I was acutely aware of this problem but as an Independent candidate with a very small team of volunteers helping in their spare time I couldn’t do anything to improve my nearly free website. Yes a WordPress site has built in features but I’d never used them before & also needed help to learn to use Twitter and other social media as these were the only free ways to engage the electorate. [Long post as I now know what the difficulties are for an independent without a lot of money available but that is the key point].

As it is most of the 1 million voters of Merseyside (able or with a disability) received no information from anyone. If I’d had a team of volunteers this was one of about 20 things down to research – to make my website more accessible for people with disabilities; so was summarising the scores of briefings I was sent by groups lobbying that there was no time to read, researching legal issues about the election process, identifying media contacts for an entire county (most of whom ignored me as an Independent until just before the election or largely ignored the election), researching the track record of other candidates and keeping up to date on what the Police Authority and Police were doing. I had a good general grasp on the latter two and there were briefings on election law and on police authorities but even as a legal expert I couldn’t go through the volume while working full time. Party candidates could all rely on helpers, even if only a small number, to do many of these jobs and they had experts and databases and email lists and all the infrastructure to help. I did have a quick look to see if there was instant advice from any charity but didn’t know where to look. (I wish I’d seen this post earlier, Chris, as it would have given me some tips).

“Even more troubling was a response that apologised that no alternative formats were available because of ‘unfortunate limits on available resources’. ” I assume you mean troubling that resources would be a limit because it is not the fault of the candidate. Having said that the response you mention might indicate an attitude that did not take account of need, or demonstrate a lack of understanding. I did get some printed materials, in small and large sizes (100 posters and leaflets), and used .pdf files as indicated in your article partly as a helper suggested them for the reasons you outline. My 6,000 flyers (for 1 million voters) were only in small size and I didn’t have time to upload .pfs of all the materials to the website as there were 1200+ PCC election related emails (estimate) over the campaign and 500 in the last week when a few people finally got interested. Plus a dozen paper briefings and lobbying mailshots and a handful of actual letters from ordinary voters. If I’d been party candidate I would have given these to someone to look at or had standard replies to use as templates. If I’d been able to see at a glance which emails were national lobbying I’d have put them in a to do later file, and which PR companies touting for my business if elected and companies touting for police business I could have ignored without reading. I sent approximately 600 individual emails. So there were a lot of competing demands on time and it meant some important things slipped from being prioritised.

“people have a right to engage with, and be involved in, their communities and not sidelined resources permitting.” I agree and the public authorities should have offered to help with this in the interests of fair play. The information issued by Liverpool for the instructions on voting was criticised by a Professor of legal theory and a lawyer for not being clear (it was limited and misleading, despite Liverpool having run a vote like this before for Mayor), and the poll card had only in 12pt type an invisible line at the very bottom (of the Poll Card) about the choosemypcc site which only went live for information about candidates long after the poll cards went out, and the advertising on radio and television seemed to have stopped. So no chance for people who had not already engaged to find out about the election if they did not use the internet to research the candidates or happen to see the one profile in a local paper. My wife asked why they didn’t at least pin the leaflets up on the wall of each polling station, and have them in the libraries. Voters asked polling station staff for information on the day and were of course told (legally correctly) that they could not help them. So they went away without voting. Many voters claimed to me poll cards did not arrive (that may have been an error on their part), and I did not receive postal information from the Home Office and our flats, and I think area, did not receive the helpful booklet the Electoral Commission distributed.

Three of the seven audience debates on Merseyside only invited the main party candidates and only two were in effect open to the general public. That was not the fault of the parties or candidates (as far as I know) but voters in three of the five districts had no debates at all. The public authorities or education bodies could all have done something about that but did not. They all left it up to someone else. Finally a colleague asked if he could bring a party of students to the count from an adult education course and the Returning Officer gave the impression this was far too difficult. So people who wanted to attend to learn about the democratic process were not encouraged but the place was far more than half empty. The officials should start from the basis that they are there to help everyone. That should surely lead also to them being more likely to comply with their legal obligations under the Equality Act as well by them anticipating being helpful to everyone.

Thank you, Chris and ERS, for highlighting this important issue. This should be part of any review into the process of the election and how it could be done better. Specifically if it is legal rules about the conduct of elections that are hindering the process being improved by being substantially modernised then the legal rules must be rewritten. That must be in addition to a review of how the post can actually be improved to enable any Commissioner to do the job the Government has claimed they will be able to do.

Kiron Reid (Independent candidate for Merseyside PCC).

17 November 2012.