Sacc trying to find way of delivering printed manifestos
INFORMATION about candidates standing in the 2020 general election will definitely be provided online, but the task now is to determine how people who are not keen to use that method will be able to access information.
Neil Inder, the president of the States’ Assembly & Constitution Committee, acknowledged that many islanders would prefer hard copies of manifestos.
The committee has released results of a questionnaire about how islanders would like to receive information about candidates.
Although more than 1,100 responses were received, Deputy Inder noted that this represented a small percentage of islanders.
‘We accept that there may be part of the demographic that we did not reach through this questionnaire, perhaps older people, so the results might be skewed a little bit,’ he said.
‘The results of the questionnaire will be used to inform our policy letter that will be put before the Assembly.
‘We accept that information online is going to exist, if we did nothing else there would still be a page of manifestos and probably an election website, but we now – as a committee – need to decide how we would propose the delivery of combined manifestos.’
The questionnaire results showed a fairly even split of those who wanted to see the manifestos online and those who wanted a combined manifesto in print form, a result which Deputy Inder said was unsurprising.
‘I suspect we will be sending a combined manifesto to every address that has someone on the electoral roll.
‘We are also looking at ways of providing local hustings, but in law Sacc is not obliged to provide hustings.’
However, due to the transition from parish elections to island-wide voting, hustings is something the committee would like to offer.
A section at the end of the questionnaire gave islanders the chance to provide their own suggestions. Comments included amplifying the use of media outlets and social media platforms.
Deputy Inder believed voting patterns of current deputies who were standing again were an important thing for the electorate to consider.
‘Some people want to know the deputies’ voting records so they can see whether they agree with them to vote them in again, although all that information is already in the public domain.’
