Edinburgh Sucks! | The cooncil need our help

City Council

The cooncil need our help

By The Basa ⋅ March 6, 2007 ⋅

It seems that the Council’s attempts to get people interested in the electoral process hasn’t been too effective up until now and the first meeting to explain the new system has had to be cancelled because not enough people RSVP’d.

It seems they are now coming to us to help get the message out as the following arrived in our email box last night from a Council IP address. The next meeting is at Portobello so read on, email or phone with the RSVP:

Date: 15 February 2007

Dear Colleague

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS TAKING PLACE ON THURSDAY 3 MAY 2007?

The City of Edinburgh Council, in conjunction with the Electoral Reform Society and Lothian Valuation Joint Board, is organising a series of public, non-political, meetings to help explain the different voting systems that will be used in the elections to be held on 3 May 2007.

As before, Members of the Scottish Parliament will be elected using the “first past the post” system for constituency MSPs and the Additional Member system for the regional “List” MSPs. For the first time in the local government elections, however, councillors will be elected using the Single Transferable Vote system and these meetings will give you the chance to find out how that will work. There will also be information about Getting Registered to Vote, including postal/proxy votes.

Each evening will follow the same format and there will be plenty of leaflets and information to take away:

1815 Doors open
Tea/coffee available

1845 Getting Registered to Vote
How and where to vote
How the Single Transferable Vote system works

1910 Questions and answer

1945 Finish

There will be four meetings across the city:

Wednesday 7 March: The Greenway Centre, 75 Harvester’s Way

Wednesday 14 March: Portobello Town Hall, Portobello High Street

Wednesday 21 March: Liberton High School, Gilmerton Road

Wednesday 28 March: Craigroyston High School, Pennywell Road.
Please RSVP to Linsay MacLean (linsay.maclean@edinburgh.gov.uk tel 0131 529 4777) indicating which meeting you and your group would like to attend and how many people you anticipate will be present.

Yours sincerely
TOM AITCHISON
Chief Executive and Returning Officer

Although we agree that it is not so communicative to send out to citizens calling them colleagues, we are happy to help the council inform the citizenry.