It’s election time in the Falklands, where every four years we choose eight members of the Islands’ legislative assembly. They say you don’t want to know how laws or sausages are made. But the way such a far-flung and tiny parliament is put together is actually pretty interesting.
In the Falklands there are only two constituencies. Stanley has five seats, with 15 candidates this year and 1,590 registered voters. ‘Camp’ (the rest of the Falklands, including any ‘outer’ islands big enough to have human inhabitants) has three seats and only four candidates, with 239 registered voters.
Camp voting is achieved by the rather charming solution of the polling booth coming to you
Voting in Stanley is simple: you go to the town hall (or theatre, court and post office) and fill in your paperwork on polling day. Postal votes and proxy voting are available Islands-wide, but otherwise Camp voting is achieved by the rather charming solution of the polling booth coming to you. There are incredibly few people available to help run the election, and so getting ballots in from Camp requires a whole day’s head start. Four teams went out yesterday, covering all the major settlements of both main islands.
With permission from the Registrar General and the Returning Officer, I hit the road at 8 a.m. with team two – made up of Roxi (who works in the Attorney General’s office), Megan (HR) and Vasil, a Swedish election observer – to tackle the northern coastline of East Falkland, an unsurfaced length of ringroad known colloquially as ‘the M25’.
The list of registered voters for this beat covered at best one side of A4. Polling place one was Riverview Farm. Stacey and Darren came out to join us on the road, had their credentials checked (‘Are you Stacey and Darren?’) and the rules explained. They then leaned in through the door of the shiny black government Musso SUV, and voted in a four-sided little wooden box perched on the back seat. Then we waited for the remainder of the allotted ten minutes in case any other voters came driving past.
When this was done on we drove, in increasingly brutal sunshine, past twinkling peaty streams, lolloping hares and soaring turkey vultures.
We had to pause at Hope Cottage as we’d interrupted some poor child’s telephone school lesson, and because many of the settlement’s inhabitants were away shearing at Port Salvador, and thought that we’d be going there. To pass the time, Vasil took photos of a cow’s skull and ram’s horns on the gate – and watched, bemused, as I applied factor 50 suncream, then, two minutes later, donned a goose down jacket.
By Little Creek the road dust was getting more than a little chewy, and I was gagging for a coffee. There is, unfortunately, no Costa on the Falklands M25. But I did get to play with another voter’s enthusiastic dogs for 20 minutes while she went to find her neighbours.
Stop five was New House, where Stacey and Jeremy brought out their one-year-old to induct into the democratic rites. This was also the only time I saw a proxy vote, conducted with full formalities. The voter stepped back from the ‘booth’, went back round to the bonnet, received a fresh slip, and then returned as though an altogether different person. By the time we got to Moss Side junction, there was a massed rally of five vehicles, their owners sitting about on the grass as though they were about to have a picnic.
San Carlos was our last stop, where we notched up our first quad bike (commuting 70m from his front door) and my boss’s parents. Five hours on the road: job done. Although we were now on the wrong side of the island.
Arriving back in town, I found an e-mail on my phone which revealed that this year, Camp inhabitants are not the only ones voting 24 hours early. Thanks to a rejigged cruise-ship itinerary, many Stanley-based voters were suddenly panicking as they’d have to be out driving tourists around today, so were allowed to vote earlier than usual (the Islands can be quite nimble when they want to be).
Otherwise, voting is going ahead as ‘normal’ at Fox Bay and Goose Green, as well as for everyone in town who isn’ttourist-driving. And then this evening (at 10 p.m. GMT) the grand unboxing starts in Stanley Town Hall, complete with live broadcast on Falklands Radio. Do tune in, if I’ve piqued your curiosity.
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