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Post by yellowperil on Mar 25, 2017 19:44:13 GMT
Would the situation have been different if the council officers had spotted the grounds for disqualification when the nomination papers were submitted? If so, what difference would it have made if the disqualification came sufficiently close to the deadline that there was absolutely no chance of finding an alternative candidate? I can see all sorts of possible scenarios here,depending on the time scale.
I think any of us who have acted as agents will be breathing a huge sigh of relief if it hasn't happened to them. Do I guess that anyone talking glibly of "anyone competent" hasn't ever done this job?
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Post by mattb on Mar 25, 2017 20:03:40 GMT
Would the situation have been different if the council officers had spotted the grounds for disqualification when the nomination papers were submitted? If so, what difference would it have made if the disqualification came sufficiently close to the deadline that there was absolutely no chance of finding an alternative candidate? I can see all sorts of possible scenarios here,depending on the time scale. I think any of us who have acted as agents will be breathing a huge sigh of relief if it hasn't happened to them. Do I guess that anyone talking glibly of "anyone competent" hasn't ever done this job? My understanding is the Returning Officer is obliged to take at face value the candidate's signed declaration of their eligibility. |
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 25, 2017 20:24:11 GMT
Would the situation have been different if the council officers had spotted the grounds for disqualification when the nomination papers were submitted? If so, what difference would it have made if the disqualification came sufficiently close to the deadline that there was absolutely no chance of finding an alternative candidate? I can see all sorts of possible scenarios here,depending on the time scale. I think any of us who have acted as agents will be breathing a huge sigh of relief if it hasn't happened to them. Do I guess that anyone talking glibly of "anyone competent" hasn't ever done this job? My understanding is the Returning Officer is obliged to take at face value the candidate's signed declaration of their eligibility. And mine. In which case it is a simple matter of legal eligibility.....or non-eligibility. If a chosen candidate it is a simple matter of incompetence by the candidate/agent/party and I cannot see why they should get a let any more than in the matter of putting in papers late with a very minor fault and not having time to re-submit, or just being a few minutes late in presenting at the office. Technicality.....Yes. But no reason to re-run a perfectly valid election. The mistake 'costs' the incompetent party. |
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maxque
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Post by maxque on Mar 25, 2017 21:00:39 GMT
My understanding is the Returning Officer is obliged to take at face value the candidate's signed declaration of their eligibility. And mine. In which case it is a simple matter of legal eligibility.....or non-eligibility. If a chosen candidate it is a simple matter of incompetence by the candidate/agent/party and I cannot see why they should get a let any more than in the matter of putting in papers late with a very minor fault and not having time to re-submit, or just being a few minutes late in presenting at the office. Technicality.....Yes. But no reason to re-run a perfectly valid election. The mistake 'costs' the incompetent party. The issue is as the ineligibity of the Labour candidate wasn't publically known (unlike Tony Benn's case), Labour voters didn't void their votes on purpose. So, the election should have been between UKIP and Conservatives, but we do not know which party those electors would have picked. |
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 25, 2017 21:08:22 GMT
And mine. In which case it is a simple matter of legal eligibility.....or non-eligibility. If a chosen candidate it is a simple matter of incompetence by the candidate/agent/party and I cannot see why they should get a let any more than in the matter of putting in papers late with a very minor fault and not having time to re-submit, or just being a few minutes late in presenting at the office. Technicality.....Yes. But no reason to re-run a perfectly valid election. The mistake 'costs' the incompetent party. The issue is as the ineligibity of the Labour candidate wasn't publically known (unlike Tony Benn's case), Labour voters didn't void their votes on purpose. So, the election should have been between UKIP and Conservatives, but we do not know which party those electors would have picked. Quite irrelevant. The candidates are who they are. One was illegible and cannot win. the public are no more disadvantaged by this than by failure to get paperwork correct or by failing to lodge papers on time. All deprive the choice of a candidate through incompetence. The public do not have a right to the presence of a candidate from a given party and if that party fouls up they will be denied that candidate............period! |
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Post by yellowperil on Mar 25, 2017 21:18:29 GMT
Yes I think you are technically right that the Returning Officer accepts the declaration presented to him, but had the disqualification criteria had been clear cut( clearly it wasn't), I am sure a way could have been found to convey that to the candidate and if that was too late for anything other than the withdrawal of the disqualified candidate, we would then have had a two-way contest between Con and Ukip which might have produced a different result from the battle for second place actually run. If the grounds for disqualification were so blindingly obvious,maybe the opposing agents would have spotted it. What will now ensue is not strictly a re-run wth a new Labour candidate- a new election might find all sorts of parties suddenly finding Higher Croft interesting.
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Post by tonygreaves on Mar 25, 2017 21:43:16 GMT
It's our County and we'll cry if we want to...
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Post by gwynthegriff on Mar 25, 2017 22:03:05 GMT
Forgive a foreigner butting in but aren't illegibility and ineligibility two entirely different concepts.
Illegibility has been an issue on a nomination paper of mine (inadvisably I'd invited a doctor to act as my nominator) but ineligibility has not.
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Post by andrewteale on Mar 25, 2017 22:29:41 GMT
In an effort to try and point out that the world is not black and white, there are two recent cases of candidates being disqualified after being given incorrect official advice stating that they were not disqualified.
Andrea Jenkyns (C) had been elected to Lincolnshire county council from Boston North West division in 2009 while she was working part-time as a music teacher for Lincolnshire Music Services. She had been wrongly advised by the council beforehand that she was eligible to stand for election. Jenkyns was re-elected in the by-election by 16 votes over the BNP.
Aled Roberts (LD) was elected to the Welsh Assembly from the North Wales list in 2011 while he was a member of the Valuation Tribunal for Wales. He had been given guidance by the Electoral Commission beforehand that he was eligible to stand; after the election it turned out that the Commission's English-language guidance on this subject was up-to-date but their Welsh-language guidance (which was the document Roberts, as a Welsh speaker, had been given) was not. The Assembly voted to seat Roberts by 30 votes to 20.
Then was the case in Redcar in 2011 where two councillors were working as teachers at a foundation school funded by Redcar and Cleveland council and it was not clear whether or not this disqualified them. Rather than get involved in a legal battle over it, they chose to resign and one of them was re-elected in the by-election (the other didn't seek re-election).
In fact I'm not aware of any recent cases of a councillor being disqualified for holding a disqualifying office and the runner-up being elected in their place. It strikes me that the most likely outcome of Carlton's idea would be an upsurge in litigation from which no-one would emerge with any credit.
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maxque
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Post by maxque on Mar 25, 2017 22:32:24 GMT
The issue is as the ineligibity of the Labour candidate wasn't publically known (unlike Tony Benn's case), Labour voters didn't void their votes on purpose. So, the election should have been between UKIP and Conservatives, but we do not know which party those electors would have picked. Quite irrelevant. The candidates are who they are. One was illegible and cannot win. the public are no more disadvantaged by this than by failure to get paperwork correct or by failing to lodge papers on time. All deprive the choice of a candidate through incompetence. The public do not have a right to the presence of a candidate from a given party and if that party fouls up they will be denied that candidate............period! That's your opinion that's irrelevant. I'm merely stating how courts and authorities interpreted the law. |
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Post by marksenior on Mar 25, 2017 22:32:26 GMT
The issue is as the ineligibity of the Labour candidate wasn't publically known (unlike Tony Benn's case), Labour voters didn't void their votes on purpose. So, the election should have been between UKIP and Conservatives, but we do not know which party those electors would have picked. Quite irrelevant. The candidates are who they are. One was illegible and cannot win. the public are no more disadvantaged by this than by failure to get paperwork correct or by failing to lodge papers on time. All deprive the choice of a candidate through incompetence. The public do not have a right to the presence of a candidate from a given party and if that party fouls up they will be denied that candidate............period! But as in the school dinner lady case cited earlier , the ineligibility is not clear cut and is the R O's interpretation of the law . It really needs to be clarified through the courts but that can be an expensive business . |
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Post by carlton43 on Mar 25, 2017 22:47:39 GMT
Perhaps I should just stick with my odd mistake of 'illegible'?
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maxque
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Post by maxque on Mar 25, 2017 23:48:12 GMT
Perhaps I should just stick with my odd mistake of 'illegible'? For seeing some hand-written declarations of interest and some hand-written letters from councillors, there is a lot of illegible councillors. |
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Mar 26, 2017 0:34:00 GMT
Illegibility has been an issue on a nomination paper of mine ( inadvisably I'd invited a doctor to act as my nominator) but ineligibility has not. 'Inadvisably' is an understatement there, Gwyn!  |
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Post by yellowperil on Mar 26, 2017 8:05:49 GMT
One of the odd things in the Higher Croft case was the timing of the revelation- I would have expected it to come to the crunch either much earlier (i.e. at or around nomination) or much later (i.e. an appeal to the courts). I get the impression (am I right?)that it came out only at the point of the declaration -certainly we all became aware of it then. I was over a hundred miles away and not particularly concerned with this by-election (my party, after all, shamefully wasn't standing) yet even I was aware of the candidate's employment.When did anyone think to check his eligibility (or even his illegibility)?
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Post by yellowperil on Mar 26, 2017 9:14:14 GMT
I have now followed the link to the local paper posted on the other thread referring to this case (2 threads was probably a mistake?) so I have partly answered my own question- the candidate withdrew himself during the election day, it seems, not that that makes anything else much clearer. It also emerges that he had stood as the losing candidate in another ward last year, without anyone querying his status. It doesn't get any less weird.
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Post by middleenglander on Mar 26, 2017 12:53:56 GMT
There was a by-election on 16 July 2009 in the Arbury & Stockingford division of Warwickshire County Council. Two Conservatives were elected (incidentally husband & wife) in the all out elections but the husband did have a part time job looking after vulnerable people on a bus operated by the County Council. He reportedly handed in his nomination papers two days before nominations closed and resigned his position on the same day as nominations closed. Labour objected and he was disqualified. He stood in the by-election but was defeated.
Given this, it is difficult to see why the Higher Croft case is out of line with previous decisions.
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Post by marksenior on Mar 26, 2017 13:11:27 GMT
There was a by-election on 16 July 2009 in the Arbury & Stockingford division of Warwickshire County Council. Two Conservatives were elected (incidentally husband & wife) in the all out elections but the husband did have a part time job looking after vulnerable people on a bus operated by the County Council. He reportedly handed in his nomination papers two days before nominations closed and resigned his position on the same day as nominations closed. Labour objected and he was disqualified. He stood in the by-election but was defeated. Given this, it is difficult to see why the Higher Croft case is out of line with previous decisions. Remember umpteen jobs Bob the Conservative elected at the Bromley by election in 2006 . At the time he handed in his nomination papers he was disqualified from standing but the post was due to be abolished on or just before election day . Technically according to the wording of the law his nomination should have been rejected but the R O did not do so . |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Mar 26, 2017 13:20:42 GMT
There was a by-election on 16 July 2009 in the Arbury & Stockingford division of Warwickshire County Council. Two Conservatives were elected (incidentally husband & wife) in the all out elections but the husband did have a part time job looking after vulnerable people on a bus operated by the County Council. He reportedly handed in his nomination papers two days before nominations closed and resigned his position on the same day as nominations closed. Labour objected and he was disqualified. He stood in the by-election but was defeated. Given this, it is difficult to see why the Higher Croft case is out of line with previous decisions. Remember umpteen jobs Bob the Conservative elected at the Bromley by election in 2006 . At the time he handed in his nomination papers he was disqualified from standing but the post was due to be abolished on or just before election day . Technically according to the wording of the law his nomination should have been rejected but the R O did not do so . No, Mark, it shouldn't, and you should know this fairly basic bit of electoral law. The RO has no power to reject a nomination that is valid on its face, nor to go investigating if some third party reports that a nominated candidate is ineligible. Rule 12 of the Parliamentary Election Rules. The rules for Parliament and local authorities are not entirely in line but the key point is that the candidate's consent to nomination includes a declaration that the candidate knows of no reason why they are not qualified for election - rule 8 of the Parliamentary Election Rules. |
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Post by marksenior on Mar 26, 2017 13:43:09 GMT
Remember umpteen jobs Bob the Conservative elected at the Bromley by election in 2006 . At the time he handed in his nomination papers he was disqualified from standing but the post was due to be abolished on or just before election day . Technically according to the wording of the law his nomination should have been rejected but the R O did not do so . No, Mark, it shouldn't, and you should know this fairly basic bit of electoral law. The RO has no power to reject a nomination that is valid on its face, nor to go investigating if some third party reports that a nominated candidate is ineligible. Rule 12 of the Parliamentary Election Rules. The rules for Parliament and local authorities are not entirely in line but the key point is that the candidate's consent to nomination includes a declaration that the candidate knows of no reason why they are not qualified for election - rule 8 of the Parliamentary Election Rules. That is not how I interpret Rule 12(2) and 12(3) |
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