Polling stations are now open in the local elections

Polls are now open in the local elections in England and Northern Ireland to determine who will run local services for the next four years.

Elections are being held in 248 English councils for local councillors: six of them including Copeland are also electing a mayor. There are also elections for all 11 councils in Northern Ireland.

If you are a registered voter in one of those authorities, except in a small minority of wards where the election was not contested, you can vote for local councillors to represent you between 7am and 10pm this evening. 

If you have a postal vote but have not yet cast it you can complete it and hand it in at a polling station for the same authority up to 10pm. 

You do not need your polling card to vote but if you do not have it with you it might be useful to bring some other form of ID to the polling station.

In the mayoral election -

this is an unusual form of election for Britain, a sort of "AV-lite" only used to elect mayors and Police and Crime commissioners.

You have a first and second preference vote. the first preference vote has to be cast in the LEFT HAND COLUMN of boxes or your entire vote is spoilt.

A number of people lost their vote four years ago because they only cast one vote and put it in the right hand column of boxes. If you do that you have expressed a second preference vote only and without a first preference vote your ballot will not be counted. 

If any candidate gets more than half of the first preference votes they win and are elected on the first round and there is no second round.

If no candidate gets more than half the votes on the first round, then the two candidates with most first preference votes go forward to the second round and all candidates placed third or with lower support than that are eliminated.

In the second and final round, the remaining candidates keep all the votes they received in the first round, and the second preference votes of those candidates who have already lost are then counted, and second preference votes from electors who supported candidates eliminated in the first round for either of the two remaining candidates will be added to their respective totals.

It is worth pointing out that your first preference vote will remain in the pile for the candidate whose name you mark a cross against in the left hand column for as long as they are in the race - it can only go to someone else after your first choice candidate loses.

Therefore expressing a second preference (which you do not have to do) cannot harm your first choice candidate's chances of election.

So, supposing you wanted to support Conservative candidate Ged McGrath as your first choice candidate, you would put a cross in the box against his name in the first, left hand column of boxes, and if of the other candidates your second choice was Mike Starkie (Independent) you would but a cross against his name in the second, right hand  column of boxes.
  
It is only 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more