PCC Hustings

It’s the Oxford hustings for the PCC elections tomorrow. The meeting’s at 7.00pm in the Town Hall. Here’s the agenda, courtesy of Oxford City Council and the Oxford Safer Communities Partnership. The original is on this link.

Oxford Safer Communities Partnership
Police & Crime Commissioner for the Thames Valley

Hustings Event 7pm Monday 5th November 2012

6.45pm-7.00pm

Assembly / submission of written questions.

7.00pm

Welcome from Tim Sadler, Chair of the Oxford Safer Communities Partnership.

7.05pm

Hand over to the Chair for the event, Professor Ian Loader, Department of Criminology, University of Oxford.

7.05pm-7.30pm

3 mins introduction for each of the candidates.

• who they are
• why they are standing
• what they want to achieve

7.30pm-8.25pm

Time for debate: a selection of topics for debate gathered at the opening of the meeting selected at the discretion of the Chair. Contributions from candidates. Challenge and comment from the Chair and from the floor.

8.25pm-8.30pm

Chair’s closing remarks.

Aylesbury hustings video

The hustings in Aylesbury were last Monday (29 October). There is an official video of the whole proceedings. I haven’t linked to it on this blog but I and others have tweeted the link over the past few days. The link’s broken now, and here’s the reason. Conservative candidate Anthony Stansfeld made an unsubstantiated allegation about Labour Councillor Jon Harvey accessing his (Stansfeld’s) bank account. Stansfeld has since apologised, but Harvey has got the Council to withdraw the video until the correction can be added to it in some way.

The official website for these elections has gone live and has details on all the candidates. Find the Thames Valley candidates at www.choosemypcc.org.uk.

Independent candidate Geoff Howard’s details are there, and I’ve summarised them below in the same format as the other candidates in my previous post.

Geoff Howard, Independent

Background: Former Head of Department in a Slough Secondary School. Businessman for 27 years. Magistrate for 20 years chairing Adult and Youth Courts in Berkshire. Former Slough Borough Councillor for 13 years.

Headlines: Politics should play no part in this role. Manage efficiency savings: no reduction in ‘bobbies on the beat’.

Top 3 crime priorities: Concentrate on tackling crimes that affect people locally. Manage efficiency savings demanded by Government without damaging the interests of the community. [Note: The choosemypcc website doesn’t ask this specific question so I have extracted this from GH’s statement.]

I’ll read the other candidates’ statements later and if there is anything new I’ll post it.

Voting procedure

If you’ve had the booklet from the Electoral Commission through your letterbox you’ve probably seen that you’ll be able to vote for up to 2 candidates. What it doesn’t tell you is how the votes will be counted – you have to look that up on a website called aboutmyvote.co.uk. It’s called the “supplementary vote system” and to save you the trouble, here’s how it works:-

• Put a cross in the first column against your first-choice candidate.
• If you don’t want to vote for a second choice, that’s it, you’ve finished.
• If you want to vote for a second choice, put a cross against your second choice in the second column. (Yes, it’s a good idea for your second choice to be for a different candidate from your first choice or you’ll confuse the system.)
• That’s it. Put your ballot paper in the box.
• When the votes are counted, all the first choices are counted first. If any candidate gets more than 50% of the votes cast they are elected. Otherwise …
• It becomes a count-off between the two candidates with the highest number of votes. The ballot papers for all but the top two candidates are re-counted, and any of their second choice votes which are for either of the top two candidates are added to those candidates’ numbers.
• The winner is the candidate with the higher number of votes at the end of this second count.

I hope that’s all clear. And no, I don’t know why they’re using this system. If anybody does please leave a comment.