How much do by-elections cost ?

[Deleted]

I remember the £100,000 figure being quoted as criticism of David Davis for causing the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, but it was joked that much of the cost would be offset by the number of lost deposits (he had 25 opponents).

[carlton43]

Oct 20, 2014 16:03:27 GMT @boogieeck said:

With regard to the Carlton/EAl spat, I think it is in part a difference in philosophy regarding the responsibilities of the government and those of the electorate, with their views on democratic engagement reflecting their ideological positions on health care, education, etc.

I suspect however that both suspect that Labour will usually do better if the ill informed, ill educated, disinterested, sick, lame and lazy, plus maybe some children, criminals, recently deceased, recently arrived migrants and dogs with postal votes can be more fully engaged.

I like that so much that I want it embossed in gold leaf and framed in platinum. I could never have put it so well.

[neilm]

Or dogs with postal votes, for that matter.

[carlton43]

Oct 20, 2014 16:41:49 GMT @boogieeck said:

Hold on to your horses, consider for a moment, why should the ill informed, ill educated, disinterested, sick, lame and lazy not be fully engaged? Do children not have a greater stake in the nations future than you do, very old boy? Likewise, migrants. Should criminals not engage more fully?

Never mind the content........it was the wonderful stream of consciousness and mode of expression. Don't spoil that with mundanity of explanation.

And. on reflection, I think I disagree with every point you make here except regarding the sick. So let fly the horses of restraint and embrace the status quo. 

[East Anglian Lefty]

Oct 20, 2014 16:17:43 GMT carlton43 said:

Oct 20, 2014 16:03:27 GMT @boogieeck said:

With regard to the Carlton/EAl spat, I think it is in part a difference in philosophy regarding the responsibilities of the government and those of the electorate, with their views on democratic engagement reflecting their ideological positions on health care, education, etc.

I suspect however that both suspect that Labour will usually do better if the ill informed, ill educated, disinterested, sick, lame and lazy, plus maybe some children, criminals, recently deceased, recently arrived migrants and dogs with postal votes can be more fully engaged.

I like that so much that I want it embossed in gold leaf and framed in platinum. I could never have put it so well.

I would make a snide remark, but I think boogie's done that well enough already.

[East Anglian Lefty]

Oct 20, 2014 16:03:27 GMT @boogieeck said:

With regard to the Carlton/EAl spat, I think it is in part a difference in philosophy regarding the responsibilities of the government and those of the electorate, with their views on democratic engagement reflecting their ideological positions on health care, education, etc.

I suspect however that both suspect that Labour will usually do better if the ill informed, ill educated, disinterested, sick, lame and lazy, plus maybe some children, criminals, recently deceased, recently arrived migrants and dogs with postal votes can be more fully engaged.

I think you may be ascribing your own prejudices to me (I make no pretence at understanding Carlton's.) I suspect in Aberdeen those demographics would generally support Labour (with a strong SNP showing further down the age brackets) but that's because in Aberdeen Labour is the historically dominant party. In north-east Essex, the same demographics (recently arrived migrants particularly, given the bits of London they tend to arrive from) would generally be fairly good for the Tories, for much the same reason. I detect (possibly unfairly) a classist element to the above rant, but if you exclude that I came across plenty of Lib Dems in Cambridge pre-2010 whose allegiance was less genetic but equally unthinking.

I'd further note that being ill-informed, ill-educated and disinterested (or just plain stupid, for that matter) are different things. There are plenty of people who are very interested in happenings in their locality who are nevertheless witless illiterates, plenty of well-read individuals with a strong understanding of public policy who nevertheless have a poor knowledge of the local political scene, plenty of people who are well-educated but know nothing about politics either locally or nationally and all the other permutations.

Nevertheless, the basis of democracy is that everybody's vote is equal, and that includes people voting for stupid reasons. Any attempt to ensure that only those who've thought about it properly vote or to ensure they have a greater say is, when you get down to specifics, just an effort to fix things in behaviour of your particular prejudices. You can't actually tell whether those who don't realise the election is happening until they're informed have thought about it, and so the best solution is to promote participation as much as is reasonably achievable.

That said, I don't actually think there's any great need to promote participation more than we already do. I just think Carlton's suggestions were so daft, even from the perspective of cost-saving, that a desire to suppress turnout was the most reasonable motive to assume. Upon further reflection, I might have been mistaken about this, because the rationality by which Carlton operates by is very clearly not one that makes sense to me.

[East Anglian Lefty]

There will be a bit of white flight proper, but in most cases it'll be something rather different (if with very similar attitudes on some issues.) Most of it is people wanting to move away from the city and get somewhere nice with a decent garden. That's closely tied up to certain anti-urban ideals, but my suspicion is that most of the migration these days is from parts of outer London where the non-white population hasn't yet arrived (and where those who have resemble the existing population enough to cause little disquiet).

[johnloony]

The Fairfield ward by-election in Croydon in December 2005 cost £15,044. Staff costs were £8,073.68. Hire of polling stations was £1,910. Printing of ballot papers cost £697. The electorate was 9,639 and the turnout was 2,700.