Making My Vote Count, part 2

Well, so far my attempt to engage with my local candidates has fallen at almost the first fence, I cannot contact most of them.

There are six candidates standing in my constituency:

• Labour (standing MP)
• Conservative
• Liberal Democrats
• Green Party
•  UKIP
• Christian Peoples Alliance

Only two of them, the Labour candidate and the Liberal Democrats one, has their email address on the Who Can I Vote For website. The Conservative candidate has his twitter account listed there, but only that, and the others have no contact details. A Google search got me the Facebook page for the Green Party candidate, but nothing else.

So I have emailed the Labour and Liberal Democrats candidate on the 11^th May with my questions, still no reply from either of them. I have tweeted the Conservative candidate and Facebook’d the Green Party candidate, asking both of them why their email addresses aren’t available. I have no way to contact the other two candidates.

These people want me to vote for them and yet they do not make it possible for me to engage with them. It feels as if they don’t want to hear from me but they expect me to vote for them just because I agree with their political party. Is it me or does this seem very lazy politics?

Drew Payne

Update – Thursday 18^th May

What a difference three days make. Today I found that both the Conservative and the Christian Peoples Alliance candidates have their email addresses on the Who Can I Vote For website. Naturally I have emailed them both with my questions.

The Green Party candidate has now got a link to his LinkedIn page there, but still no email address. His LinkedIn page tells me that he is an “IT Specialist”, whatever that is, but there is still no way to contact him directly.

The UKIP candidate only has a link to her personal website there, but the link doesn’t work. Click on it and you’re taken to a web page saying the Server Can’t Be Found. So I have even less chance of contacting her.

The Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates still haven’t replied to my email, even though it’s now a week since I emailed them.

This still leaves me feeling very cynical, do these people even want to engage with me, a voter? Yet also, was this election called so suddenly and quickly that it has caught all the political parties off guard, even the Conservatives; or is this what living in a safe Labour seat feels like, the other candidates are only half-heartedly fighting this election, at best.

Oh well, two steps forward...

Drew Payne