Londoners! Have Your Say!

Published on 1 June 2004 in , , , ,

A couple of weeks back, Martin posted up a rather impressive website which explains the forthcoming elections. The rather swish London Elects website explains the process extremely clearly – and does it in 20 languages.

Today I noted that the site now had brief summaries of the policies for the candidates standing for major – rather handy I thought.

And then I got home and was really impressed for sitting in the pile of post was an envelope from the Greater London Returning Officer, which contains the same information in a booklet form.

It’s an A5 book, and each mayoral candidate gets two pages to set out their stall. Then there is a list of the candidates for London Assembly and for the European Elections as well as brief instructions explaining how to cast your vote.

This is a truly fantastic idea, bringing politics direct to peoples homes and without all those pesky party activists telling you about how great such and such person is. My hat goes off to those that put both the website and the booklet together – hopefully it’s an idea that will spread.

Whilst I do like the satisfaction of going to the polling station, sadly I’ll be deprived of that joy this time. Because of when we’re moving, it was too late to get on the electoral roll in Merton, but we’ve put in for postal votes. As long as Royal Mail doesn’t lose them, we’ll be fine.