Of the four Labour ,the Conservatives and Plaid are fully bilingual . Whilst Ukip leaflet is entirely in English and not surprisingly because it was printed in Bodmin (So at least Cornwall got some money)
Ukip have the advantage however in that they can be complexly negative about Europe and play on Immigration fears Whilst the others (even the Tories) struggle with a positive even when its there.
I have heard from a number of people who have only received Electoral Communications from only one or two parties.
If I was running the delivery of the leaflets for a party I'd meet with counterparts in the other parties and conduct a united survey of party members to see how much is actually getting through. the post
But the worrying aspect is I received for instance no Liberal Democrat communication and as Alwyn ap Huw nin his Hen Rech Flin Blog points out n election where less than one-third likely to likely to turn out to vote, a number of postal voters will be crucial to the final result, and like himself, had voted before the campaign.
We are getting to the stage where people will have voted well before the actual polling day and Election Communications need to be delivered as soon as the campaign starts. Or they will be wasting tgher time and money in preaching to an audience that has already voted.
The only other solution would be to have the postal votes sent in on the final few days before and delay the count for a week .
But its a worrying factor and together with tho allegations of corruption it may well be that we should reconsider the extension of the postal vote to whoever wants it and not just those who cannot physically get to the polling station or are not present in the constituency on polling day.
It may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle but we really need to look at the democratic failings here.
2 comments:
You are right that postal votes can potentially be mis-used, although there is no evidence that that has happened in Wales. An interesting phenomenon I've observed over the last week is that the postal vote does not always go to the party which went to the trouble to arrange it. A number of traditional Tory voters have told me thaty they have used that vote to support UKIP.
I was out handing out leaflets (Welsh Labour ones, since you ask) at a car boot sale in Aberconwy constituency this morning, and a number of people who had a postal vote had not yet used it. There is everything to play for even at this late stage.
Bil I guessed that it was Labour leaflets but thanks for nailing your colours so to speak.
But my argument does concern other factors including the question on are all electoral addresses being delivered on time?
I stil haven't had one from the LibDems and the Greens and fortunately none from the BNP who tend to put it on Glossy Paper stooping me using it to wipe my bum.
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