Getting out the vote

As I write this it is a week until the Police and Crime Commissioner elections. UK Polling Report have highlighted an Ipsos MORI poll suggesting only 15% of people intend to vote.

The turnout in the US presidential election in which people have claimed that some states had actively tried to prevent people from voting had an approximate turnout figure of 51% and at the last UK general election the turnout was 65.1%

Of course we are in the relatively rare situation of there being a reasonable proportion of people who have a political or practical objection to the office that the elections are being held to fill. So getting out the vote has an inbuilt disadvantage.

The candidates in South Yorkshire are:

David Allen

English Democrats

Jonathan Arnott

UKIP

Nigel Bonson

Conservative

Robert Teal

Liberal Democrat

Shaun Wright

Labour

As usual the position of this blog is everyone who can should vote.

Police and Crime Commissioner Elections 15/11

On the 15th of November elections will take place for the first Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire.
Elections here in Sheffield will be arranged as usual by Sheffield City Council but the lead council for totting up all the results from South Yorkshire is Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council.
IN ORDER TO VOTE YOU HAVE TO BE ON THE REGISTER AT THE CORRECT ADDRESS BY 31st OCTOBER 2012.
Some people, like the Electoral Reform Society, are predicting a shockingly low turnout for this election for a number of reasons. Even if you disagree with the concept of Police and Crime Commissioners not going to vote is not a protest, spoil your ballot if you must.
For more information see thinkPCC, the Home Office or follow the news.

Registering to vote deadline is Midnight.

I've had this from the Electoral Services Officer at Sheffield City Council on the nature of tomorrow's voter registration deadline if you are walking up with a filled in form:

Whilst we would prefer them to be received during the day so we can get them processed the legislation says it's 12 midnight. Anyone coming after our reception closes at 5 will need to hand in their registration form at the Porters Lodge entrance round the back of the Town Hall. Postal Vote applications have to be in by 5pm.

The Boundary Commission for England proposals.

The Boundary Commission for England is currently conducting a review of Parliamentary constituency boundaries in England on the basis of new rules. These rules involve a significant reduction in the number of constituencies in England (from 533 to 502). This means South Yorkshire will go from 14 down to 13 Parliamentary constituencies.

The public meetings on these proposals are listed on the Boundary Commission for England website. I also expect this to be where the documents outlining these and the rest of the changes to be published.

The parts of the proposals that pertain to Sheffield are as follows:

There are currently 14 constituencies in this sub-region, only four of which (Doncaster Central, Doncaster North, Don Valley, and Rother Valley) have an electorate within 5% of the electoral quota. Of the remaining constituencies, all ten have electorates that are below the 5% limit. We propose to reduce the number of constituencies to 13.

We considered whether we could leave unchanged any of the four existing constituencies that had an electorate within 5% of the electoral quota and we are able to do so in our initial proposals.

In this sub-region, our options were limited by the number of electors in each of the wards in the City of Sheffield, which ranges from 12,134 to 17,646. We noted that, if we were to avoid dividing wards between constituencies, it would be challenging to create constituencies that were either based on the existing constituencies or wholly within the City of Sheffield. Given the electoral sizes of the wards, it was inevitable that some constituencies would have to be proposed that contain part of the City of Sheffield and part of an adjacent borough (either Barnsley or Rotherham). In Doncaster, we propose no change to any of the three existing constituencies.

We propose a Barnsley West and Ecclesfield constituency that crosses the boundary between the Borough of Barnsley and the City of Sheffield. Two wards of the Borough of Barnsley (Darton West and Penistone East) are included in this constituency, together with four wards of the City of Sheffield (East Ecclesfield, Firth Park, Southey, and West Ecclesfield). We note that there are good communication links along the A61 road that connects the urban Sheffield wards with the more rural Barnsley wards in the north of the constituency. We also propose that one ward of the Borough of Barnsley (Penistone West) is included in another cross-boundary constituency called Sheffield West and Penistone, together with five wards of the City of Sheffield (Crookes, Ecclesall, Fulwood, Stannington, and Stocksbridge and Upper Don). Four of these are in the existing Sheffield, Hallam constituency.

We propose that the five remaining wards of the Borough of Rotherham form a Rotherham and Sheffield East constituency, together with two wards of the City of Sheffield (Darnall, and Shiregreen and Brightside).

As a consequence of our changes elsewhere, the remaining 17 wards of the City of Sheffield are divided between three constituencies. The Sheffield Central constituency contains five wards; the Sheffield South East and Sheffield South West constituencies each contain six wards.

Constituency	Ward	District/borough/city/county	Electorate
Barnsley West and Ecclesfield CC			73,081
	Darton West	Barnsley	8,317
	Penistone East	Barnsley	9,180
	East Ecclesfield	Sheffield	14,464
	Firth Park	Sheffield	13,566
	Southey	Sheffield	13,519
	West Ecclesfield	Sheffield	14,035
Rotherham and Sheffield East BC			73,631
	Boston Castle	Rotherham	9,024
	Brinsworth and Catcliffe	Rotherham	9,033
	Keppel	Rotherham	9,286
	Rotherham East	Rotherham	8,786
	Rotherham West	Rotherham	9,004
	Darnall	Sheffield	14,711
	Shiregreen and Brightside	Sheffield	13,787
Sheffield Central BC			73,171
	Broomhill	Sheffield	12,974
	Burngreave	Sheffield	14,765
	Central	Sheffield	17,646
	Hillsborough	Sheffield	13,569
	Walkley	Sheffield	14,217
Sheffield South East BC			78,338
	Beighton	Sheffield	13,239
	Birley	Sheffield	12,898
	Manor Castle	Sheffield	12,134
	Mosborough	Sheffield	13,595
	Richmond	Sheffield	13,123
	Woodhouse	Sheffield	13,349
Sheffield South West BC			79,790
	Arbourthorne	Sheffield	12,551
	Beauchief and Greenhill	Sheffield	13,530
	Dore and Totley	Sheffield	13,477
	Gleadless Valley	Sheffield	13,882
	Graves Park	Sheffield	13,346
	Nether Edge	Sheffield	13,004
Sheffield West and Penistone CC			80,123
	Penistone West	Barnsley	8,992
	Crookes	Sheffield	13,702
	Ecclesall	Sheffield	14,647
	Fulwood	Sheffield	14,047
	Stannington	Sheffield	14,159
	Stocksbridge and Upper Don	Sheffield	14,576

An Apology

I am sorry to say that due to personal reasons I will not be doing live coverage of the count in Sheffield this year.

The information I have had from the Electoral Services of Sheffield City Council on count timings is as follows:

Firstly, the count(s) will take place at the English Institute Of Sport (EIS), Coleridge Road, Sheffield, S9 5DA.

The count will commence at 10pm (close of poll) on Thurs 5th May. All ballot boxes (local, parish & referendum) will be received at EIS and the contents verified.

Once the referendum ballot papers have been verified they will be locked away securely.

The local and parish counts will continue overnight and results declared as and when (predicting 12.45 am - 3.00am)

The national referendum count will commence at 4pm on Friday 6th May and we will therefore be getting the referendum ballot papers back out at that point to count up the Yes and No votes. We then report our Sheffield result to the Regional Counting Officer (Wakefield) but will not be in a position to make any kind of Sheffield declaration until we are given approval to do so by the Regional Counting Officer. We have no information on what time a national result of the referendum will be declared.

d’Hondt

You may have seen the post I did last month that had Sheffield as a fictional super constituency electing six MPs. Using the numbers from this years elections under my fantastical system we would now have 3 Labour, 2 LibDem and a Conservative.

 

Labour	101909	50954.5	33969.67	25477.25
Liberal Democrats	83131	41565.5	27710.33	20782.75
Conservative	49513	24756.5	16504.33	12378.25
BNP	10741	5370.5	3580.333	2685.25
UKIP	8798	4399	2932.667	2199.5
Green	3464	1732	1154.667	866
English Democrats	1078	539	359.3333	269.5
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	656	328	218.6667	164
Martin Fitzpatrick	429	214.5	143	107.25
Christian Party	250	125	83.33333	62.5
Official Monster Raving Loony Party	164	82	54.66667	41
Communist Party of Britain	139	69.5	46.33333	34.75
Rod Rodgers	40	20	13.33333	10

Sheffield Council AGM - Wednesday May 19th

Seats on the council: Liberal Democrats 42, Labour 39, Greens 2, Independent 1

There will will be a lot of interesting manoeuvres going on between the parties over the next 11 days as they try and work out who can take some semblance of control of the council. It will be interesting to see if yesterday's rumours pan out. Coverage from the Star

No Overall Control

The new make up of the council is Liberal Democrats 42 seats, Labour 39, Greens 2, Independent 1. As I understand it the current cabinet will remain until the council AGM, but the AGM will apoint a LAB lord mayor on the muggins turn principle who will have the casting vote. There is also a strong rumor that the greens will side with the Labour group.

Last Night

Last night, obviously, blogging failed. This is something I can only apologise for, I do hope some of you were following on twitter. I am now off to watch the local election count, which should be much quicker ;-)

General Election live blog

Will appear here from 10pm. Live from Ponds Forge. 10:50 - Blogger being slow, updates will be more frequent on twitter @shefvotes. Ballot box contents being checked atm and local ballots being seperated. 01:20 - Still having issues updating blogger, nothing concrete to report from any seat, just avoided being in shot behind Mr Blunkett. 01:30 - Only other laptop I have seen not in the hands of a media type is being used by the lib dems by the poweraid machine. 02:16 - No official word but the rumour mill says Sheffield counts running ~2 hours late, have seen other parties with laptops now though 02:20 - Again huge apologies for my blogging technology letting me down somewhat, twitter is where it is at. 03:14 - some typos creeping into tweets, all 6 counts still seem far off 03:51 - Difficult to stay out of camera shot now Nick Clegg is here, he made almost strait for Paul Scriven