All-up elections – what the calendar would look like
March 13, 2013 4 Comments
One of the arguments for all-up elections for Southend-on-Sea Borough Council is the cost savings it delivers. This is said to be especially so when they coincide with national elections.
European Parliamentary elections are held every five years and, since we now have fixed-termed Parliaments, so are General Elections. All-up local elections would occur every four years. Thus, we can look and see what savings would be made.
Assuming that we start the all-up cycle in 2015 we would next see coincidence with a national election in 2019. The next three sets of local elections would stand on their own, and so the next time we would see these savings would be in 2035. In fact, looking at the calendar (below) we can see that most elections will be on their own; so much for those savings. Still, anything to keep the Tories in power …..
| GE | EU | All-ups | |
| 2014 | EU | ||
| 2015 | GE | All-ups | |
| 2016 | |||
| 2017 | |||
| 2018 | |||
| 2019 | EU | All-ups | |
| 2020 | GE | ||
| 2021 | |||
| 2022 | |||
| 2023 | All-ups | ||
| 2024 | EU | ||
| 2025 | GE | ||
| 2026 | |||
| 2027 | All-ups | ||
| 2028 | |||
| 2029 | EU | ||
| 2030 | GE | ||
| 2031 | All-ups | ||
| 2032 | |||
| 2033 | |||
| 2034 | EU | ||
| 2035 | GE | All-ups | |
| 2036 | |||
| 2037 | |||
| 2038 | |||
| 2039 | EU | All-ups | |
| 2040 | GE | ||
| 2041 | |||
| 2042 | |||
| 2043 | All-ups | ||
| 2044 | EU | ||
| 2045 | GE | ||
| 2046 | |||
| 2047 | All-ups | ||
| 2048 | |||
| 2049 | EU | ||
| 2050 | GE | ||
| 2051 | All-ups | ||
| 2052 | |||
| 2053 | EU | ||
| 2054 |
The years without elections would also be savings, no?
But this should be a debate about democracy anyway.
I don’t think you’ve got this quite right. Where we would save most is in the years where there need not be elections at all, eg 2016. When the two elections take place at the same time we save because the council doesn’t have to bear the whole cost.
They would, but all-ups would be more expensive as a one-off that an election by thirds (if only for all the extra paper produced). However, it should be a debate about democracy – and since we are not going to see proportional representation for these all-ups they will be less democratic than our current electoral cycle. This is because small margins are grossly rewarded. For instance:
Lab candidate 1 35%
Lab candidate 2 33%
Lab candidate 3 31%
Con candidate 4 30%
Con candidate 5 29%
Con candidate 6 28%
etc
For an average lead of 4% Lab would get all three seats, when proportionally they should only get one (or two depending on how the rest of the candidates did).
I vaguely recall the savings being quite modest (about £70000 a year). However, although turnout is often below a third regular elections do allow residents to pass opinion on the performance of their council and its councillors. It is possible to change the administration in three out of every four years at present, whereas going to all-up elections locks the chamber down for four years.