News / Politics
Bristol mayor: ‘We want local elections to go ahead in May’
Marvin Rees says the pandemic has highlighted a lack of resilience in our democratic systems amid speculation over whether local elections will go ahead in May.
The date for Bristol voters to go to the polls to have their say on councillors and the mayoral position has already been postponed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Council leaders across the country are calling on the government to provide urgent clarity on whether the local elections on May 6 will go ahead as planned.
is needed now More than ever
Bristol’s mayor says he has heard nothing concrete from Westminster, but he wants to see the elections go ahead in a Covid-safe manner.
“We have nothing from government about what they intend to do about summer elections,” said Rees, speaking during a press briefing on Wednesday.
“At a webinar involving national government yesterday, there were a couple of ministers who were really at pains to say the elections would go ahead. I know there are some rumours flying around now but all indications are that they will go ahead.
“And we need them to go ahead and they need to go ahead in a safe way and they need to be quality elections.”
He continued: “I would say there is a broader question that comes up as Covid has tested all our systems – we need to build more resilience into the entire democratic process. We should be using online methods of voting too.
“We can get a passport, do our cars, do our banking [online] and we should have been building then into our everyday life by now anyway just to build more resilience into that system.”
People in Bristol are due to go to the polls in May to vote on council and mayoral elections, as well as the police and crime commissioner for Avon and Somerset and head of the West of England Combined Authority (WECA).
Following speculation local elections could be postponed due to concern about the new variant of Covid-19, Mhairi Threlfall, a Labour councillor for Eastville, took to Twitter, saying: “This is unacceptable. Elections have already been delayed by a year and some wards already have less effective representation as a result. It’s not OK. They just had an election in the US, we can manage it here. Why not give everyone a postal vote?”
But concerns have been raised from some commenters about campaigners taking to the streets and the lack of online voting in England.
David Williams, chairman of the County Councils Network, has urged the government to provide urgent clarity and a swift decision as soon as possible on whether the local elections due to take place around the country will go ahead as scheduled.
Rees said that, in the meantime, he won’t speculate or outline contingency plans if the elections are postponed again.
“We want the elections to go ahead, they are really important,” said the mayor. “We want them to be done in a safe way, but we have no inside line about what government is doing other than the assurances of ministers that they are going to go ahead. I’m not going to throw speculation out now. We’ve seen that you can have assurances on one day and those assurances then get overrun by decisions the following day.”
He said Bristol City Council is working with community development workers and city partners to make sure people are registered to vote so they can have their democratic say and are aware of all available voting options, and ensuring polling stations are Covid-safe.
Main photo by Martin Booth
Read more: Bristol ‘at most critical point yet’ in fight to tackle Covid
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
