Month: April 2008

Categories
voting

Another study agrees, our electoral system is vulnerable

Stuart Wilkes-Heeg's report “The Purity of Elections in the UK: Causes for Concern” [PDF download] has garnered some decent press coverage. Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (who also funded ORG's election observation mission in 2007), it's a good report which covers a broad number of areas in which our electoral system is weak (disclosure: I was interviewed by the report's author for their research).

A leader column in The Guardian, and a BBC News report both give the subjects a good airing. But it's so depressing to hear the same old 'maybe' response from the Government. They let this situation get to it's current appalling state whilst ignoring clear calls from The Electoral Commission and many other independent voices.

A clear, simple individual voter registration system based on diverse photo IDs (not the national ID card) is clearly what's needed — I just don't understand why the Government is running scared from this.

Categories
current affairs

Observer leader supports Greens in London

In a major coup, The Observer’s leader column, backs Sian Berry in the London contest, with Ken as second preference:

There is a stronger case to be made for casting ‘first preference’ votes for Sian Berry, the Green candidate. The party has already used its toehold on the London Assembly to wring green concessions worth millions of pounds out of the mayoral budget. A respectable score for Ms Berry, an intelligent and articulate advocate of her cause, would send a clear signal to whoever wins the mayoralty that London cares about environmental policy.

Full column
Sian’s website

Categories
notes from JK

Refreshing Green Election Broadcast

Superb Green Election Broadcast this year… Below is the local elections version with Caroline Lucas, click to view the London-specific version with Sian Berry.

Categories
notes from JK

Election season away from home

JK with London candidates

It's election season again but this year we've no elections in Brighton & Hove. So I've doing some travelling to help other Green parties as much as I can. I spent a Saturday in Oxford helping to maintain their strong position on Oxford City Council. There's a wonderful group of dedicated councillors and candidates there and I thoroughly enjoyed my time out campaigning with them.

A week later I was up in London helping the Greens there. Our two London Assembly Members, Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones, have achieved a huge amount by applying pressure on Ken Livingstone over the last four years whilst Ken has needed their votes to pass his budgets. Whilst we don't agree with many of Ken and Labour's policies and approaches, it's hard to imagine a Tory Mayor of London being as willing to work cross-party to build a successful budget.

Sian Berry's Mayoral campaign for the Greens has garnered lots of press coverage, the challenge is to make sure that translates into votes for Green Assembly Members where we can have much more influence than a high mayoral result — we all know it will be Ken or Boris after all.

Having spent time with some of our Assembly candidates I hope we can encourage voters to vote Green on all their ballot papers so these good, hard working Greens can put their energy and ideas to good use.

http://www.sianformayor.org.uk
http://www.votegreenparty.org.uk