PCC Elections

[louisedennis]

Just got back from spoiling my ballot paper, following carefully the instructions* provided by

Comments

[parrot_knight]

I have voted, despite my not agreeing with the post. I suspect that at 4pm I was only about the sixth or seventh person to vote that day. I tried to put aside party affiliation and voted for someone from a party for which I don't usually vote as first choice, though of the candidates it seemed to me that there were only two credible choices in any case.

[louisedennis]

Most of the candidates were vaguely credible, though fewer than half had an actual background in policing. I was tempted to vote for the Independent but based on his pitch on the website he could have believed in almost anything policing-wise.

[lukadreaming]

I'm usually very particular about voting. But I forgot to apply for a postal vote. If I had, I would have spoiled the paper, which I did at the last election when it was a choice between two candidates who were both as moronic as each other.

[louisedennis]

I know quite a lot of people who are spoiling their ballot. It'll be interesting to see if the proportion of spoiled papers is higher than normal.

[daniel_saunders]

We haven't got such elections in London. Maybe I should riot?

I can't imagine any candidate seriously putting forward a policy of maximizing the impact of budget cuts on policing

It's like when politicians say they'll improve government by eliminating waste and inefficiency - good, because I was tempted to vote for the party aiming to increase waste and inefficiency...

I should ask my policeman cousin what The Force feels about this next time I see him.

[louisedennis]

I imagine police opinion would be divided. A good PCC would be in a position to protect the police from a lot of political interfering.

[adaese]

I have voted - there were a few other electors around, but it certainly wasn't as busy as the last general election.

I agree, a 500 word limit is ridiculous, and leaves very little room for differentiation or CV. They are at least not all wasting space on stating the obvious round here - only three of the four candidates said they stood for reducing crime.

[louisedennis]

I don't know there was a 500 word limit. But the official statements all seemed to be about that length so I assume it was the case. I don't think they necessarily needed 1000s or words but 500 didn't seem to give room for more than "I'm a magistrate and I want to reduce crime".

[bunn]

I just voted (54th person at our polling station!)

We had several reasonable-looking candidates standing as Independents, and they all had websites of their own, detailed in their official site entries, plus they were all holding forth on Twitter and Facebook too - so I felt I had a reasonable amount of info to judge on.

[louisedennis]

Some of the party-backed candidates had separate websites, but the only independent gave an address. At some level I object to having to write off to someone in order to decide whether I should vote for them.

It does also seem a bit disenfranchising to make the internet the only simple means to learn about the candidates. I find it hard to imagine B's parents, for instance, coping with much more than the basic website - if that.

[bunn]

I agree - it would not be good if internet was the only medium.

Our local radio is usually chronically short of content, and I understand has staged several debates with candidates - although I don't know how effective they were, as I only heard about them on Twitter. Still, they did happen.

It's probably more difficult in areas with more actual news :-D

[louisedennis]

We're not really very well plugged into the local news scene, so of course there may have been more information at that level. I think it might have helped if we'd started actually trying to find information a little earlier than we did.