The goings on at Haltemprice and Howden have re-awakened in me an idea which I have had for some time. We should have a ballot line system, in which parliamentary candidates are nominated not only by their own parties, but also by other parties, by campaigning organisations (such as trade unions, or Liberty), or, I suppose, even by newspapers registered as such at the Post Office.
All other nominators would appear on the ballot paper in alphabetical order under the name of the candidate's own party, or the word Independent, as the case may be. All votes cast for a candidate on any of those ballot lines would count towards his or her total, but the totals per line would nevertheless be counted and published separately.
"It Was The Sun Wot Won It"? Well, this way we could know for certain.
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Why do we need to do this?
ReplyDeleteJust imagine it - parties would *know* whether they could or could not win without, say, UKIP, or Respect, or the Greens, or Liberty, or the Daily Mail, or whoever. And everyone else would know it, too.
ReplyDeleteNo they wouldn't.
ReplyDelete- What if someone was influenced by another party, but didn't put it down?
- What if they weren't, but put it down anyway?
And parties get this anyway through opinion polls. This is just unnecessary bureaucracy.
You haven't grasped the concept at all.
ReplyDeleteIt works very well in New York State, where no Republican has been elected to state-wide office since 1974 (yes, 1974) without the endorsement of the Conservative Party of New York State.
Republicans and Democrats alike go to great lengths to secure the endorsement of the ballot line parties, knowing - I mean knowing for a fact, not just guessing very well - that they cannot win without them.
And we'd extend this to other campaigning organisations, and possibly even to registered newspapers.