LESS than half of registered voters showed up to the ballot boxes for this year’s election and turnout was lower than in 2018 despite attempts from the previous government to increase engagement, statistics published by Vote.je have revealed.
A total of 25,264 ballots for Deputies were counted across the Island, despite 60,678 people being registered to vote – giving a total turnout figure of 41.6%. This compares to 26,947 ballots in 2018 – a turnout of 43.38%.
The highest percentage of voter turnout was in the Grouville and St Martin constituency (51.6%) and the lowest was in St Helier Central (28.8%).
Deputy Lyndon Farnham, who along with Deputy Ian Gorst has lodged proposals to reinstate the Islandwide role of Senator, said he was ‘not surprised’ that voter turnout was down and that he believed the ‘majority of the public’ did not ‘engage with the new system’.
‘When out canvassing during this year’s election, a lot of the talk on the doors was that Islanders were dissatisfied with the removal of the Senator, with some even going as far as refusing to vote in order to express their discontent,’ he said.
‘The new system has achieved exactly the opposite of what it was designed to try and do.’
Deputy Farnham said he believed that Islanders did not feel like their vote was having as big an impact as they would like.
‘It is so important that we do whatever we can to improve engagement. The current situation around the Islandwide mandate needs to be reviewed and, once people have reflected on these figures, we need to debate and come to a decision on what to do,’ he said.
Civic engagement has been a long-standing issue in the Island, which has spanned a number of governments.
During the last political term, the States Assembly agreed to radical reforms which saw the Islandwide role of the Senator scrapped in favour of 37 Deputy seats spread across nine constituencies alongside the 12 parish Constables.
One of the reasons given for making this change was to make Jersey’s political system easier to understand by reducing the number of offices within the Assembly, which, it was hoped, would in turn would encourage more people to vote.
Former chair of the Privileges and Procedures Committee Russell Labey, who was not re-elected this year, was a driving force behind the reforms.
He said that ‘no amount of changes’ to the constitution of the Assembly would ‘increase voter turnout alone’.
‘Politicians did their bit in making things simpler; the complexity of the system was time and time again, in every survey, cited as a major disincentive to vote. But politicians do not and should not run elections,’ he said.
‘What they can do now, if they are serious about increasing our dire voter turnout, is ensure that elections are properly resourced.’
Mr Labey said he believed there needed to be a government campaign to explain the election to Islanders and ‘encourage’ them to vote.
He said that ‘eligible voters should automatically be registered to vote’ and added:
‘We will not increase voter turnout in Jersey until we address the fact that when the voter isn’t coming to us, we have to go to the voter.
‘We need twice as many polling stations, in more convenient locations … Everybody should be able to vote at the Town Hall or at any polling station.’
St Helier Central Deputy Carina Alves, who is also a former chair of the PPC, said that she was ‘disappointed’ in the turnout, but that blaming it ‘solely on electoral reform would be unfair’.
‘I would like to see the system run for another election and it be given time to bed in. The focus needs to be on getting information out there properly and educating people about how to vote. We also need to introduce automatic voter registration,’ she said.
‘There is a real lack of awareness and lack of engagement on the subject. We need to be putting up stalls at events, going into schools, sharing campaigns on social media. But not just at election time, it needs to be done consistently throughout a political term.’
Deputy Alves also said she believed that Islanders of other nationalities should be given more information about Jersey’s political setup.
‘When people arrive in the Island they are not given any information about our political system. They know about the requirements for work or to buy a house, but don’t know it’s only two years to vote,’ she said.
