The Electoral Commission’s Peter Wardle last week gave a speech to local government Chief Executives, during which he made this point about election addresses:
The constituencies in the PCC [Police and Crime Commissioner] elections are big, with over a million voters in some cases. There’s currently no provision for candidates to have Freepost facilities to deliver their election addresses to voters. Nor is there a provision for any sort of booklet for voters that would include candidates’ election addresses. Alongside the PCC elections, of course, there may well be elections for Mayors in the larger English cities. And candidates for Mayor will, on current plans, be able to pay a fee to have their election address included in a booklet delivered to voters across the city. So we’re worried that we’re currently heading for an odd situation, both for candidates and for voters.
A very good point.
* Mark Pack is Party President and is the editor of Liberal Democrat Newswire.
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4 Comments
Short answer – Yes – they should be a freepost for police commissioner elections. From a democracy point of view it eliminates on of the problems of getting your message across all of an area. In most counties only the Tories are able to do this.
Why didn’t we get this into the legislation?
It is really worrying how badly MPs including our own have been on this legislation.In fact I don’t think I have ever witnessed a bigger cock up from the massed leadership of the party whether in Parliament, the FE or the English Party than this. Only the Lib Dem leadership in local government seem to have been sensible on this issue.
Agree with the above. Without a freepost some people don’t realise how this changes the dynamics of the election campaign. Even the Tories won’t be able to get literature to every house. Some LDs still worry about the cost despite the fact that it will be a campaign fought in the press, on radio and tv, and on the web and social media sites. November will see the end of any Lib Dem influence on policing and its domination by Labour and the Tories.