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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Jan 26, 2024 17:14:08 GMT
Bumping this thread because the Wellingborough thread is perhaps getting swamped by ballot paper access talk and this seems to touch on everything being discussed there.
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Jan 27, 2024 10:50:07 GMT
Cross posting here to avoid flooding the Wellingborough thread Not barring people from standing in any way, is, for me, the most democratic option, and the one I personally favour. I really don't think a large number of candidates is a problem, voters on the whole are not as stupid as many on here seems to think, they can cope with it when it irreguarly happens. Calling candidates frivolous because they don't represent a major party, to me shows a certain narrowness of mind. 150 years ago, there was a small frivolous party called the Labour Party, that got few votes. Please don't engage in a deliberate distortion of the argument. The measure of frivolity is whether candidates are putting forward a serious political case not a trivial one, whether they are taking a distinctive position which is not covered by any existing political movement, whether the issue they are putting forward is broad enough to capture an entire constituency of 70,000 or so electors (and not merely a personal gripe or one affecting a tiny group), and whether they have substantial organisation behind their campaign. From the moment of its foundation the Labour Party met all those criteria. If a candidate does not meet these criteria, it is no loss to democracy if they are denied a spot on the ballot paper. In fact it is a service to the electors to do so. I think trying to legislate for "correct" or "proper" candidates is always going to be like mapping the Baarle-Nassau border using pasta shapes. Esther Rantzen in Luton, James Goldsmith in Putney, the numerous opponents against incumbent prime ministers, they all have their place in the process of allowing voters to mark their preference (or objection!). I think we've discussed here before what would happen if a terminally ill candidate was nominated knowing they could die prior to polling day, and other very extreme examples of minor candidates being nominated to deliberately skew results, but I don't know how you can legislate for each and every eventuality. I guess I'm against signatures for ballot paper access instead of the deposit because, as someone posted a few days ago, it begins to restrict ballots only to the parties with previous success and draws the drawbridge up. |
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Post by jamesdoyle on Jan 27, 2024 13:42:20 GMT
Does it have to be one method only? How about you can pay a deposit, or you can collect signatures?
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Jan 27, 2024 14:19:37 GMT
Does it have to be one method only? How about you can pay a deposit, or you can collect signatures? I suppose it's how that works in our constituency system. We don't want to stop minor or independent candidates from standing. We don't want to be seen to give two parties in particular a "free pass". What stops the creation of a system where Labour pays a peppercorn rate in, say, Liverpool, but a disproportionate amount in Surrey? |
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Post by uthacalthing on Feb 16, 2024 16:01:16 GMT
Another reason to object to a high signature threshold is the scope it gives for the sort of yobbery we say at Tobias Ellwood's home to be directed - or for fear of it being directed - at those either collecting or offering signatures.
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