Election day looks set to get more complicated
Much complaint about the number of simultaneous votes some lucky folk will be invited to cast on May 5th. The electorate of Leicester South will have to choose a new MP, a Mayor for their city, city councillors, and the right voting system for future General Elections - four separate polls.
Cue much chuntering about how unreasonable it is to ask people to consider several different issues at the same time.
I suspect we'll just have to get used to it. One of the outcomes of the Coalition's blizzard of constitutional changes will be more elections - for members of the Upper House, for Police Commissioners, and for more big city mayors. And it's hard to imagine that all of these different elections can be kept separate.
Considerable contortions are already being suggested to avoid the General Election scheduled for 2015 clashing with the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland elections (and there were loud enough complaints when a mere referendum was scheduled alongside this year's).
But if all goes according to Nick Clegg's plans we could be electing our first tranche of senators (or whatever they will be called) on polling day 2015, and quite possibly several mayors and police commissioners as well. And that's before we get onto the provisions in the Localism Bill to allow direct consultation of the electorate on major policy issues and council tax increases in referendums. There could be a few of those as well.
The alternative is to have a second big polling day a year, perhaps in October, where lesser elections can be shuffled away from a General Election - which would be expensive and would almost certainly lead to a lower turnout.
So maybe the Government will bite the bullet and offer voters American style balloting in which they choose everyone from the municipal dog-catcher to the President, in one fell swoop.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
Comment number 1.
At 6th Apr 2011, keithunder wrote:I think we can cope, have you ever seen an American Ballot paper? Why do people think we are thicker than people in other countries?
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Comment number 2.
At 6th Apr 2011, Race_Equality_Inspector wrote:________________________
NO! BITE A BRITISH BULLET.
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". . . . So maybe the Government will bite the bullet and offer voters American style balloting in which they choose everyone from the municipal dog-catcher to the President, in one fell swoop."
Why not bite the very British bullet of a British "Racial Democracy"?
The new concept of "Racial Constituencies" is based on the combination of British Police and British Census data.
Will the British Government do some research on the new movement for a British Racial Democratic process?
We shall see.
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Comment number 3.
At 6th Apr 2011, Kit Green wrote:1. At 17:18pm on 6th Apr 2011, keithunder wrote:
I think we can cope, have you ever seen an American Ballot paper? Why do people think we are thicker than people in other countries?
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So many MPs being opposed to AV may well be because they are too thick to understand it.
The only other mainstream conclusion would be that they want to preserve their self interest.
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Comment number 4.
At 6th Apr 2011, RW49 wrote:The thing that bothers me here is the volume of election bumf we are going to get. In an ordinary one-off election we get tons (tonnes for the metrically inclined) of the stuff. Now we are going to get a pine forests' worth, most of it meaningless manifestos.
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Comment number 5.
At 6th Apr 2011, jaystar wrote:Whatever the result of the referendum, we will have a non proportional single member constituency electoral system. Many people still want PR, but this referendum shows that any new system has to be simple.
With a simple modification, FPTP could give us an uncomplicated PR system which keeps the best features of FPTP – simple voting and counting and the single member constituency.
(google DPR Voting or )
One benefit (of many) is that every vote makes a difference to the result. This should encourage a higher voter turnout.
Another would be better MPs.
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Comment number 6.
At 6th Apr 2011, jaystar wrote:The election in May will be a fixture with fixed term parliaments, and perhaps a referendum at the end of June to validate any resulting coalition programme could also become a fixture.
That would give some scope for spreading the load.
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