St Pier plan to investigate rolling island-wide elections is defeated
A PROPOSAL for a six-month investigation into rolling island-wide elections was defeated in the States yesterday.
Gavin St Pier wanted the States Assembly & Constitution Committee to look at ideas such as one-third of the Assembly being elected every two years, or half being elected every two or three years. But his amendment was rejected by 14 votes to 21.
Rolling elections were recommended as a potential improvement in a report published by the Scrutiny Management Committee towards the end of last year which followed a public survey with 1,500 respondents.
‘That report deserves more than to be filed on a shelf,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘My amendment is not an endorsement of the model discussed in Scrutiny’s report, namely a six-year term with island-wide elections every two years for a third of the Assembly, but is simply a direction for SACC at that and other variants of rolling elections.’
The Scrutiny report found that 62% of respondents favoured changing the electoral system used in 2020 with a further 11% open to change.
Deputy St Pier wanted SACC to complete an investigation by June this year, 12 months ahead of the island’s next general election, which would not have been affected by his amendment.
‘It is acknowledged that time is tight to do this work. But it is incumbent on this Assembly, in my view, to acknowledge the evidence in the Scrutiny report,’ he said.
‘There are challenges, flaws even, with the current electoral system which need to be considered.
If, like the emperor in new clothes, we choose to ignore these, in particular voters’ difficulty adequately scrutinising individual candidates and making an informed choice, then the most likely outcome is reduced voter participation.
‘We should not simply say that will be a matter which the next Assembly will need to deal with. It would be irresponsible not to seek to mitigate those risks, if we can. I emphasise “if” because I don’t know if a system of rolling elections can do that without the work called for in this amendment.’
SACC president Carl Meerveld asked the States to reject the amendment.
He said his committee was happy to look into the advantages and disadvantages of rolling elections, and other ideas in Scrutiny’s report on elections. But it wanted to hand over its work to the next SACC, which would be able to make any recommendations in the light of two rounds of island-wide voting, in 2020 and 2025, rather than being required to make recommendations this summer.
