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The States will tighten up the proofing process for manifestos in the combined booklet, but the States Assembly & Constitution Committee is still yet to nail down how many pages will be offered to each candidate inside.
SACC decided in its May meeting to maintain the status quo and keep the booklet at two pages per candidate after it was revealed that just 10% of candidates submitted correct images and text at the first attempt in 2020, extending the production time, while 15 people hand wrote their manifesto content, and more requested repeated copy changes.
But investigations into the States-led election materials were reopened in the latest committee meeting with additional information requested from UK printers to understand the impact of less editing on production.
Deputy Simon Fairclough, who supports two pages, said the committee was “going around in circles”.
The States has since clarified that “the guidance to candidates made clear that they needed to make themselves available to proof their pages and set a fixed period time of four days within which they could do so.
It also said that “corrections were requested by the candidates and incorporated into the final version”.
The ability to make corrections is “reasonable”, but the States said for the next edition “multiple rounds of corrections and amends will not be permitted” and that “there will be an expectation that candidates supply materials as requested and as a final draft.”
Pictured: Deputy Carl Meerveld.
Deputy Carl Meerveld, President of SACC, had agreed to keep the booklet at two pages per candidate but since then has reflected and questioned whether four pages would be best, with one page standardized and up to three extra provided by the induvial “as they wish”.
He also suggested cutting back on free materials such as the State-filmed video for each candidate which is published on the website, saying the States in 2020 was supplying “professional editorial services”.
“We shouldn't be standardising the presentation of candidates in a way that is not reflecting who they are on the day they stand... I have a feeling we are doing a disservice to the public,” he said.
“The cut off is the cut off, whatever is supplied is printed,” he added, saying expectations should be clear.
An official again advised against this, arguing a “myth is developing” about how much editing was offered by the States and said decentralising the presentation of content risked increasing production schedules and lowering accessibility if manifestos were unintelligible.
They said one option would be to remove free campaigning materials entirely.
Deputy Yvonne Burford requested that parishes be left out of free materials, and a searchable field, as she said it "unfair” in an island wide electoral system considering the population differences between parishes.
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