Official Referendum Campaign Groups Appointed

Thursday 28 June 2018

Official campaign groups have been appointed for three options in the upcoming island wide voting referendum.

The States Assembly and Constitution Committee appointed the groups after inviting people to submit applications to head-up campaigning for the five options. Two will therefore receive no specific campaign.

Each group will receive a States grant of £5,000 and an overall spending cap of £10,000 per option has also been imposed. Campaigning is slated to begin on Saturday 1 September and end midnight before referendum day itself – 10 October.

Newly formed political group the Islander’s Association has been appointed to lead campaigning on Option A – where everyone would have 38 votes to cast on election day. Association founding members deputies Carl Meerveld and Peter Ferbrache will take the lead on its campaigning.

The association said this option presented the ‘purest form’ of island wide voting, and Deputy Meerveld said the change will herald a new era in local politics.

"Island-wide voting will fundamentally change the process of electing our deputies, Candidates will no longer be able to rely on their popularity within a couple of square miles of our island. They will require the skills to project themselves island-wide."

Fergus Dunlop and Caroline McManus will be in charge of campaigning for Option B – which will split the island into seven districts.

Deputy John Gollop and Rhoderick Matthews will press the case for Option C, a hybrid of an island-wide and district system.

Option D, which would split the island into four electoral districts and give voters between nine and 11 votes at each election, and Option E where elections are held every two years and deputies serve six years, received no interest from people wishing to persuade others of the merits.

But SACC President Peter Roffey said this did not mean the options would be absent from the public in the run up to the island’s first ever referendum.

"While no applications were received to promote Options D and E, the public can be assured that sufficient information about those options will be available, via the impartial guidance on all five options that the Committee will be producing, to enable individuals participating in the referendum to reach an informed decision for the purpose of voting."

Individuals and groups not officially appointed are still free to promote any of the options, but cannot spend more than £100 doing so or else they will be committing an offence.