Another referendum on how to reform island-wide voting could be held

I am a current member of Sacc and a former member of House committee. I have been a deputy continuously since 1997 representing three different boundaries around St Peter Port parish.

I would be willing to contribute and expand on my ideas with extra material and or a personal appearance as a witness at a public, private or streamed meeting. I believe public broadcasting of Scrutiny meetings should not cease or be confused with data protection issues as this is a quasi-judicial parliamentary process with privilege.

My main points are as follows

l There is massive and growing opposition to the island-wide election but such sentiments generally conflate and confuse the outcome and our current political climate performance and system of government with the election.

l There is no mandate for government to change the system of election voted for by the referendum, a clear mandate winner in six out of seven area constituency districts. Indeed, the minimum forty per cent turnout was achieved perhaps due to Deputy Neil Inder’s innovative adverts.

We clearly voted for thirty eight representatives to be selected island wide.

l It is perhaps a flaw that there is no mechanism for voters to use single transferable voting and also a preference of selecting the candidates they would like to be chief minister and maybe other senior positions. Election expenses is another grey area.

l I supported a hybrid option C which would have preserved 28 parish community representatives and ten island-wide election winners. I still think a mixture would have identified the most suitable people for strategic leadership roles and responsibilities and would have been a better apprenticeship. A problem today is lack of constituency meetings and dialogue and surgeries which has led to lobbying by demonstrations, social media campaigns and mass emails.

l To be honest the island-wide election in the circumstances was a great success, superficially. The highest-ever modern turnout for those on the role, although that needs expansion. In addition to the eighty per cent engagement, 119 candidates was a record too.

But there was a poor gender age balance and lack of diversity or economic heterogeneous candidates and a result that was retrogressive in some ways. However, continuity was OK, about the same as previous elections. And party groups were new.

Vale parish community representatives have been media quoted as being against by a majority the change, and feel alienated. But it implied they chose the wrong candidates.

l From a reform perspective the election period needs to be a week longer with more States financial help for candidates and more importantly technical support for manifesto PDF artworks etc. Some candidates failed to be published in the generally excellent book but nominations were still open an hour before the first print deadline.

Organisers shouldn’t assume that candidates are technologically literate or capable.

l Candidates should get more information and ideas about what being a States member means. We should have a more flexible, Jersey-style policy of allowing candidates to do posters and billboards.

l We need to guarantee more people, especially the younger tenants and newer residents are entitled to vote. Electronic voting should be sponsored and pursued as a priority too.

l Perhaps another referendum on reform should be held around 2027.

John Gollop