Post by AdminSTB on Jan 10, 2017 19:58:56 GMT
For the benefit of our newer members, the best part of two years ago, jamesdoyle posted this idea, which initially created a great deal of enthusiasm.
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.
All we ever agreed to (by way of one of my forum polls) was a name: The Psephological Society. And this sub forum was created by Kris. Then momentum was lost and the whole thing ran into the sand. I'd be interested to see if if the idea is worth revisiting, and how far we could go with it.
peterl has suggested that one good starting point if we are going to set up the Psephological Society would be to create and agree to a Mission Statement. When this whole idea was originally proposed, I recall only one Mission Statement being proposed, by Rose Tinted Lane .
Here it is (emboldened):
We need articles of association, or at least a firm set of aims for the Society, possibly based on the following:
"The Psephological Society exists to promote efficient and transparent administration of elections in the United Kingdom. The Society concerns itself with the dissemination of information before, during and after the elections themselves, and will work in partnership with councils, returning officers, interested national organisations, and the media, to ensure that public access to information is as open and deep as possible.
The Society is a political, but non-party, organisation, open to all those interested in the analysis and study of elections, and all collateral matters.
The society is concerned with:
- all regular elections to European, national, regional and local authority bodies in the United Kingdom
- by-elections to said bodies
The Society will act as a critical friend to concerned organisations, and respondent to consultations on:
- accessibility and presentation standards
- use of modern (social) media
- management of election counts
- clear analysis
- boundary reviews
- media presentation and commentary on elections"
----------
Perhaps we should begin by asking someone to start a database of members: what details would be need? Just name, address and email? A separate thread should be started for each of the Society Constitution and the Articles of Association (Aims), with a model template proposed as the first post in each thread. Members of this forum can then contribute, amend and make suggestions. After a set period of time (a month?), those members who have provided their names and email addresses to the database-holder will be sent an e-mail asking them to vote on each of the two documents. If those documents are approved, we can then proceed with electing an executive committee who can set up a bank account/website/twitter account.
That way, any member of this site can participate, but voting is done by actual members. Perhaps a trusted member of the site can administrate these first elections, or some agreeable third party?
What do people think of this as a way to proceed?
As this was the only Mission Statement proposed at the time, perhaps we could give it our approval or constructive abuse, whatever is most appropriate?
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.
All we ever agreed to (by way of one of my forum polls) was a name: The Psephological Society. And this sub forum was created by Kris. Then momentum was lost and the whole thing ran into the sand. I'd be interested to see if if the idea is worth revisiting, and how far we could go with it.
peterl has suggested that one good starting point if we are going to set up the Psephological Society would be to create and agree to a Mission Statement. When this whole idea was originally proposed, I recall only one Mission Statement being proposed, by Rose Tinted Lane .
Here it is (emboldened):
We need articles of association, or at least a firm set of aims for the Society, possibly based on the following:
"The Psephological Society exists to promote efficient and transparent administration of elections in the United Kingdom. The Society concerns itself with the dissemination of information before, during and after the elections themselves, and will work in partnership with councils, returning officers, interested national organisations, and the media, to ensure that public access to information is as open and deep as possible.
The Society is a political, but non-party, organisation, open to all those interested in the analysis and study of elections, and all collateral matters.
The society is concerned with:
- all regular elections to European, national, regional and local authority bodies in the United Kingdom
- by-elections to said bodies
The Society will act as a critical friend to concerned organisations, and respondent to consultations on:
- accessibility and presentation standards
- use of modern (social) media
- management of election counts
- clear analysis
- boundary reviews
- media presentation and commentary on elections"
----------
Perhaps we should begin by asking someone to start a database of members: what details would be need? Just name, address and email? A separate thread should be started for each of the Society Constitution and the Articles of Association (Aims), with a model template proposed as the first post in each thread. Members of this forum can then contribute, amend and make suggestions. After a set period of time (a month?), those members who have provided their names and email addresses to the database-holder will be sent an e-mail asking them to vote on each of the two documents. If those documents are approved, we can then proceed with electing an executive committee who can set up a bank account/website/twitter account.
That way, any member of this site can participate, but voting is done by actual members. Perhaps a trusted member of the site can administrate these first elections, or some agreeable third party?
What do people think of this as a way to proceed?
