A team of impartial international election observers is in the Isle of Man to monitor and report back on the polling process.
The mission is organised by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association British Islands and Mediterranean Region (CPA BIMR), and has come at the invitation of the Isle of Man Government.
Head of the mission is Deputy Chris Blin, from Guernsey.
He told Manx.News: “We are a little bit different in the sense that, although I am an elected politician in Guernsey and on our team we have experts from different countries and parliamentarians but the key is that we are independent of governments.
“We are here really to talk with the stakeholders, to observe and to do all the things necessary and to hear the views of the process of this election.
“”There is no political objective, it is not biased in any way. It is an independent view from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.”
Stakeholders
He added: “The stakeholders will include everyone, from the members standing, existing members. The stakeholders can also be from parliamentarians to the clerks to the lieutenant governor, to all parts of society.
“We have already attended one of the hustings yesterday. That was really fascinating to see the hustings in action.”
Blin continued: “There is a number of bodies and what we are here to do is to collate, collect information and then write a report, which is basically for the benefit of the Isle of Man.
“The report will go to the government here and, respectively, in other areas, like whether it has taken place in Jersey or in other jurisdictions, those reports are then given so that the government and in effect the members have the ability to look through it.”
Recommendations will be made
The report, which will be handed over after the election process, will include recommendations.
“Those recommendations are not mandatory, they are really to be considered if this will help,” he said.
There are three other parliamentarians forming part of the mission, Josephine Connolly and WIllin Belliard, from Turks and Caicos Islands and Leslie Bruzon from Gibraltar. In addition there are two election analysts from the CPA.
The election will be assessed against international standards and domestic laws. Anyone who wants to share their experience with the mission can do so via cpabimr@parliament.uk
A preliminary statement from the mission will be made in the week after the September 24 election, with a full report published later in the autumn.
You can hear more from Deputy Blin about the mission here:
All-island Voting
Guernsey switched from parish voting to all-island voting for its States’ Assembly five years ago and has just undergone its second election on that system.
Deputy Blin said of the island’s response to the change: “There are two sides to it. You have to be careful what you wish for. There are advantages and disadvantages.
“But from an island perspective, it has worked, there are still people involved who say maybe we preferred the old one but everything has to be given time and it will be given time and it will be a decision of the people if that want to revert it.”
He explained:
Manx.News has approached the government for a figure on how much the election monitoring process will cost.