ELECT Executive
Report on
“ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP” PILOT PROJECT |
|
| This
Executive Report has been prepared to assist the independent evaluation
by the Dept. of Politics and International Studies, University of
Hull, under the guidance of Professor the Lord Norton and Dr.Cristina
Leston-Bandeira.
It is made up
of four parts A – The aims and objectives of the project Aim Objectives • Objective
1 -To raise awareness of the electoral process Geographic Scope This was to be achieved by using an interactive website as its hub and “reference library” to assemble useful information to assist in reengaging the public with their elected representatives. The use of a website allowed ELECT to partially recreate “the hustings', to counter the existing state where electoral information is "supply-led" and non-interactive, for example, via radio and television programmes and delivered leaflets. Using new technologies will ensure information and interaction is "demand-led", shifting the debate agenda to the voter. What should not be ignored are the non website activities designed into the project, these included banners, leaflets, interviews on TV and Radio, candidate media training and public meetings.
The “Active
Citizenship” Project had three interconnected aims With the actions described in this report which includes the website and associated activities we feel that the first two items have been covered and that the basis for the third has been laid. In North East Lincolnshire we had full cooperation and assistance from Democratic Services, Education (both schools and Adult) and Business Development and all the political parties, we would like to thank them for their support. I think it is important to point out that we able to choose such an advanced information technology area such as North East Lincolnshire. With NTL cable TV and broadband web access and 11 libraries online and 23 UKOnline centres, our own digital public service TV Studio at Immingham, we were able to take a cutting edge approach. We assessed very early in our planning that people were “switched off by politics” but everyone is interested in the Issues that affect them. We therefore pushed this whole “Issue” approach in our attempt to reconnect the public with their elected officials. The strong support
we received from a wide range of educational specialists at our
18th February rollout to stakeholders was memorable. This started
a train of pilot adult education programmes in the 11 online libraries
and the school lesson planning now being written for different age
groups. Every candidate received an invitation to be included on the website, with their own set of pages allowing them to give their CV, their issues in text and audio, an email address for them to use and people to contact them. The facility of being able to issue a press release from any online computer in the world onto their pages is also included. These invitations were handed out by the Electoral Registration officers and followed up by ELECT to the candidates’ home address. 64 out of the 91 candidates presented themselves for briefing and interview and over 250 audio comments on ward issues were recorded. Each candidate could repeat their entries until they were satisfied. They were asked to give three ward issues and a “why vote for me”! The party leaders also attended extra interviews to give the Key Council wide Issues they were using to promote their party. They each gave three issues and also “Why vote for my party”. The opposing leaders were then offered the opportunity to answer the other parties’ remarks. The Independents (5 out of 8 attended) were given equal space to the political parties and offered the opportunity of presenting one issue each and one reply. A local TV debate was arranged by ELECT. Two party leaders and one deputy took part. Also on the panel were an Independent (chosen by lot) and the Member of Youth Parliament. This was transmitted to a potential local audience of 40,000 and repeated for 7 nights. Banners were placed throughout the borough, 6000 leaflets were circulated encouraging participation and a number of TV and radio interviews took place. There is no doubt that we raised the profile of the election, whether we can claim the increase in turnout is more difficult to assess. (29.1% to 30.3%) Funding is now
being sought to carry out the third element - to offer continued
interactive access to elected members and to “grow the seeds”
that we have planted in setting up an impartial online messageboard
and registering enough people onto the ElectionsUK/YOUGOV polling
panel to be able to assist the Council and the residents to be able,
quickly and cost effectively judge the mood on contentious issues.
What could we have done better? We could have perhaps convinced the 27 candidates who did not or could not find the time to attend for interview of the potential of this innovative project. We needed to have started months earlier (the funding acceptance arriving in the run up to Christmas) to lay the foundations early enough to make a significent difference. Please remember that we were truly pioneering and had to try and fit in with the established method of running an election as well as “pushing out the boundaries” of what might be possible for an impartial supplier to raise the profile of the election in schools, business, homes and not least with candidates. Many candidates (and councillors) undersell themselves, whether through lack of opportunity or aptitude I am not sure. I felt it a privilege to have had one-to-one talks with so many local politicians who had the community very much in their hearts. Many useful suggestions were made on vital policies and without our project many of these would never have been aired. An interesting point has been made that the views on issues made by those elected as councillors provides a useful database of information for council officials to know “what your councillor really thinks!” Owing to the
small immigrant population in North East Lincolnshire we did not
get the opportunity to develop another part of our strategy, to
engage and help integrate those new to our country. We feel that
use of website such as ours, acting as a library, introduced by
local ethnic leaders in their mother tongue and using subtitles
could have a major influence in assisting better integration into
the mainstream of UK life. Returning Officers
carry out an excellent job of running Elections, in fact world leaders,
but their very culture does not naturally fit in with in marketing
elections. Therefore a system of accredited impartial projects &
suppliers, such as ELECT is pioneering, might be helpful.. On another matter,
as part of our Electoral Education programme we organised the Channel
7 Local Election debate, believed to be the first in the UK. We
were not permitted to officially sponsor the event and have our
banner encouraging people to visit our website and vote. Finally I would like to thank my directors and working group for their unstinting support and giving me the background information to have made this project a success and The Electoral Commission for the constructive and sympathetic way that they have dealt with us and the vision to support us in this exciting project. Richard A Bellamy Executive Secretary ELECT An Analysis of what actually took place against objectives • A programme
of meetings and workshops was held to provide 'awareness raising
of citizenship”' workshops at local level. Questions for
group discussions i) Empowering
teachers – “This is already an excellent resource”
Roy Horobin Teacher 2) How would you modify, add to or subtract from this resource to maximise its usefulness in your area of interest or work? i) The interactive
element of the site was seen as a big plus. There are great gains
to be made from the interactive development of the site
i) Involve children
in website development / feedback. E.g. raise awareness by the use
of text messaging. To back “shadow” general elections
in schools Feedback form Active Citizenship Launch 18th Feb 2003 1. “Already an excellent resource for Teachers” Roy Horobin – Teacher 2. “Empowering, ideal to link development with Youth Parliament and involve text messaging” Phil Huckin NELincs Foundation Subjects Consultant KS3 3. Richard The Community Learning Service very much wants to be kept involved. Please put me down as your communication contact point. At the present time we have a team of tutors working in libraries helping the public to gain the skills to access ICT. Talking with
my colleague Fiona Service from Libraries we feel that this team
may be useful in promoting ELECT. We just need the nod from you when you’re ready. Lynne Maultby
Area Coordinator
I attended the above conference on Tuesday this week and was very impressed with the proposed new website. It will be a valuable tool and source of information for all age groups. I work with people who have physical disabilities and sensory impairments in a day service setting. I am also Chairman of Turning Point Productions which is a group of people with disabilities making programmes about disability issues for broadcast on Channel 7, our local television station. I have contacts in many other disability organisations. Disabled people
are part of our society but their needs and abilities are often
overlooked by decision makers such as government officials and others.
With today's computer technology it would be so much easier for them to make an informed choice when voting using the proposed website, and without having to worry about how they will get to and from the polling station. Myself and other
colleagues (most of whom have a disability/impairment) are very
interested in helping to promoting your project in any way we can.
I look forward to hearing from you. Regards, Glyn Spate Chairman Turning Point Productions glynf.spate@ntlworld.com 5. Thanks Richard I have had a
good look at the site which is an excellent idea. I was interested
to see that in the Doncaster mayoral election, the candidate who That tells us
something about the current situation re the electorate. There is clearly
a need for education in the democratic process. 6. Richard As I mentioned
before, the main contribution I can make in the future is in the
use of TV, particularly with respect to encouraging the engagement
of those currently disinterested in the political process. Lifelong learning
policies linked to providing greater access to ICT• appear
to be increasing participation of those already engaged in learning
but don’t appear to be encouraging wider participation of
those not already active in learning. I spoke with Tony Bellringer about submitting a local television based proposal to enhance, promote and encourage use of the ELECT site. Perhaps we can talk about this at our next meeting. Congratulations
again on a successful launch. 7. 'The launch
conference for ELECT in February 2003 was well organised, well attended
and I enjoyed it very much. Best regards, 8. Dear Richard Eric Clements – Fisheries Advisor for Austin Mitchell MP gunner275@ntlworld.com Initial POST ELECTION COMMENTS "The ElectionsUK
project represents a positive step forward in engaging voters and
promoting active citizenship. Richard C An Analysis of what actually took place against objectives (Cont) • d) Adult education workshops were set up through the 11 online libraries in the area with tutors visiting test locations. (Ob1,2,4,5,6,7,8) • f) A local TV debate was encouraged on Channel 7 NTL cable system, where all parties were represented as well as an independent and our local Member of the Youth Parliament. This one hour programme in front of a live audience was transmitted each day for a week.(Ob1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) • g) Local radio, TV and newspaper interviews were completed. (Ob1,2,4,6,7) • h) Over a dozen 9ft banners were placed around the borough encouraging citizenship and voting. (Ob1,2,6,7,8) • I) 6000 leaflets were distributed to encourage raise the profile of the Election, visits to the Website, registering for polls and voting. (Ob1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) • j) A
specially designed private web-based email facility was set up;
all candidates were given email addresses at xxx@ElectionsUK.org
, so that Candidates could find one another, via an internal search
engine. • k) A Message Board system was constructed on the website that allowed discussion to take place online on a number of issues. Any posting to the board was sent to the Administrator who could remove it, edit it or contact the contributor. Any posting relevant to a party or candidate could then be emailed onwards to encourage a reply. Chat Moderators joined us to moderate any unacceptable postings which have caused offence in the past.(Ob1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) • l) A special arrangement with YOUGOV.com for local polling has been set up with ElectionsUK. When enough people have registered it will allow periodic local polls to be carried out cost effectively by ElectionsUK or North East Lincolnshire Council. The basis of this is on registration that the registrant gives a personal profile so that a balanced demographic balanced can be given to any poll. We found a considerable resistance to give detailed personal information and are therefore designing a less intrusive registration system which will still give an demographic profile accurate enough to enable comminty polls to be taken with confidence as to the results.(Ob1,2,4,6,7,8) • m) As part of the candidate interviews, initial media training was given to those requesting it. (Ob2,8) • n) Connection was made with schools and youth parliament representatives and an ElectionsUK Youth Advisory Group has been formed. (Ob1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) • o) 800 Federation of Small Business members were circulated encouraging them to be “Active Citizens” and suggest that they applied for postal vote forms for all their employees that would not normally vote. (Ob1,2,3,6,7,8) • p) During
the election period a presentation was given to a registered blind
voter of his ward candidates using the audio interviews with good
results and now work is progressing with SoundScene, who produce
a weekly audio tape for the blind and partially sighted. q) Representatives from Schools & Colleges are working on producing 12 bespoke citizenship lesson plans, using ElectionsUK resources for teaching in Key Stage 3, 4 and post 16 r) A printing service was provided at the count for results of each ward shortly after their announcement. A full analysis of all the wards was then issued as soon as the final information for verified number of eligible voters and verified actual voters was available. The Candidate
Website - The Candidate
interviews were all carried out on a one to one basis ( except for
thee occasions where 3 or 4 attended together to get their party’s
assistance.) these usually lasted between 1 and 1 ½ hours
and consisted of a full briefing of the project including an online
web demonstration. Each candidate was then asked to produce three
Ward issues on which they were going to fight the election and were
also asked “Why should people vote for you”. When the
candidate had identified their subjects a 30 second audio response
was recorded for use on the candidates own pages. This was repeated
until the candidate was satisfied that it represented them to their
satisfaction. Some candidates required assistance in identifying
which issues to choose and coaching in how to present them, whereas
others were well prepared and the interviews were achieved first
time. It became apparent that many candidates found it very helpful
to discuss their issues with our Impartial Interviewer as it helped
them to distil their ideas and prepared them to answer the voters
questioning with more confidence. The website itself
was set up allowing an enquirer to put in their own home postcode
or address to find out which ward they were in (14 old wards had
been redesigned by the Boundaries Committee to balance out the population
better and 15 wards were used for the election for the first time).
Special thanks are offered to Democratic Services who produced the
information as it was not yet available nationally. 1. The proportion
of electorate voting in the next local election 2. The number
of 'hits' on the ELECT web-site 3. The number
of questions asked by electors on the web-site 4. The number
of schools and colleges who have used the ELECT web-site as part
of Citizenship courses 5. The number
and composition of attendees at ELECT conferences and workshops 6 The number
of candidates for election who (a) attend ELECT briefings (b) engage with
debate on the web-site Proposed Questions
and parameters to judge effectiveness of ELECT Project Do you feel more
confident in using e-communication? On the website,
include a feedback form with questions: Are you more
aware of what each candidate is standing for? Are you going
to use the website to engage in on-line discussion with candidates? Are you more
likely now to vote in the next election? * Note - These figures should be treated with discretion owing to the small number who were prepared to enter their personal information into the ElectionsUK / YOUGOV polling system. A more basic registration is being developed to deal with this problem but still giving an adequate demographic profile. |
HOME | CANDIDATES | POLITICAL
PARTIES | WARDS | HISTORY
| LINKS