Over 20,000 apply for postal voting, ten times last election

With just over 31,000 islanders on the electoral roll, it suggests that only about a third of the overall turnout will make their choices in the various polling stations.

The deadline for receiving applications for a postal ballot is midnight tonight, and a final flurry of requests is anticipated today.

Covid-19, the high number of candidates, and a campaign to push the postal vote option, are all thought to have led to the surge of applications.

This year there are 118 candidates and 38 seats and so many islanders have decided they would rather fill out the large ballot paper in the comfort of their own homes.

The postal vote packs, including the ballot papers, are being sent out next week.

Postal voting has been allowed in Guernsey since 1972. In 2016, there were 1,924 postal votes sent out.

For the referendum in 2018 that number had increased to 2,906.

Instead of putting the traditional ‘X’ in the boxes, this time voters will have to fill in a small oval shape to indicate preferences.

This change is because for the first time locally the ballot papers will be read by electronic counting machines.

However, if the machine spits out a ballot paper as unreadable, it will still be checked by a person to see if a clear intention can be established.

The election team visited the Age Concern meeting at St Stephen’s Church Hall yesterday afternoon to explain the process.

They reminded everyone that voters do not have to use all of their 38 votes, and a ballot paper with 39 votes would be void.

Members of the meeting were embracing the postal vote, with most of them already signed up for that option.

Alan Morton preferred the old parish system and said he wanted a lot of the sitting deputies out.

‘There’s got to be a lot of changes because the last four years has been absolutely horrendous and disgusting, I’m only going to be voting for one of the sitting deputies, and parties I don’t agree with at all.’

Mick Le Vasseur, 77, said his main issues were health and pensions, and he thought the older demographic were most likely to vote.

‘People I know are chatting about the election. They say who they’re not voting for, but some deputies have done me good.’

No candidates have knocked on Pam Bartlett’s front door yet and she sounded sceptical about the parties, but said there were individuals within the parties who she wanted to vote for.

‘The island-wide system is a change and sometimes there have been deputies you might have wanted to vote for who aren’t in your parish, so I think it’s worth giving it a try and, if it doesn’t work, at least we tried.’

Social media has been a theme of this election campaign but at Age Concern the members wanted to meet the candidates face-to-face and read the manifesto booklet.

Ken Warwick, 89, said he was not particularly inspired by the quality of candidates, but he still intended to vote.

‘There’s too many candidates and too little, if you can understand that, it needs some young blood.’

n Postal vote applications can be made today at the website election2020.gg