Post by Deleted on May 26, 2014 20:54:02 GMT
During those long campaigning hours slogging around delivering newsletters, or stuffing envelopes, I was thinking about posting on this subject, and then Kris put it in rather a humorous context with his 'intervention' in the Newark by-election.
We are all interested in the administration of elections, insomuch as it impacts on our ability to analyse the results and use the information either personally or for the benefit of our parties. And we all know that election administration is a) a bit of a cinderella in local government, and b) officers don't appreciate how their approach impacts on those who are interested; I'll include in that the general public, because every election season I am amazed how many councils don't make the upcoming elections the major feature on the front of their websites - just shows that officers run councils, not members!
Of the top of my head, some of the many things we, as a group, have identified and groused about on here:
council websites where the elections pages are very difficult to find, and/or very late with updates
lack of clear information about wards, electorates, etc
poor information about by-elections
poor use of twitter and other social media to publicise elections, results, and the details thereof
lackadaisical approach to making information available in a timely fashion (Maidstone, eh?)
Now, we can make an impact on some of this individually - as Pimp and I did, I think, in Maidstone - but I suspect that if we want to succeed in improving things, then we power, or at least the illusion of it.
On the other side of the fence, the officers have the Association of Electoral Administrators, and I am tentatively suggesting we set up a Psephologists' Association to act as a lobbying group and consultee to council electoral services officers and other such groups.
I think it would be clear that this would not be involved in lobbying either way on electoral reform, or similar issues, but would be purely concerned with matters related to the administration of elections, and dissemination of information about elections and results.
The platform would include such points as those above, and we could make membership open initially to basically anyone who posts on this forum, and/or similar forums, and then perhaps to anyone who expresses an interest in joining. I would imagine that we could also extend an initial invitation to individuals such as Mike Smithson, Anthony Wells and Martin Baxter. I'm sure you can think of others. Perhaps we could invite national and regional agents for the main parties, given that they probably tear their hair out over the same things.
We could contact councils directly, giving them an honest assessment of how their council performs, recommendations on how to do better, and examples of good practice.
Being a cross-party organisation would give it credibility that any one party would not necessarily have, I think. If it proved to be successful, we could extend the remit to wider issues such as trying to persuade the boundary commissions to do reviews on a sensible basis (i.e. thinking about the impact up or down the hierarchy), and also lobbying the media (BBC!) on how they present election results. We have a number of people on here who could present a case eloquently and powerfully on our behalf, and probably do a better job of analysing information than the people they have on currently.
So, views? Anyone think this is a good idea? We'd need a good logo for the letterhead, of course.
We are all interested in the administration of elections, insomuch as it impacts on our ability to analyse the results and use the information either personally or for the benefit of our parties. And we all know that election administration is a) a bit of a cinderella in local government, and b) officers don't appreciate how their approach impacts on those who are interested; I'll include in that the general public, because every election season I am amazed how many councils don't make the upcoming elections the major feature on the front of their websites - just shows that officers run councils, not members!
Of the top of my head, some of the many things we, as a group, have identified and groused about on here:
council websites where the elections pages are very difficult to find, and/or very late with updates
lack of clear information about wards, electorates, etc
poor information about by-elections
poor use of twitter and other social media to publicise elections, results, and the details thereof
lackadaisical approach to making information available in a timely fashion (Maidstone, eh?)
Now, we can make an impact on some of this individually - as Pimp and I did, I think, in Maidstone - but I suspect that if we want to succeed in improving things, then we power, or at least the illusion of it.
On the other side of the fence, the officers have the Association of Electoral Administrators, and I am tentatively suggesting we set up a Psephologists' Association to act as a lobbying group and consultee to council electoral services officers and other such groups.
I think it would be clear that this would not be involved in lobbying either way on electoral reform, or similar issues, but would be purely concerned with matters related to the administration of elections, and dissemination of information about elections and results.
The platform would include such points as those above, and we could make membership open initially to basically anyone who posts on this forum, and/or similar forums, and then perhaps to anyone who expresses an interest in joining. I would imagine that we could also extend an initial invitation to individuals such as Mike Smithson, Anthony Wells and Martin Baxter. I'm sure you can think of others. Perhaps we could invite national and regional agents for the main parties, given that they probably tear their hair out over the same things.
We could contact councils directly, giving them an honest assessment of how their council performs, recommendations on how to do better, and examples of good practice.
Being a cross-party organisation would give it credibility that any one party would not necessarily have, I think. If it proved to be successful, we could extend the remit to wider issues such as trying to persuade the boundary commissions to do reviews on a sensible basis (i.e. thinking about the impact up or down the hierarchy), and also lobbying the media (BBC!) on how they present election results. We have a number of people on here who could present a case eloquently and powerfully on our behalf, and probably do a better job of analysing information than the people they have on currently.
So, views? Anyone think this is a good idea? We'd need a good logo for the letterhead, of course.
