Voters play hard to get

We guess that apathy produces the outcome that it deserves.
Back in January, Boston Borough Council considered a report on the new executive arrangements which the government is introducing after next year’s local elections, and tonight the council's Standard’s Committee discusses the way to go forward.
The choice was between one of two forms of executive - either an elected Mayor and Cabinet, or what’s been called a “‘New style” Leader and Cabinet ... which is more or less the same as the current system except that the leader has more power than at present.
Apparently, the council organised an exhaustive trawl of public opinion - in the shape of an online questionnaire, media coverage editorially, advertising in the local media, a general survey sent out to all residents with the council tax bills, whilst councillors were encouraged to circulate copies of the leaflet within their wards, citizens panel members were e-mailed with a link to the online questionnaire, and “hard to reach groups” were also consulted.
The result seems to show that everyone in the borough fell into the “hard to reach” category.
We know that local government affairs induce overwhelming apathy among the voting public, but even we were surprised to learn that only 1,021 votes were received - 1,008 by post and 13 online. And let’s not forget that quite a few of those will be councillors, their families and borough employees.
The majority - 65% - voted for the Leader and Cabinet model, and 33% for an Elected Mayor and Cabinet. The remaining 2% of respondents didn’t vote for either option, but left “relevant” comments. We bet they did!
Overall, a shameful 2% of the local electorate took part in this consultation.
So do people simply not care?
We were surprised to hear about the survey sent with council tax bills - but when we dredged out the pile of bumph that came with the tax bill .... there it was - we’d missed it entirely.
Perhaps a snappier title other than “A Leader or an Elected Mayor. Governance Consultation” might have attracted more readers.
All in all we feel that more could have been done to interest people in the debate.
The outcome is that we will continue with the same power hungry, voter-indifferent elitist clique that we are currently lumbered with.
Whilst we could not guess the outcome if more people had voted, we do feel that result is telling us that the borough is badly out of touch with the electorate and needs to work hard to re-engage their interest - if ever it engaged it.
Meanwhile, it looks as though we’ll simply pay the price.

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