A sad day for democracy

The local elections are confusing. Well they are fairly easy to understand if anyone explains, but in Morecambe we have elections for the Town Council when you can vote for up to five candidates, and the Lancaster City Council when you have up to three votes. On top of that we have the AV referendum and despite all the good efforts of those involved in the campaigns, many will not know what it all means. Fortunately the Liberal Democrats have put out a leaflet to explain the voting system.

The lists of candidates has now been published and can be found at http://www.lancaster.gov.uk/news/2011/apr/nominations-published-city-council-parish-council-elections/ but we still need an explanation of how many votes we have in each election.

In Torrisholme there are five Liberal Democrats for the Town Council and three Liberal Democrats for the City Council. This matches the number of possible councillors but take a look at Bare (that's an area of Morecambe). There are no candidates other than those from a party called the Morecambe Bay Independents. I have only glanced at the lists and there may be other wards like this, but just the Bare list, and it is a bare list, makes this a sad day for democracy.

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