Prospective Parliamentary Candidates

The general election candidates list has been updated with the official list of those people that succeeded in the nomination process.

Making Your Mind Up

Today is has a lot of deadlines, it is the last day for applicants to be included in the Register of Electors to be used for both elections (in person as the post won't get there in time) and the last day for requests for a new postal vote or to change or cancel an existing postal vote or proxy appointment.

It is also the last day for delivery of nomination papers /withdrawal of candidature/appointment of election agents for the general election so baring any wrangling over objections to candidates we should have the full list of those standing in all of Sheffield's seats.

Most of the other exciting stuff that has been going on with opinion polls etc is interesting from a personal point of view but not really what this blog is here to cover. However once we have the full list of candidates i hope to start some social media league tables.

In the meantime here is a bit of fun

Updates

The general election candidates list has been updated, the additions have been:
Mark Adshead Official Monster Raving Loony Party (Sheffield Hallam)
Martin Fitzpatrick Independent (Sheffield Hallam)
Elizabeth Beighton Official Monster Raving Loony Party (Sheffield Central)
Steven Andrew Communist Party of Britain (Sheffield South East)

Voter Power update

I thought I should post an update on the ongoing issues with http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ I stumbled across on  Friday my original plan for that post was to lightly touch on electoral reform by showing how a system already in use in some elections in this country could be used for Westminster elections. This is a hugely complex set of topics which I am unlikely to be able to cover in sufficient depth on this blog but I thought the concepts were worth mentioning.

Voter Power was launched with quite a bit of publicity and seemed a good way of highlighting alternative voting systems online, especially in comparison with the original report document which understandably lacks mass market appeal. It was therefore a huge disappointment that it had obvious glaring errors. It had just been something subtle like rounding errors in the numbers or a fault with the visualisations then that wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but the site is currently peddling serious misinformation. The fact that the fault in the data shows on the front page in the two prominent lists of top and bottom ten show that the quality control standards here don’t seem to include having a quick glance over the results let alone a full test suite.

Why is this an issue? This is the so called Internet Election, where social media and networking, blogs and mashups are as important to getting information out as door-stepping and leaflets. The power is there for everyone to be able to put forward their view of the country and how it should be run and provide visualisations on how this compares with reality and the viewpoints of candidates. This sort of increase in information and comparison tools is, in my opinion, a hugely valuable way of increasing engagement and hopefully turn out, so high profile errors like this set the whole process back as they undermine trust,

Martin has been in touch but is away for the weekend so can’t look at the issues that are marring the site until he gets back.

This week on Sheffield Votes

It has been an interesting week here on the Sheffield Votes blog. Here is the list of posts that have been made

Election by thirds

An explination of how Sheffield council's election cycle runs.

General election candidates

The current state of play as to who is standing in each seat in the General Election

Probable General Election Timetable 6th May

The key dates for the election process (also avaliable as a google calendar

Expenses

The rules and regulations about what candidates can spend in the general election campaign

Drawing of lots or the flip of a coin

How do ties get resolved in an election and other parts of the count process.

All but one seat in Sheffield is "Safe"

The Electoral reform society's assesment of the election says Saheffield Central is the only contestable seat in south yorkshire.

Hashtags #Sheffield #GE2010

Co-ordination of social media efforts on the general election

Voter Power - Voter Power and Sheffield South East - Curioser and curioser

Three posts about the Voter Power site and some inconsistancies in the message being put accross.

Curioser and curioser

Looks like there is a one seat difference in the bottom 10 list on voterpower.org.uk, also involving Sheffield.

Top 10
Constituency	VOTE POWER INDEX
ARFON	1.490
CEREDIGION	1.390
CLWYD WEST	1.387
BELFAST SOUTH	1.228
WIRRAL WEST	1.200
PRESELI PEMBROKESHIRE	1.180
SITTINGBOURNE & SHEPPEY	1.176
NA H-EILEANAN AN IAR	1.174
ABERCONWY	1.160
EDINBURGH SOUTH	1.154
Bottom 10
Constituency	VOTE POWER INDEX
KNOWSLEY	0.001
EASINGTON	0.001
BARNSLEY EAST	0.001
SHEFFIELD BRIGHTSIDE & HILLSBOROUGH	0.001
BOOTLE	0.002
LIVERPOOL WALTON	0.002
WASHINGTON & SUNDERLAND WEST	0.002
BELFAST WEST	0.003
COATBRIDGE, CHRYSTON & BELLSHILL	0.003
NORMANTON, PONTEFRACT & CASTLEFORD	0.003

Voter Power and Sheffield South East

The more I look at the Sheffield South East inconsistency I spotted when doing a post about Voter Power this morning the more it looks like a software or data glitch. Looking at the spreadsheet published by the Guardian, which if I am reading right should be the same back end data, then Clive Betts has a safe seat. So something seems to have gone wrong in the data import or the software.

Other sources have Sheffield South East as safe and Magnus from the ERS said in reply to my question by email:

Our determination is an educated guess based on previous results, local election trends, incumbency and demographic trends. Sheffield South East and its predecessor seats have been held by Labour since the 1930s, and the notional 2005 results taking into account boundary changes gives the Labour incumbent Clive Betts a majority of 42%. In my view this is a pretty safe seat.

I am still awaiting a reply from voterpower.org.uk

Voter Power

Today’s political chatter is about a report from the new economics foundation called spoiled ballot, "why less than three per cent have a fair share of power in Britain." Actually very little of it is about the report, most of it is about the Voter Power Index which is a very web 2.0 friendly interface to the data including the compulsory video explaining what the site is about for those who don’t like to read.

In this methodology Sheffield South East turns out to be one of the most powerful in the country in marked contrast to the Electoral Reform Society data I reported Wednesday which makes me worry about the methodology and I’m thinking of emailing the authors to ask them about this. Their reports for the rest of our constituencies are Penistone & Stocksbridge, Sheffield Central Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough, Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield Heeley.

Following on from this I decided to have a play with the data from the last general election to see what would happen if Sheffield was a super constituency elected using the method used by the UK in the European Parliament elections called the d'Hondt method. You’ll note that the nef report doesn’t have this as an option they suggest using the same mega constituencies that we do currently use for the EU elections for party list elections. They do have a suggestion that could see Sheffield elect as one, but it is based on Single transferable vote which would be impossible to do the kind of back of a napkin maths for the table below involves as it would mean guessing at voter’s second, third, etc choice intentions.

In my fictional system instead of 5 labour MPs and 1 LibDem we would have 3 Labour, 2 LibDem and a Tory (the figures in red represent an elected person). Of course there are flaws with even this extrapolation such as Green supporters only being able to express their preference in half the old constituencies and voting method influences choice but I think the result is interesting none the less.

	Sheffield Central	Sheffield Attercliffe	Sheffield Brightside	Sheffield Heeley	Sheffield Hillsborough	Sheffield Hallam	Total	D'Hondt /2	D'Hondt /3	D'Hondt /4
Labour	14,950	22,250	16,876	18,405	23,477	5,110	101,068	50,534.0	33,689.33	25,267.00
Liberal Democrat	7,895	6,283	3,232	7,035	12,234	20,710	57,389	28,694.5	19,129.67	14,347.25
Conservative	3,094	5,329	2,205	4,987	6,890	12,028	34,533	17,266.5	11,511.00	8,633.25
Green	1,808	-	-	1,312	-	1,331	4,451	2,225.5	1,483.67	1,112.75
Respect	1,284		-	-	-	-	1,284	642.0	428.00	321.00
BNP	539	1,477	1,537	1,314	2,010	469	7,346	3,673.0	2,448.67	1,836.50
UKIP	415	1,680	779	775	1,273	438	5,360	2,680.0	1,786.67	1,340.00
Socialist Alternative		-	-	265	-	-	265	132.5	88.33	66.25
Christian Peoples	-	-	-	-	-	441	441	220.5	147.00	110.25

Hashtags #Sheffield #GE2010

A post this morning on OurKingdom pointed out a suggestion by politicalbetting.com to standardise hashtags for all Constituencies in the general election.
I was initially not sure about this being dictated in advance I am oldfasioned enough to remebr the back channel being something vaguely subversive that happened spontaneously but I can see the arguments that it will help with mash ups and other apps capturing this data especially on election night itself so I'll try and use them where appropriate alongside #GE2010 and #Sheffield.
One thing I do still object to about them is that as far as I am concerned the geek abbreviation for Sheffield is shef with only one f and not two.

The list of tags is:

Penistone & Stocksbridge	#Penistone
Sheffield Central	#SheffC
Sheffield South East	#SheffSE
Sheffield, Brightside & Hillsborough	#SheffBH
Sheffield, Hallam	#SheffHm
Sheffield, Heeley	#SheffHy

All but one seat in Sheffield is "Safe"

According to the Electoral Reform Society Sheffield Central is the only non-safe parliamentary seat in the city.

Name	Electorate	Current Party	Status
Penistone and Stocksbridge	68,628	LAB	Safe
Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough	68,194	LAB	Safe
Sheffield Central	65,515	LAB	Marginal 2 "the real front line between Labour and Conservative government"
Sheffield Hallam	68,863	LD	Safe
Sheffield Heeley	65,904	LAB	Safe
Sheffield South East	67,559	LAB	Safe

In fact according to the full data it is the only non-safe seat in the county.

Drawing of lots or the flip of a coin

Unlike the American electoral system where recounting can go on for days and then move on to months of legal action, electoral law in this country is such that baring credible accusations of widespread fraud the results of a count should be decided within a reasonable amount of time.
The first key to this is the regulations are sprinkled with incidences of the phrase "the (Acting) Returning Officer's decision is final" at first glance this doesn't look democratic, but pretty much universally these discussions are made within clear sight of agents of the candidates, other members of staff and for the last few years accredited observers and officials are liable for criminal prosecution if it can be proven they are in breach of their duty.
Secondly the methods for dealing with "doubtful" ballot papers give a large amount of leeway for sensible interpretation of a voters intentions with a presumption to accept rather than reject marginal papers. This adjudication is one of the areas where the decision is final unlike say the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota which took 246 days to resolve due to legal action over the admissibility of ballots.
Thirdly while there is provision for one (or more) recounts for close or in doubt results, if it is the case that there is little purpose in subsequent recounts due to no significant change in the results there is a presumption they will not be repeated. Note that recounts are just as valid at the bottom end of the table as at the top if there is a possibility of a candidate being credited with enough votes to avoid loosing their deposit.
Finally in the case that after recounting there is a tie for first (and while we have a first past the post electoral system and are electing one person per seat, only first) the regulations state that one extra vote shall be allocated according to the drawing of lots or upon the flip of a coin. This has happened on at least one occasion in a local council election.

Expenses

Once the election is officially called that may well not be the end of scandals involving expenses.
After Parliament has been dissolved MPs are no longer MPs but if they have been selected by their party to run again, or are running independently they are candidates.There is a strict limit to how much candidates are allowed to spend, or have spent on their behalf during elections. For borough constituencies such as those in Sheffield the limit is £7150 plus 5p per elector so Sheffield Central for example will have an expenses limit of approximately £11500 which they will have had to raise personally or from party funds. If the candidate is accepting donations then any that are over £50 must be declared and conform to rules abut the donor. Items that are counted in these expenses include:

• Leaflets and other unsolicited material sent to electors
• Advertising
• Transport
• Public meetings
• Staff costs
• Accommodation
• Admin costs, such as stationery, telephone calls

While some items are excluded such as:

• Volunteer time
• Use of anyone’s sole or main home, if it is given free of charge
• Transport in a vehicle which was acquired for someone’s personal use, and given free of charge
• Use of computing or printing equipment primarily acquired for personal use (if given free of charge)

Candidates also get one free mailout to all registered electors and the use free use of rooms for public meetings. Receipts and invoices must be kept and submitted after the election. The full sets of rules and advice for candidates and their agents is on the Electoral Commission's website.

Probable General Election Timetable 6th May

The news media seem very certain that the Prime Minister will be going to the palace later today and asking the Queen to dissolve parliament next Monday, the 12th. That would mean that the timetable for the election after the 12th would be would be:
20 April

Last day for delivery of nomination papers /withdrawal of candidature/appointment of election agents (4pm)
Statement of persons nominated published at close of time for making objections to nomination papers (5pm on Day 6) or as soon afterwards as any objections are disposed of
Last day for requests for a new postal vote or to change or cancel an existing postal vote or proxy appointment (5pm)
Last day to apply to register to vote

27 April

Last day for new applications to vote by proxy (except for medical emergencies) (5pm)

4 May

Last day for appointment of polling and counting agents

6 May 2010

Polling Day (7am – 10pm) Last day to issue replacements for spoilt or lost postal ballot papers (5pm) Last day for new applications to vote by proxy on grounds of a medical emergency (5pm) Last day to make alterations to the register to correct a clerical error or to implement a court registration appeal) decision (9pm)

I understand from the Electoral Commission survey on the matter that Sheffield intends to count after the polls close on the evening of the 6th/early hours of the 7th.

General election candidates

I have started pulling the candidate lists for the general election out of the data provided by yournextmp.com and adding in twitter usernames and web page URLs (yournextmp.com has links for candidates but it doesn't expose them in the data) to post on this site.
Obviously as the general election hasn't been officially called let alone the nomination process formally completed the list will probably change between now and the election, a fair chunk of the process is automated so as the lists get updated mirroring the changes here will be reasonably easy. Please take a look at the note at the top of the listings page about how to get changes made.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an online aggregation resource for the local elections so I suspect I will end up doing a data entry job once the candidate lists are released.

Election by thirds

Each ward in Sheffield is represented by three councillors each serving a four year term. Elections take place 'by thirds' meaning for one of the three places at a time every year for three years with a year off in the fourth. To illustrate lets look at the Central ward, created in 2004.

Central ward 2004

The example starts at 2004, due to the electoral boundaries being changed every seat on the council was up for election. The top three candidates all got a seat, the person with the most votes over all got a 4 year term, 2nd place a three year term and 3rd two years.
The results were

Jean Cromar (Labour) 1,355; Jillian Creasy (Green) 1,305; Mohammad Azim (Liberal Democrat) 1,276;

Leaving the seat with multiparty representation for two years.

Central ward 2006

2005 was a fallow year with no election, in 2006 Mohammad Azim having got the fewest votes of the three elected defended his seat but was beaten by Bernard Little from the Green party.
This was the only seat on the council to change the party representing it that year.

Central ward 2007

Having placed second in the 2004 election Jillian Creasy was up for re-election in 2007 and ran a successful campaign to retain her seat.

This of course meant no change to the party make up of the ward.

Central ward 2008

In 2008 the last of the three seats elected together came up for re-election and was captured by the Green Party. So as you can see over a whole electoral cycle the representation of a seat can change significantly, although for most wards on Sheffield council things are less dramatic.
There was no election in 2009.