One of the main planks of our campaign for Mayor is to fight the shockingly undemocratic nature of the process. To qualify for the actual election not only do you need to find £10,000 but a candidate is also required to find ten signatures from registered voters in each of the London boroughs and the City of London. Fair for everyone? No, because if you are a registered political party you have access to the electoral rolls, effectively handing you the information on a plate. If you are an independent candidate you don’t get to see the electoral rolls and have to do it yourself. So I must be off, I’m walking round Haringey with pen and paper tonight. In fact, that’s me knocking at the door.
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The fund so far
Well, the political parties don’t have the advantage that you may think they do. I’ve run many an election campaign for such a party. Just because you have lists of registered voters doesn’t mean you can automatically fill out your nomination paper.
What tends to happen is that the party looks up its membership lists and contacts some of its more active members in each area to ask them to sign the nomination. But in certain areas that can be tricky and they end up having to tramp round and knock on doors just as you are doing.
The reason for the deposit and the nomination form is to prevent thousands of nutters from standing. If the process was done away with, you’d have a ballot paper that was a hundred pages long and reading the results of the count would take the best part of a day.
After all, if you can’t find ten people in each borough to assent to your candidacy (not that they’re even endorsing your platform), then you’re hardly likely to be in a position to win.