Perhaps it’s the increasing freedom for people to use social media during Liberal Democrat selection contests. Perhaps it’s the increasing proportion of party activists who take part in online discussions. Or perhaps it’s hiccups with the Royal Mail, party data or others involved. Whatever the cause, as with the party’s recent federal committee elections there seems to be more chatter about people not receiving ballot papers for the current Euro selections than in previous contests.
Whether it’s a greater awareness of hiccups or whether there genuinely are more issues than in the past will be something that it is important to examine properly in due course (and kudos to Party President Tim Farron for responding so positively to the issues raised on social media during the committee contests).
In the meantime, an all-postal ballot of party members is currently under way to select Euro candidates in England. So if you’ve got your ballot paper and not yet posted it back, remember to do so.
The original deadline for returning ballots was Wednesday 28 November. However, a problem which resulted in around 550 party members being missed out by mistake from the original ballot mailings has been identified and ballot papers have been posted out to them by first class post earlier in the week (along with first class freepost return envelopes).
In addition, the return deadline for all ballots has been extended to noon, Friday 30 November.
If, even after those replacements, you are entitled to vote and haven’t yet received your ballot paper (or are not sure if you should have), contact Returning.Officer AT libdems.org.
And whether or not if you have got your own ballot paper, if you are involved in local communications (e.g. you run your local party’s email list for members or you are the local council group secretary), why not pass this information on to other members too? If there are people who haven’t received ballot papers as yet but should have, it may just be that if you don’t tell them, no-one will.
UPDATE: A couple of further pieces of information. The Euro selections are a ballot of party members who have had continuous membership for more than a year. If you have asked for a replacement already then that request will have been dealt with and the replacement is on its way to you.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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9 Comments
Mine arrived this morning. I had been making waves after my husband’s arrived weeks ago and there was nothing for me. Membership did eventually contact me to say that I would be receiving one about now, but I could have done with notification at the time the error was spotted rather than some time later, as it would have saved me some anxiety, and a lot of other people from the effects of it.
I would be interested to know what caused the problem.
Live in twickenham; nothing so far.
Spoke to membership at HQ 10 days ago. Not received mine yet.
I only got mine after chasing. I haven’t been receiving Lib Dem news for months because they can’t even tell me if my subscription is up to date – infact half the time they can’t even reply to an e-mail. It seems the party’s central organisation has fallen apart ever since Rennard was replace by his English cousin, it hasn’t improved since Fox’s departure.
I hope mine is waiting for me at home. It hadn’t arraived and the RO told me HQ had dispatched a replacement last Friday almost a week ago!.
A quick footnote. If you’ve commented (or read but not commented!) about not receiving a ballot paper, you’ll need also to email [email protected] so that the issue can be sorted.
Thanks Mark for highlighting this issue and reminding members about the deadline. As you say, some names were missed off the registers and will still receive ballots. I’ve had several requests about missing ballots from members as a candidate myself. That’s why the deadline has been extended to 30 November at 12.00.
There was also an issue with members of our overseas branches (like my own), who are now receiving electronic votes to avoid delays with the international mail. If anyone still doesn’t have theirs or is in any doubt, please do contact the returning officer.
Received, voted, sent back.
Do we know if the accession of Croatia will reduce the UK’s seat allocation?
According to Article 9.2 of the English Party Constitution, the loss of voting rights if you are late renewing only applies to “Members joining after 26 November 2005”. However Membership Department apply it to everyone. They seem to think that if you lapse then renew, your membership has re-started after 2005. But if that were the case, there’d have been no need to put that date in the constitution.
Some of our long term members were very late renewing this year. I was very relieved when they finally did renew (especially those who were on our Exec!!). I do NOT look forward to telling them they can’t vote when we select candidates.