Voting system needs update

✒ LAST May, with very little previous experience, I was given partial responsibility for a £34 million budget. Crazy, right? Yes, but not unusual as I’d just been elected as a district councillor for Torridge.

What I find bizarre is that I won my seat with just 387 votes. My ward had 4,072 registered voters at the time, meaning less than 10% of electors voted for me.

Yet, I’m now one of 36 Torridge councillors, voting and making decisions on projects, some involving millions of pounds, that have major implications for residents and the local economy. Hopefully, I’m proving to be a good councillor, speaking out for my ward on local issues and bringing a fresh eye to the job.

Of course, the actual budget is put together by council officers, all professionals in their field. But, as councillors, we can affect these decisions. We can follow the advice of officers or we can go against it. And we have to approve all major financial decisions and budgets.

My election wasn’t even remarkable. Six councillors were elected last May with significantly fewer votes than me. One got in with 200 votes, just one vote ahead of a rival candidate!

Even if numbers are rounded up, only seven councillors out of 36 got the votes of 20% or more of the electorate in their ward. The highest vote share for any councillor was 892 votes (29%) for Lib Dem group leader Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin in the Shebbear & Langtree ward. The late Peter Christie, the Green Party group leader, was second highest with 871 votes in Bideford North.

Across the district, turnout for the May 2023 local elections was just 33%. So why don’t more people vote? Some don’t understand the powers that local councils have, some just don’t think their votes will make any difference. But another major problem is our antiquated first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system. So often people don’t vote because they know the candidate they support isn’t going to win.

Whatever party or position you support, every vote should matter. The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system, where voters can rank every candidate in order of preference, is used for all local elections in Northern

Ireland and Scotland. Councils in Wales can vote to change the way they’re elected from firstpast-the-post to STV. Voter turnout has increased in Scotland following the introduction of STV in 2007.

At the last meeting of Torridge District Council, I put forward a motion calling for the council to support the introduction of fairer elections. I got the support of Green, Labour and Lib Dem councillors, plus a couple of independents. But the motion was defeated 14-12 by a group of Tories and ‘independents.’

The defeat was a shame, but we will try again.

There’s an old saying about paying peanuts and getting monkeys. Maybe there should be a new one about not voting and getting...?

Councillor Huw Thomas

(Green Party)

❝❝

We could halve the amount of councils instead, which would be a far better idea, plus save millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money