A requete, led by Yvonne Burford, will ask the States to agree that in future it would require two or more vacancies in the office of deputy for an island-wide by-election to be held.
Similar proposals were rejected by the current and previous Assembly, but since then a by-election in April attracted a turnout of just 17% and cost £55,000 to organise.
Six other deputies have signed the requete: Marc Laine, Paul Montague, Jennifer Strachan, Andrew Niles, Sasha Kazantseva-Miller and Tom Rylatt.
‘Since it was first decided to move to a system of island-wide voting, the Assembly has considered thresholds of one, two and three vacancies, but has always remained with one,’ they said in their requete.
‘However, it was not until 2026 that there was a vacancy, the first under the island-wide voting system.
‘In the light of that experience, in particular the low level of voter engagement, we believe it would not dilute democracy to any unreasonable degree to change to a requirement for two casual vacancies to occur before a by-election takes place, at least for as long as the current electoral system remains in place.’
Deputy Burford said late yesterday that she anticipated submitting her requete imminently and it could be published as early as today. It seems likely to be scheduled for debate at the States meeting due to start on 16 December.
If the requete is approved, changes would be drafted to the Reform Law, and they would need to be presented to the Assembly in 2027.
The requete will note that any vacancy occurring before the changes to the law were finalised would be subject to existing legislation and therefore still require a by-election.
This clause has been included in the requete following a previous attempt to scrap a by-election once a vacancy had already been created by the resignation of a deputy.
The signatories to the requete claimed that the introduction of island-wide voting in 2020 changed the terms of by-elections to fill vacant deputies’ seats.
‘Under the previous electoral system of district voting, a by-election was a smaller affair, involving approximately one-seventh of the island’s electorate rather than the entire island,’ they said.
‘Additionally, a district vacancy represented a larger proportion of that constituency’s representation compared to an island-wide vacancy in relation to an island-wide constituency.
‘Reasonable arguments can be made that changing the by-election threshold to accommodate a particular type of voting system raises questions about the electoral system itself.
‘However, we consider, in the light of the poor turnout in the April 2026 by-election, that pragmatism is called for by increasing the threshold by one vacancy.’
The States Assembly & Constitution Committee is under a direction to review the size of the Assembly and submit recommendations well ahead of the next general election in June 2029. Sacc has previously opposed making temporary alterations to the number of deputies ahead of concluding its review.
The signatories to the requete said that their proposal to allow the Assembly to operate with only 39 members, by avoiding a by-election for the 40th seat, did not imply any view on the correct size of the States beyond the end of the current political term.
The only by-election held so far under the current island-wide voting system was won by Deputy Ross Le Brun, who won 953 votes, only 62 more than former deputy Carl Meerveld, when 4,759 voters went to the polls exactly six months ago yesterday.