Do we still need assentors?

[peterl]

Following the recent discussion on forging nomination signatures, I'm wondering whether people feel that gathering 10 signatures together serves a useful role in the political process or not.

[J.G.Harston]

Apr 3, 2017 10:12:49 GMT peterl said:

Following the recent discussion on forging nomination signatures, I'm wondering whether people feel that gathering 10 signatures together serves a useful role in the political process or not.

I think it's a useful very small hurdle to make people put some thought into being a candidate.

Back in Sheffield where I had an electorate of 16,000 it was easy to get ten sigs. Even here in Whitby with 8,000 electors it was easy enough, I got them all on two afternoons. When I stood for Parliament in Sheffield Brightside, 4-th(?) safest Labour seat in the country, it was a matter of an afternoon walking around the most-LD-ish part to get ten sigs, and keeping a note so I could go back five years later.

Somebody with a hand on the numbers might be able to tell us: what's the smallest ward electorate in the country where you need 10 sigs? I think Barnsley's are 6,500. Parish wards can be tiny, but you only need two sigs, and if you can't bang on your next-door-neighbour's door to get them to sign you can't be helped.

[LDCaerdydd]

Llanbrynmair, Powys had an electorate of 770 in 2012.

[timrollpickering]

I am surprised that for the London Assembly no signatures seem to be required. And for the London Mayor it seems an obstacle to require ten from the City of London - it's got a lot of flats and weekday homes that can actually make it hard to reach voters. I wouldn't be surprised if some other cities have inner city wards where massive chunks of the electorate are similarly hard to get to.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

I think some of the West Somerset wards are under 1,000 electorate. Occasionally the LGBCE creates a ward which is almost empty - have a look at Chenies ward on Chiltern DC from 1991 to 2007.

[Arthur Figgis]

Apr 3, 2017 13:37:15 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

I think some of the West Somerset wards are under 1,000 electorate. Occasionally the LGBCE creates a ward which is almost empty - have a look at Chenies ward on Chiltern DC from 1991 to 2007.

1991-2003, at which point it became part of Occupied Buckinghamshire. The councillor 1991-5 and 1999-2003 was later my running mate for a parish election.

Actually, that doesn't make sense. The occupation of part of Bucks by Herts CC was in 1991.
In 1987, the ward electorate was 1722, while in 1991 it was 192.

The 192 must be what was left behind in Bucks, namely the village of Chenies itself- rather than the parts of 'Greater Chorleywood'.

[anthony]

I tend to think 10 is just large enough to be really administratively annoying and stressful for the agent and candidate(s). If we really think it should be difficult to stand unless you have a significant amount of support, then make it higher. If it's a formality to give some evidence to the suggestion that the candidate exists and lives/works/owns property where they say they do, let's look at another way.

[greatkingrat]

For parliamentary elections I would like to see a system where candidates can choose to either pay a deposit, or collect signatures instead (maybe 50?), but they wouldn't need to do both.

[John Chanin]

As part of my boundary work I downloaded all the wards in England & Wales. The 3 smallest in England are:

West Quantock - 901 (West Somerset)
Martinsthorpe - 887 (Rutland)
Swaledale - 913 (Richmondshire)

I'm sure most members of this forum would have been able to guess these very small local authorities.

In Wales there are many smaller ones, eg Garth in Gwynnedd just 420.

[Harry Hayfield]

How's this for a compromise:

2 assenters for a local council
5 assenters for devolved assembly
8 assenters for Westminster
15 assenters for regional elections (mayors / assembly)
50 assenters for country wide elections to external body (European Parliament or akin)

[Deleted]

Plenty above about signatures; what about deposits? They go hand in hand with nominators and assentors. I think £500 is a reasonable amount, as it happens, to prevent ballot papers being cluttered up with candidates standing just for a laugh.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

It's long past time for the Parliamentary deposit to be raised significantly. Too many frivolous candidates.

[peterl]

I think £500 is enough, the deposit shouldn't put off legitimate candidates, for instance a local independent who wants to raise attention to a local issue. The 5% threshold to get the deposit back really ought to be lowered when there have been several times in recent years that major parties have failed to reach it.

[gwynthegriff]

Apr 3, 2017 17:32:35 GMT peterl said:

I think £500 is enough, the deposit shouldn't put off legitimate candidates, for instance a local independent who wants to raise attention to a local issue. The 5% threshold to get the deposit back really ought to be lowered when there have been several times in recent years that major parties have failed to reach it.

I refer the Hon Member to my (numerous) past pleas for a sliding scale for deposits.

5% you get it all back; 0% you forfeit the lot.

Avoids the situation where a Green gets 4.2% and loses £500, while a "Make Len Goodman Head of State" idiot gets 0.05% and loses the same.

I would also make space for 12 names on nomination papers, of which 10 must be valid (to avoid the situation where a minor discrepancy causes a paper to be rejected).

I would also advocate a deposit for principal area authorities. And a Freepost.

( Or, perhaps, a fee for the Freepost.)

This is why I voted "other".

[Deleted]

Apr 3, 2017 17:56:27 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Apr 3, 2017 17:32:35 GMT peterl said:

I think £500 is enough, the deposit shouldn't put off legitimate candidates, for instance a local independent who wants to raise attention to a local issue. The 5% threshold to get the deposit back really ought to be lowered when there have been several times in recent years that major parties have failed to reach it.

I refer the Hon Member to my (numerous) past pleas for a sliding scale for deposits.

5% you get it all back; 0% you forfeit the lot.

Avoids the situation where a Green gets 4.2% and loses £500, while a "Make Len Goodman Head of State" idiot gets 0.05% and loses the same.

I would also make space for 12 names on nomination papers, of which 10 must be valid (to avoid the situation where a minor discrepancy causes a paper to be rejected).

I would also advocate a deposit for principal area authorities. And a Freepost.

( Or, perhaps, a fee for the Freepost.)

This is why I voted "other".

Combine that with making it 2-5k and we've got somewhere.

[johnloony]

I have always said that the requirement for 10 signatures is a pointless waste of time (not just for candidates/agents, but also for the administrative hassle for the election staff in checking them) because it has nothing to do with demonstrating significant support for a candidate. In all my elections, I mostly asked complete strangers and usually got the 10 signatures within 3 hours.

In Croydon North in 2012 three candidates went along the same road and there were several signatures which were duplicated, thus demonstrating what a farce the system was.

However, since I stopped being a candidate I have come to think that perhaps there is some value in having a pointless obstacle course of this kind, just to make it slightly difficult and to deter a few frivolous or lazy candidates.

The idea of having a few extra spaces on the nomination paper to allow for the possibility that one or two of them might be invalid is something which some returning officers already allow de facto, just because some are less fussy than others.

I agree that there needs to be a deposit of at least £500 to deter frivolous candidates, but it probably wouldn't make much difference if the threshold were 2% instead of 5%. I agree with David and when the deposit level was set at £500 in 1986, it might have been better if it had been index-linked so it would now be £800 or £1000 or whatever.

[gwynthegriff]

Apr 3, 2017 19:44:17 GMT joe said:

Apr 3, 2017 17:56:27 GMT gwynthegriff said:

I refer the Hon Member to my (numerous) past pleas for a sliding scale for deposits.

5% you get it all back; 0% you forfeit the lot.

Avoids the situation where a Green gets 4.2% and loses £500, while a "Make Len Goodman Head of State" idiot gets 0.05% and loses the same.

I would also make space for 12 names on nomination papers, of which 10 must be valid (to avoid the situation where a minor discrepancy causes a paper to be rejected).

I would also advocate a deposit for principal area authorities. And a Freepost.

( Or, perhaps, a fee for the Freepost.)

This is why I voted "other".

Combine that with making it 2-5k and we've got somewhere.

Wouldn't disagree with the lower end of that range.

[warofdreams]

I like the idea of requiring more signatures. Perhaps 1% of the electorate. Give enough time to gather them and allow submission of extras (up to a sensible limit) in case of minor discrepancies. No need for a deposit, £500 for a Parliamentary election is a real barrier to many individuals who should be permitted to run if they can demonstrate enough support.

[peterl]

I quite like this idea of having two alternatives: no signatures but a deposit or a long list of signatures and no deposit. I believe a similar thing is done in some parts of the US.

[J.G.Harston]

Apr 3, 2017 21:17:27 GMT warofdreams said:

I like the idea of requiring more signatures. Perhaps 1% of the electorate.

God, I don't think I'd have been able to get 160 people to sign my nomination papers unless I spent an entire week continuously going house to house. With the typical explanation, natter, check, scribble, thanks, travel from house to house, that's a minimum of 80 hours, getting on for two weeks in "real" days. Plus I tended to also do half a dozen "dead" wards as well going around the dozen known previous nominators. That's something like 1000 people to get signtures from in one week.