Candidates prepare for the long wait

It’s the last chance to make it count for those who remain out of the 31,000+ on the electoral roll.

It promises to be an election day like no other. Gone are the queues, the line-up of nervous would-be deputies outside the parish halls hoping to persuade one last voter with a smile and a friendly nod.

Boxes of votes are already stacked in Beau Sejour waiting for the count to begin tomorrow morning.

Only at 9am can the laborious process of checking postal votes for a valid identity card and signature begin.

With two envelopes to open containing tens of thousands of origami ballot papers which need to be unfolded it is clear why no one expects a result much before Thursday evening.

It promises to be a long couple of days for all the 118 candidates. While a number of standing deputies will be confident of getting in the top 38, only a handful can expect a place in the top 10.

At this stage the ambition has to be getting elected. But within a few days, thoughts will turn to committee elections and the big jobs on offer.

Here the new voting system will once again change the dynamic of our democracy.

A high place in an island-wide poll is different to topping a district. Attempts in the past to link a top spot in one of the seven districts with a committee presidency always looked faintly daft. The comfortable winner of St Peter Port South in 2016 was several hundred votes short of what it took even to get elected in the Vale.

With a single electorate, a popular candidate can, with more legitimacy, claim a ‘mandate’ from the people and some authority to take a top job.

Whether the new Assembly will see it that way is doubtful.

Some parish poll-toppers of the past have shown themselves to be good at campaigning but very bad at running a States department.

To saddle a committee with a poor leader at one of the most important junctures in the island’s history purely because of a single poll would seem more self-destructive dogma than pragmatic government.