Island-wide voting hustings sees 150-strong turnout

Representatives for each of the five options on the ballot paper presented their options and took questions from the floor.

The meeting at Beau Sejour tonight began with five-minute presentations from each of the three official campaign groups – A, for full island-wide voting, B for the status quo, and C for a hybrid of the two.

Deputy Barry Brehaut spoke for option D, for four electoral districts, and former Sacc president Deputy Matt Fallaize volunteered to present E, island-wide voting for a third of the States every two years.

Members of the audience were then given close to an hour to put questions to the panel of speakers, before closing statements were made.

Castel parishioner Brian Gaudion said he relied on seeing candidates at a hustings for making his choices at a general election.

He said this would not be possible with 70 to 80 candidates, to which Option A campaigner Peter Ferbrache suggested there could instead be multiple hustings in different parts of the island with a group of candidates at a time.

Michael Beaumont was concerned about Option C leading to voter fatigue with two elections in the space of a month.

Gordon Young felt the public was being misled by those behind the referendum.

Members of the panel urged people to cast their votes to ensure the turnout is high enough to make the referendum results binding.

40% of people on the electoral roll need to vote in it to do so.

The hustings was also live-streamed on Facebook.

The deadline for registering on the electoral roll or for a postal vote is 11.59pm on Thursday 4th October.