This coming Sunday - 15th July - sees my first experience of the Board's Divisional Elections. Those in the know have encouraged me to get stuck in and stand for one of the Divisions - the choices are between Community Issues, Defence, Finance and Organisation and International. Given my career is in international development, I felt that it was here that I could make the greatest contribution.
And so to the process. Each candidate provided a 200 word manifesto which was collated and circulated to all Deputies. We were all encouraged to reach out by phone and email to other Deputies to solicit their support - but where to start? As a new Deputy, my network is not yet well developed, so it didn't take long to get in touch with the people I know and ask for their support. I joined the Facebook groups and followed and contributed to the conversations and I reached out to a carefully selected group of people who I thought might vote for me.
I may have been too selective and left it too late - but who knows. The elections work on a STV (single transferrable vote) system. Pretty complicated stuff, but the Changing the Board group posted a very useful 'unofficial' guide that made it clear that I need to get 21 votes to have a chance of getting in.
I've read all the manifestos; I've pulled together a list of the people that have said they'll support me and who I want to vote for and there's pretty much little else I can do... except of course share my manifesto here. It's coming soon in my next blog.
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