Forum Topic

Local Elections & Democracy

The local elections have three ballots:One for the Mayor - we know who they are and can make decisions based on that. Many are aligned to a political party so I assume some may follow their own party preference.The second is for the Merton and Wandsworth Constituency which is as above.The third is for London Member. Which is a party only list. My question is why can't they put a name or several in here too? It seems undemocratic not to. It could be the candidates above plus one additional name for example.I'm posting this because at some point we may move to a more representative form of democracy and these are the issues that we need to discuss and our system should be as transparent as possible IMO. Also the decisions should be made by the people not the party.Thoughts appreciated.

Ed Robinson ● 1836d2 Comments

Thanks Jonathan,I found them here: https://www.londonelects.org.uk/im-voter/candidates/london-assembly-candidates-london-wideThey are also on the last couple of pages of the booklet which I missed👀.Interesting that some of the London wide Assembly member candidates are also Mayor candidates.

Ed Robinson ● 1836d

I haven’t seen the ballot paper itself but all the party list candidates are set out on the GLA website and so they are only a click away. But they should be on the ballot paper too, in order of precedence, ie the person at the top of the list will be the first to be elected if that party gets enough votes. They have a similar system in Scotland where you get two votes - one for an individual constituency candidate and one for the party list. These party lists are regional. There’s been a debate about that since the Alba party appeared, campaigning for a list vote only - and where they are guaranteed representation as long as they get more than 5% of any one of the regional list votes. Their top candidate is of course Salmond.

Jonathan Callaway ● 1836d