Police commissioner elections: I'm spoiling my paper

[Cartoonjane]

What a lot of popycock this is. It seems to me to be a leaflet making competition as I don't know any of the candidates. I have decided to spoil my paper.

Since we have to do this, it makes sense to elect someone who is going to make sure that all meetings and dealings with lobbyists and private contrators will be published. At the moment the successful Labour candidates have promised to do this; imo it's important for all the candidates to do it too.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/09/yvette-cooper-labour-police-chiefs

Tempting thought. Our Labour Candidate has been told he can't stand because of a 22 year old conviction, but his name will probably still be on the ballot paper. Might vote for him anyway.

How to vote in the PCC elections

Polling stations are open from 7am until 10pm on Thurs 15 November.

1. In the three force areas where just two candidates are standing - (Dyfed-Powys, North Yorkshire and Staffordshire) - you will have the familiar "first past the post" ballot paper.

You are expected to vote for just one PCC candidate.

1. In all the other force areas, where there are more than two candidates, the PCC elections are held under a system called the supplementary vote.

You will be given a ballot paper with two columns.

2.1 In the left column, voters choose their first preference for PCC;
in the right, voters choose their second preference.

2.2 Voters can choose to mark just one preference, using the left column only.

Please vote.

nice to see Labour electoral fraud, anti-UKIP extremism, tory bashing and the usual leftist drivel.

and someone doesn't understand subsidiarity.

Local BBC radio, local papers and national papers covered these elections. You probably wont get the knock on the door. The areas covered can be enormous. It will be a low poll; but councillors get elected on small turn out consistently. Voting is either like us Voluntary; or like the Aussies compulsory. Thats the big question.

Should be a good turnout round here, because we have a by-election, a town council election and the Police Commissioner election. Can we stand this much excitement in one day?

Police Commissioner elected in Wiltshire on 7% of vote (15% turnout, according to the BBC). How democratic is that?

What is the point? The only thing I can think of is that the govt (again) just wants to slough off responsibility for everything and anything that can go wrong. So they massively cut the police force and then when crime starts to rise again, they will try to wash their hands of the consequences by pretending that it's our fault because we have elected the wrong Commissioner.

I don't agree with the assessment that it's sloughing off responsibility. The Police Commisioner replaces the largely anonymous and appointed Police Authority.... anyone know who theirs was? Why should someone parachuted in by Westminster be managing matters in Durham or Carlisle? As for the low turn-out, I suspect that once the new commissioners are in place & making themselves visible we will have much stronger views about who is suitable for the job next time around.