Monday 07 October 2019
The States' Assembly & Constitution Committee is pleased with the positive response received to its questionnaire issued this summer
The President, Deputy Neil Inder, said:
"The States' Assembly & Constitution Committee launched a questionnaire for six weeks over the summer to help it understand how the public would like to receive information from the States of Guernsey about candidates in the lead up to the General Election in June 2020.
We saw a fantastic response with 1186 people returning the questionnaire. We are grateful to everyone who took the time to complete the questionnaire and give additional feedback."
The Committee sought feedback on a few options it had provisionally considered to assist voters and candidates, including:
- producing a 'combined manifesto booklet' that incorporates all of the candidate manifestos into one document; and
- the creation of video and audio clips for candidates to broadcast their message; and
- enabling the general public to submit questions to candidates online.
The Committee has released a report summarising the findings of the questionnaire - some of the key headlines are as follows:
- In respect of the States issuing a booklet containing all candidates' manifestos, there was a fairly even split between respondents wishing to have the booklet electronically or in hard copy delivered to their home automatically. 5% of respondents wished to have a paper copy delivered to their home on request and 6% wanted the option of collecting it from specified locations.
- A majority of respondents did not wish to see lengthy manifestos as part of the combined booklet. 43% of respondents wanted the manifesto to be 1 side of A4 and 35% wanted it to be 2 sides of A4 (i.e. 78% want the length limited to 1 or 2 sides). 16% of respondents were happy for candidates to submit manifestos of any length and 5% would like to see manifestos of 4 sides of A4.
- The States of Guernsey will be creating an Elections 2020 website and feedback showed:
- 82% of respondents wanted to see individual pages for each candidate with a copy of their full manifesto, photo and contact details.
- Just over half of respondents wanted to see a short video clip of each candidate at around 2 - 3 minutes in length and for such videos to be able to be shared via social media.
- 71% of respondents wanted there to be a Q&A page on the website to enable the public to ask all candidates questions and for these responses to be published.
A number of further suggestions were put forward in respect of initiatives the States could undertake and these are summarised in the report.
The public also provided useful feedback on meeting candidates, suggesting varying types of hustings that could be held, drop-ins, "speed-dating"-type meetings and roadshows.
Deputy Neil Inder, said:
"We are currently finalising the Committee's next policy letter on the General Election and the consultation responses will help inform the Committee of what it will propose. These proposals will be presented to the States of Deliberation by the end of 2019".
The Committee will be publishing further information on the General Election in due course, including a guide for prospective candidates. People considering standing as a People's Deputy in 2020 might be interested in the course run by the WEA Guernsey at Les Cotils entitled 'Do you want to be a States Deputy in 2020?'. It begins on Thursday 17th October for six Thursday evening sessions and information about the course can be found on www.wea.org.gg/
