Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Harris and I'm the person who's going to be guiding you through today's session.

This lesson is called How Do Local Elections Work, and it comes from the unit entitled, how Does Local Democracy Work? By the end of today's lesson, we're going to be able to say, I can explain what elections are, why campaigns are important, and how local elections are conducted.

Some of this content you might have heard a little about and some might be more challenging.

That's okay because I'm here to guide you all the way through it and we're going to learn together.

Let's get started.

First of all, here are some key words that are going to come up during this lesson today.

I'm going to say the word and you are going to repeat it back to me.

Election.

Ward.

Candidate.

Campaign.

Manifesto.

Let's start with our first learning cycle then.

What are local elections? Local elections are a really important part of democracy, absolutely key because they provide residents, the people that live in a local area, the chance to choose who they want to represent their views on the local council.

It's really important that residents get a say in who runs their local council because the council has control and manages so many different things which have an impact on people's lives.

Let's have a look at some of these examples then provided by local councils.

You can pause the video for a few minutes if you like to read through these and then we'll come back and have a look.

That's a lot of services, isn't it? And this is just examples of services.

This isn't even all of the different things that local councils do.

Things like education in schools and planning, licencing for different things like entertainment or taxis.

They help people with housing and leisure centres, things like food licencing, making sure that places that sell food are safe and able to do so.

Also, things like cemeteries, so when people have died, councils take charge of things like cemeteries and burials.

They also have things to do with entertainment, so things like museums and theatres, and often they can be found right at the centre of lots of community events that go on as well.

Every large council area is divided into smaller areas called districts, and then these districts are divided again into smaller areas called wards, and in these wards you have certain counsellors and that ward is their responsibility.

That job position that the counsellor have, that's called having a seat in that ward.

Okay, so wards have seats and how many seats they have is how many counsellors they can have, and how many seats Ward does have is based basically on how many residents live there and the size of the area.

Now local elections, that process to choose the people who you want to be counsellor, that takes place regularly.

Now most elections will happen every year.

Some elections take place every two years, but elections must happen every four years.

Every counsellor who wins a seat, they're allowed to stay in that seat for four years.

Occasionally it might be slightly longer, but for most people it's four years, which means their seat isn't up for election every single year.

If a council ward area has four seats, it's very unusual if all four seats are elected in the same year, often they'll have three keep their role and one seat will be up for election that year, and then the following year a different seat will be up for election, which means three councillors stay the same each time and one is changing and that just helps the community have some familiarity.

They know who is in charge of their ward and who is there to support and help them rather than everybody changing all at the same time.

At the end of the four years that a counsellor has in their seat, they can choose to stand for election again or they can choose to stand down and no longer be a counsellor for that area.

A quick check for understanding then.

Which of these statements is true? A, elections take place every six years.

B, each councillor vacancy is called a seat.

Or C, all wards have the same number of councillors.

Which of these statements is true? I will give you a few seconds to think.

So the statement, which is true is B.

That's correct.

A council vacancy is called a seat and there's Lucas reminding us there.

Seats are held for four years.

Elections happen between every one to four years and not every seat will be available every year.

As we've already said then, local elections are really important because it's the way that local people choose who they want to represent their views, and when they have that counsellor, that counselor's job is to tell the leaders of the whole council what the people need in their ward in their smaller area.

If only a few people vote, then that means that counsellor has been chosen by not that many people in the ward, which means that what they're saying and who that person is might not be speaking for what lots of people want in that area.

So when more people vote, it does show, doesn't it that people really care about what happens in the area and who that person is that's going to be speaking for them.

It means the counselor's been chosen by more people, and so the counsellor is more likely to represent what the ward and that wider community needs because more people have been involved in that decision of picking that counsellor.

It's really important, isn't it, that people have that power to choose who they want their local counsellor to be.

If a local counsellor is doing a really good job, then voters might reelect them.

They might choose them again in four years time.

But if they're not doing what the community needs or they're not keeping their promises, voters can quite easily vote for somebody else in the next election.

It's what's called being accountable, isn't it? They have to be trusted and they have to follow through and take responsibility for their actions.

If you make a good decision, you can take responsibility for that and take the good consequences for that.

If you make some poor decisions or if you're a counsellor, you don't listen to the people in your ward, then there might be negative consequences for that and if you're a counsellor you might get voted out.

So this all really encourages counsellors to listen to the people in their ward and work really hard to improve things for them.

Can you fill in this missing word? So we've got a gap first, is when counsellors are held responsible for the decisions, policies, and management of the area.

What's the word? Take a few seconds to think and then we'll come back to it together.

What's that missing word then? It is accountability.

Yes, accountability is them taking responsibility for their actions and the decisions for what they do in the area.

Most counsellors in the UK belong to what we call a political party.

A political party is an organised group of people who all have similar ideas and beliefs and goals about how society should be run.

Councillors are often members of political parties because they support the ideas of that group, so they think, well, I think that too, and so they decide that's going to be the political party that they want to be a part of.

There are lots and lots of political parties.

Some of them might think completely different things from each other and other parties might have similar beliefs and similar goals, but different in other areas.

If you look at the political parties that elected counsellors in the UK at the moment, which ones they belong to, you'd find that these ones have the most amount of elected councillors.

So we have the Labour party, Conservative party, Liberal Democrats, Green party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein.

But Izzy's telling us here that some councillors are not members of political parties.

They're actually independent.

True or false? To be a counsellor, you must belong to a political party.

Is that true or false? Take a few seconds to think.

Is it true or false? Let's check.

It is false.

No, you do not need to belong to a political party and why? Because some counsellors can be independent.

Task A then you are going to write one paragraph about why local elections are important.

You might like to mention how elections affect people's lives and the communities that they live in.

You might like to mention why it's important that people vote.

Why is it important that lots of people vote rather than a small amount of people who vote? And you might also like to talk about the accountability and the responsibility of those who are elected who then become those counsellors.

So write me a paragraph about why local elections are important.

Pause the video, give yourself the time to do it and then we'll go through some possible answers together.

Okay, now this is my answer, so yours won't be exactly the same, but let's see if we've got anything similar in there.

Local elections are important because they help decide who makes the rules and plans for communities.

The counsellors that are chosen can affect things like schools, parks and public safety.

When lots of people vote, it shows that the community cares about who gets elected, which helps ensure that leaders listen to everyone's needs.

When someone is elected, they have to be responsible for their decisions.

Voters can hold them accountable in the next election and vote them out.

This way the community can make sure its leaders are really working for them.

Yeah, so did you get the three main things there? It's about giving residents the choice of who they want to be a leader.

It's about making sure that residents voices are heard and it's also about holding counsellors responsible and accountable for the decisions that they make for the community.

Really well done on that.

fantastic job.

Let's move on to learning cycle two then.

How do candidates gain support? When a person decides that they want to be a counsellor, they become what's called a candidate.

Now a candidate must be 18 or over.

They must be a British or commonwealth citizen and they must have lived or worked in the area that they want to be a counsellor in for at least the last 12 months.

If you've got somebody who lives in Cardiff, they cannot be a counsellor for an area in Fife in Scotland, okay? So they have to live or work in the area that they want to be a counsellor.

Now, when it comes to being a candidate, it's very very unlikely that there is only one candidate for a seat within an ward.

There'll be lots of different candidates, and so to become a counsellor you have to get support, don't you? You have to get people to vote for you.

So how does a candidate even begin to do that? So they have to build support for themselves in order to get people to vote for them, and that's what we call a campaign.

Campaign is when candidates put together a plan of action to basically tell people in the area why are they a good person to speak and to represent the people who live there.

Sophia says, think about it a little bit like sport.

So it's a bit like picking a team captain.

Each candidate wants to show the rest of the team that's a local area, why they would be a great leader for that area.

Lucas is telling us that a campaign gives the candidate a chance to talk about their ideas and their plans and then make those connections with the voters and they hope that this might get people to vote for them.

If you feel like you can talk to the person who wants to be a candidate, if you feel like they're listening to you, you are more likely to vote for them, aren't you? Fill in the missing word for me then.

A person who decides to run for a position as a counsellor is called a what? Take a few seconds to think about it.

A person who decides to run for a position as a counsellor is called a candidate.

That's right, well done.

So you've got somebody who's a candidate.

Now they have two different options.

They can choose to stand as a member of a political party or they can choose to stand as an independent candidate.

That means they are not part of a political party, but this means the way that they choose to stand, either as a member of a party or not.

This might influence and change what their campaign might be like.

If a candidate is a member of a political party, then that party actually has to agree to them standing for election.

They have to give their approval and say, "Yes, you are a fantastic person to go for this council role." If there's more than one candidate in that political party that want to go for the same seat party then has to decide which candidate they think has got most chance of winning that seat.

So they have to think about the good things about this person and the good things about this person and which person might get the most votes.

There are some really positive reasons to be a political party candidate.

You'll get a lot of advice and support so you're not on your own.

You'll have this team behind you and that's really helpful when it comes to campaigning and trying to persuade people in the area to vote for you.

You'll get financial support.

Now things like handing out leaflets and signs and posters and having events that all costs money and if you are part of a political party, you will have money support to be able to do that.

It can also change how voters are as well.

So lots of people will vote for a particular party and it doesn't really matter who the candidate is, they just want to vote for that party.

So for example, if the party was the Green party, some people will vote for the Green party no matter who the candidate is because they want the Green party.

So sometimes that can really help a candidate get more votes.

It can sometimes make a candidate look more trustworthy as well because if important people in that political party are supporting that candidate, that sometimes makes people think, "Oh, well if if they think they're a good person, if they want them to be in the area, then maybe I should vote for them." there might also be negative reasons to being a political party candidate.

One of those is you have to keep in line.

In other words, there might be some policies or beliefs or ideas that you might not actually really believe in, but or ideas that you might not actually really believe in, but because it's part of that political party you will have to abide by that and you will have to have that within your policies.

It might affect voters' thoughts about who to vote for.

So just as I've said, it's a positive reason sometimes to be part of a party because people want to vote for say, Labour or Conservatives or the Green party.

Sometimes it can have the opposite effect where some people don't like a political party and it doesn't matter how good candidate is, they don't want that party in their area.

Sometimes people can feel that they're being pushed around a little bit, so they want to do something for their area, they've got ideas for that area or they might feel like they have to put the political party first.

Which of these then are positive reasons to be a political party candidate? Let's have a look.

Is it for advice and support? Is it because they have to keep in line? Is it financial support or is it party over people? Which of these are positive reasons to be a political party candidate? Take a few seconds to think about it and we'll go through the answer together.

Let's have a look then these are A and C.

That's right.

And Lucas is there telling us that keeping in line and party over people might bring some challenges like for example, going with policies or ideas you don't fully agree with or putting the needs of the political party before the needs of the area.

Let's look at the other type of candidate then.

If they're independent, so not part of a political party, they're going to have to fund their own campaign.

They're going to have to pay for it themselves and they're going to have to find a team to help them as well.

Now often local businesses and local people who live in that ward, if they really believe in an independent candidate and really believe that they are the best thing for their area, they might sponsor them and give them funding and give them practical help when it comes to their campaign.

Because they don't have that political party support, an independent candidate, their campaign might be quite a bit more challenging than somebody who is in a political party.

They might get less attention, so because they might have less money to spend on signs and leaflets, they might not be able to afford to put on events.

That might mean people in the ward don't know about that candidate as much as somebody who is in a bigger party.

With advertising, do you remember the list of the political parties I gave you? Well, all of those have got logos and most people in the UK will recognise the political party by their logo and so they're very aware of what that means.

But independent candidates, they don't have a logo, they don't have that to help and certainly not something that everybody in the area would know about.

For some people it might bring up some trust issues.

They might think if that independent candidate is not part of a team, why? Is it because they can't be trusted? Is it because they don't get on with people? Why are they doing it on their own? Now that's not the case.

An independent candidate might be perfectly trustworthy.

They might get less support as well.

So instead of having a large team around them, they might have fewer volunteers to help run their campaigns, which means they're not getting seen by as many people in the ward as maybe they want to be.

Do you remember how I said some people always vote for a political party and some people never vote for a political party.

So sometimes that means independents have to work so much harder to prove actually what they want to do, what their ideas are are just as good, they just happen to not be part of a political party.

Some voters, however, see independent candidates as the best option.

Lucas says they don't have to follow a party's policies.

They can choose what they think is best for the ward.

Sophia says they might see independence as more personal and connected to the area rather than joined to a party.

So that's a little bit like the opposite of the party before people.

It's the people first because there is no party to worry about.

Izzy says that independent candidates are not going to be influenced by people quite in the same way that somebody in a political party might.

So in other words, they can make up their own mind about things.

Fill in this missing word then.

An independent candidates campaign may be more hmm than a political party member's campaign.

What's that missing word there? Take a few seconds to think and we'll do it together.

An independent candidate's campaign may be more challenging than a political party member's campaign.

That's right, it might be because they don't always have that big party, that big team support behind them.

Well done if you got that.

So we've talked about campaigning then and it's when a candidate is trying to persuade people in their area why they would be the best person to represent their views.

Now how they do that is done in quite a lot of different ways actually.

One of these ways is called canvassing.

Now this is when candidates or the people within their team, they go door to door and street to street to meet people in their homes.

Sometimes it's a really nice thing for people to have a candidate.

They're asking them and saying, "I'm here at your home, tell me what's important to you".

And it's a really good way of making connections with local people.

Another way is in public meetings.

So a candidate might go to events or host events.

That means being in charge of an event where people can go and actually ask questions and discuss the local issues and then they can be really there around people finding out what's important.

Things like flyers, leaflets, posters, they're all really helpful.

You can put them through doors, you can put them up in cafes or on streets or in supermarkets and then people get really familiar and start to recognise the candidate's name, maybe their logo, maybe their policies, and if they recognise that candidate's name, maybe they're more likely to vote for them.

Social media is a really good way of connecting with local voters.

It's very fast, it doesn't cost a lot of money and it can be accessed around the whole world.

So even if a person is on holiday, the candidate's posts might come up on their phone.

It's a really quick and easy way to make connections with voters and to communicate with them about what a candidate's policies and ideas are and sometimes they can even do it in really funny ways to really grab attention.

Community events are really important.

If a candidate shows up to a community event, it shows that they are part of that community, they're part of that group of people.

Debates are also a really good way of doing it because you can have one candidate versus another candidate and people can sit and listen to their ideas.

Online campaigns can be really helpful as well.

So I'm not just talking about social media here, but things like actually having a website or blogs or vlogs which give a bit more detailed information for the voters.

They might include things like their goals, their policies, how they plan to help the community, and that really helps voters make that decision about who they want to be their representative.

True or false, then.

It is important for candidates to connect with local residents.

I'll give you a few seconds.

The answer is true.

Of course it is.

People are very unlikely to vote for a candidate if they do not feel any connection to them.

They don't feel like they've been listened to or they don't like their policies and here we're reminded of that.

I'll give you a few seconds to read through this explanation.

So as we've just said, then it's really important that a candidate connects with the voters that need to build trust, build up that public support so that they can win the votes.

Now Lucas here is telling us about one of his local candidates.

He says, "My local candidate is already well known in the ward.

He started a project where older people are matched with a friend in the community.

He also arranges litter picks and spends time maintaining flowerbeds in the town." It sounds to me like the candidate in Lucas's ward is already really well connected to that local area.

Sophia says, "My local candidate listens to people in the ward.

She came to our house to ask us what we think our area needs.

She was really interested in my ideas about having a place for teenagers to go and be with friends somewhere indoors and safe." It seems to me here that Sophia has got a really positive impression already of the candidate for her area and that she would listen to what Sophia thinks is important.

Izzy, however, has a slightly different story.

She says, "My local candidate isn't great.

My dad spoke to him when he was campaigning at the market and he didn't have any ideas about what our ward needs.

Also, my dad didn't feel like the candidate had listened to him at all." That's not the way to build up support is it? Do you think Izzy's dad's going to vote for that candidate? I would think that's very unlikely if they haven't felt listened to and that they don't really have ideas about what the area needs.

That's the complete opposite of what a candidate should be doing.

I'm going to show you four options now and you are going to decide which of these are unhelpful for a candidate when they're campaigning.

Take some time to think and we'll go through the answers together.

So the unhelpful thing for a candidate when the campaigning would be to not have clear policies.

Izzy is telling us here, it's important that candidates decide on their ideas and policies before they are elected because this is a way that people decide who to vote for.

She's absolutely right.

If you don't know what your local candidate wants to do, how can you vote for them? Task B, you are going to match the campaign method to its purpose.

So the reason for it, what is it? So we have canvassing, debates, flyers and posters and social media.

Four lines between the campaign method to the purpose.

Pause the video now to give yourself a time to do it and then we'll go through the answers together.

Let's check those answers then.

Here we go.

So canvassing is to meet voters at their door, face-to-face and it's to build trust and confidence.

Debates are to compare their plans for the community with other candidates views.

Flyers and posters are to explain a candidate's policies and promote their upcoming events.

And social media is to share information with many people extremely quickly and sometimes in funny ways.

Did you get those answers? If you did, really well done.

You are working extremely hard today.

Part two of this then is to write a list explaining why attending community events is an important campaigning method.

For example, Lucas says, "My local candidate helps out our town events and has done for years.

For example, we have a summer fair every year and she's always there running stalls or taking part in silly competitions.

I feel like she's really interested in what goes on and she seems to know loads of people too." So your task then is to write a list explaining why attending community events is an important campaigning method.

Pause the video to give yourself the time and then we'll go through some possible answers.

Let's go through some possible answers then.

Your answer might have included this.

It's important for candidates to attend community events because it shows that the candidate is part of the same community, that the candidate is interested in what is going on.

That they support the local area and local businesses.

That the candidate is just like the other residents because they're there too.

That they know the local issues and what people in the ward want.

And it also might be voters feel more likely to vote for the candidate if they see them attending and participating.

Did you get any of those? Really, really well thought out there.

Great job.

Our third learning cycle then is called, How do local elections take place? In the UK the voting system is called first-past-the-post.

In other words, it's a little bit like a race.

Whoever gets there first is the winner.

The first-past-the-post system is also called a plurality or winner takes all voting system.

It's a really easy system for voters to understand and it does make it really easy to figure out who's one.

Basically voters will put an X next to the name of the person that they want to be the counsellor, and then all those bits of paper are taken in and the person who has the most Xs, they win the seat in the ward.

It's that simple.

A quick check for understanding then.

So the two other ways of describing the first-pass-the-post system are, is it plurality, majority or winner takes all? Take a few seconds and we'll go through it together.

Alright, the two of the ways are plurality and winner takes all, that's correct.

I'm going to take you through an example of a local council election.

Have a look at the table.

Who if we're using the first-pass-the-post system, who won that election? You can tell me or you can tell somebody around you.

Who won? Yes, candidate one.

How many votes did they get? 2000 votes.

That's right.

And Sophia tells us that.

She says "Candidate won won with the most votes." However, and it's a big however, however, 2,750 people voted for people who were not candidate one, which means the winner does not have what we call the majority vote.

So whilst they got the most votes for themselves, if you add up all the other candidates, more people didn't vote for them than did vote for them.

Laura gives us a bit more detail about this.

She says "More people voted for other candidates, but candidate one won.

People voted for policies that were not the elected councilor's policies.

So they wanted something that was different from what candidate one was offering.

Andeep says "This might suggest that more people in the area want different changes than those that have been proposed and given by the elected candidate." And this here is a reason why some people believe that that first-pass-the-post system isn't actually fair.

True or false? The first-pass-the-post voting system means that the person who wins may not have the majority of votes.

Is that true or false? Take the time to go through and we'll check the answer together.

All right.

Is that true or false? It is true, yes.

So just as we've demonstrated with that example election, 2000 people voted for candidate one, 2,750 people voted not for candidate one and why? Let's take a look at this.

Whoever gets the most votes wins, but they may not have the majority of votes.

This means that more people may have voted for policies that were different from the policies of the candidate who won.

Let's go through then how a local election actually takes place.

Now across the whole of the UK it's pretty much the same way.

We have step one, step two, step three, step four, step five, and the final step six.

So step one.

The person decides that they want to be a counsellor, so they put their name forward to the political party if they're a member of the political party and they may be chosen as the one to be the candidate.

Remember, others might not be a member of a political party, they might be independent.

Now often candidates you'll find that they have done years and years of work in the local community and it means that a lot of them will already know a lot about the local issues and what the area and what the people need.

Once they're selected, once they are now officially a candidate, they need to have a manifesto.

The manifesto is basically a pledge to say, this is what I want to do, this is what I believe, this is how I can improve the area, and having that manifesto will persuade people to vote for them if they decide that is what they want as well.

Step three then election campaigning finally begins, including canvassing, debates, attending community events, flyers, social media, and all kinds of different ways of making that connection with the voters.

Can you now then put these first three steps in the order that they happen in the election process? So we've got three pictures to represent the three steps.

What order are they happening? A is about campaigning, B is about the candidate being selected and C is about finalising the manifesto.

Put those in the correct order and then we'll check it together.

Here are the answers then.

Yeah, B comes first.

The candidate is selected followed by C.

They have to finalise their manifesto, finalise their ideas and what they want to do.

And then number three is the campaigning begins.

Let's move on.

Step four, polling day is the big day.

This is the election day and this is when the residents get to go and actually vote for the person that they want to be at their local counsellor.

Voting is done by secret ballots.

In other words, nobody needs to know who you voted for.

The places that people go to do their voting, they're called polling stations and they're often community buildings.

So often school halls are used, church halls are used in other community buildings nice and close so that it's easy for residents to get there.

And these open at seven in the morning and they close at 10 at night, so they're open for a lot of hours in the day to hopefully get as many people as they can to vote.

Some people actually choose to vote by post and it'll get sent to their house and they post it back.

But the key thing here is you can only vote if you are registered to vote.

So it doesn't matter if you are 18 plus, doesn't matter if you live in that local area, if you haven't registered to vote, you can't have a vote on that day.

Step five, so it's 10:00 PM voting is closed.

The hundreds of boxes for each council area are collected in and they're taken to a very large community space.

Often things like a big sports hall and sometimes even massive venues like for example, the Leeds's First Direct Arena.

The candidates then and their supporters, they get to stand around and watch the people who are counting and there's a very strict process in place.

When a person is counting, they're not allowed to have their phone on them, they're not allowed to have their bag nearby and they have to be fully in view of anybody who wants to watch them so that votes aren't getting knocked on the floor and ignored or some are just left to the side.

It's all very open and transparent and fair.

There's also people in charge of the people who are counting and if the amount of counts they have doesn't match the amount of votes they thought they had, they have to start right back at the beginning again and we're talking hundreds and hundreds of votes every single ward.

Sometimes people can be counting to four o'clock and five o'clock in the morning.

When all the counting has been checked, when they've seen how many pieces of paper they have and how many votes they expect to have, and it's all been checked and checked and double checked again, the returning officer is the person who then declares the winner and that winner then officially becomes the new local counsellor.

Put these last three steps in the order that they happen in the election process again then? So this time you're going to start with step four.

So you are going to put steps four, five, and six into the correct order.

A is showing voting beginning, B is showing the winner is declared, and C is showing the count takes place.

Which order do these happen? Take a few seconds to do this and then we'll go through the answer.

Okay, let's see the answer then.

So step four is voting begins, isn't it? Yeah.

Step five is the count then takes place, and when the count is finished, finally the winner is declared.

If you got those, really well done.

Task C, then this is your final task for this session and what you are going to do is complete a storyboard.

You can see here on the table in front of you, there are six steps.

For each of those steps you are going to write a short summary and then for each of those steps you are going to illustrate, you're going to do a picture to show each part of the election process as well.

Pause the video to give yourself the time to do it and then we'll have a look at what your answer may have been.

How did you find that? Is that okay? I bet you were fantastic at it.

Let's see then.

This is mine then this is what my answer looked like and yours might have looked something like this.

Did you get those main six steps? If you did, really well done.

You have worked incredibly hard on that.

Really great.

Let's summarise our lesson then, which has been called How Do Local Elections Work? A political party is an organised group of people who often share the same similar beliefs and goals and ideas about how they would like society to be run.

Candidates for the local elections, they could choose to belong to a political party or they may choose not to be a part of a political party and be independent.

The election then is that formal process of choosing the councillor of the district or the ward.

And if they win, it's called winning the seat, isn't it? Once they're a candidate, then they have to organise their policies and ideas into a manifesto, and this is what tells people in the local area what the ideas are.

People will choose to vote for whose ideas they want to see put into action.

Candidates then have to campaign to try and engage with and make connections with the people who live in the area, and that's to try and persuade them to pick them to be their counsellor.

This might have things like leafleting, canvassing, taking part in debates.

I think you've worked incredibly hard on that today.

There was a lot of information there and if you've taken that in and you've understood that, amazing.

Well done.

I am really proud of you today.

Hopefully I'll see you again soon.