Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Oh Well, Win Some Lose Some

I have just got the results about the UNISON London Local Government Service Group Executive Election. I was well beaten by incumbent David Eggmore who got 2,882 votes. Second was Glenn Kelly who got a surprising (to me anyway) 2,528. I came third with 1,430 and Oreleo DuCran came 4th with 677. See previous post.

Congratulations to David!

The good news is that Irene Stacey (see next post) won the London female seat 3586 to 3532. Narrowing defeating Sonya Howard. Interesting to speculate about what this actually means?

Bad news I fear also about Rachel Voller and Bill Beekoo in the London Health SGE elections. I am sure that this is just a blip!

Nationally the centre left seemed to have done better.

I enjoyed the campaign and have a number of ideas on how to possibly get a better result in any future elections.

Turnout was as always very poor. 79,507 members balloted, total number of valid votes counted only 7,517. There was an incredible 677 invalid votes cast in my election and 1076 for the female seat? Scotland who balloted 102,282 members only had 61 invalid votes? (Only one seat up for election in that region).

The low turnout meant that in London you only needed just fewer than 3% of the membership vote to win.

Would better publicity, raising the profile of the SGE, internet voting, voting via mobile phones make any difference?

Anyway, such is life, I am now settling down to a nice cup of tea. (still using skimmed milk)

10 comments:

Sean said...

Well done David and Irene I got half of what I voted for at least! Hard luck on the other candidates who I am sure will have toels ot paly in the future in other parts of the union. John do you happen to know what the reasons for the spoilt papers were?

Anonymous said...

Also of interest is that we had 4 men standing but only two women in the regional LG elections?
Perhaps we do need to get more women members interested in standing -perhaps something the regional women's committee may want to work on.

It was good that Sonya stood as she doesn't hold a number of highish profile positions already so was a relatively 'new face'.
Anyway -congrats to winners -commiserations to losers -and I hope that the new and old reps will provide regular report backs to the relevant memberships they represent.kat

John Gray said...

Hi Sean
You didn’t make it clear what half you voted for so I am very pleased to assume that you voted for Irene and I! Many thanks – I knew you would come through eventually!

I’m not sure why there are so many spoilt votes apart from the fact that when you had more than one election in each region this caused a problem in the number of spoilt votes? Maybe some members treated it as a PR election rather than “first past the post”?

John Gray said...

Hi Kat
The more members standing the merrier I say! Not sure what I can report back on the SGE since I was not elected but I will give it a go!

Anonymous said...

sean got his answer re spoilt ballots over at my blog.
If someone voted in only one of the seats and not the other. Their vote was counted as spoilt for the seat they didn't enter a vote for. (Makes sense if you think about it)

It also explains why scotland didn't get as many spoilt ballots because they only had one vote on the ballot paper - if people didn't want to vote they just didn't send the ballot paper in. In london both seats were on one ballot paper.

John Gray said...

Thanks for that Marsha; I thought that was what JR was on about. Actually, I think that many members probably thought that they could only vote if male for the General seat (which they wrongly thought it was only for blokes – understandable in one way since only men were standing) or if a women for the “Female seat”.

So one positive thing from this would be for it to be made clear in future elections that members can vote in both!

marshajane said...

Yes other suggestions where having 2 balot papers (General and female) but then i guess youd need one for low paid as well (where we ever to get a candidate let alone a contested election!) or categories of spoilt ballots.

I think one line on top of the balot paper saying every one is entitled to vote in each seat should clear up any confusion.

Sean said...

certainly I got a number of queries from male UNISON members askign if they were allowed to vote in the Womens seat

John Gray said...

Hi Sean
That is interesting, not only because getting any reaction from members about national elections is momentous enough! Nick at 4glengate point out that there were loads of spoilt vote in the East Midlands General Health SGE election, even though he had a female opponent.

However, this confusion about male/female voting must be a major reason for spolit votes.

I’ll ask Irene to bring it up at NEC!

John Gray said...

Hi Marsha
Yes, that makes sense (never thought I would say....)