venta

For those of you in the UK: vote, or lose the right to complain when your council is controlled by the BNP.

I live in London, so today we're voting for the new mayor and for members of the London Assembly (a body that keeps its eyes on, and advises, the mayor).

I've managed to see surprisingly little info on the elections (though more than my colleague who was, yesterday, quite bewildered by the idea there was an election today - despite the fact his kids' school was closed for use as a polling station). Last week we had a flyer through the door from the Conservative Party - the only party that bothered to flyer us. It requested that we: 1. On the pink ballot paper vote Zac for mayor. 2. On the white ballot paper, vote Dominic for the London Assembly. 3. On the orange ballot paper, vote Conservative.

Oh. I wonder what the orange ballot paper is for.

When I was given my ballot papers this morning, the election chap explained that I could make two selections on the pink mayoral paper, "and here's your other two".

Fortunately, I had got round to looking up what the mysterious orange slip was for. Just under half of the London Assembly members are "London-wide" (rather than tied to a constituency) and are elected by proportional representation after a party ballot.

Equally fortunately, I also know how the mayoral ballot works. I'm not really making two selections, I'm voting for first and second choice candidates. The election is a two-horse race between Sadiq Khan (Labour) and Zac Goldsmith (Conservative), although there are twelve candidates[*]. Two choices mean you're not forced to choose between the tactical choice and the minority candidate you actually like. And maybe we get to find out just how many people actually like that minority candidate. It's great, it makes voting a lot more fun, and it's almost like the country should have voted to ditch FPTP five years ago.

But the system is more complicated than FPTP, and it's really not been well advertised. The whole election - its options, its mechanisms, and its existence - hasn't been well advertised. I predict pitifully low turn-out, some of which will doubtless be down to apathy, but I reckon a lot will be caused by ignorance. Sure, the info is there, but you have to go and look for it. In fact, I think everyone's so taken up with the EU referendum in June that the tedious business of running our towns has got a bit forgotten.

[*] It's also, given that the office has been dominated since creation by Ken or Boris, a curiously no-horse race.