We just had a by-election (or, as SHG often charmingly puts it , a"bye-election" - goodbye!)
Once again some candidates put themselves forward even though the result shows there was almost no realistic possibility of them getting elected. Does this matter? In a true democracy isn't anybody that is qualified entitled to put themselves forward?
Except that there is a cost to them doing so, not all of it borne by the candidates. For two examples there is the work registering the candidates and checking their qualifications and also the space allocated to them in newspapers and on the radio.
The only barrier at present is that you need a proposer, a seconder and ten other supporters - this amounts to 0.6% of the electorate. And at the recent by-election some candidates got very few more votes than this threshold: 34 (less than three times the minimum), 30 & 17 (only 4 more than the minimum). Surely there should be some mechanism to prevent people from standing if they are only going to get so few votes?
In the UK you make a deposit; a sum of money you put up and if you get fewer than 5% of the votes cast you lose this. In the UK the sum is £500, designed not to be too high (which would hinder democracy) but also not an insignificant amount to stake. As St Helena incomes are about a quarter of the equivalent UK salaries, how about a deposit of £100?
£100 should not be enough to put off genuine candidates (and anyway, if they get 5% or more of the votes they get it back). But it might be enough to give pause to people who really have no hope of actually being elected.
In yesterday's by-election three of the five candidates would have lost their deposit, which might have deterred them from standing, making the election simpler and less expensive to run.
Worth discussing?
PS: while we're talking electoral reform, two weeks was not enough time for an effective campaign. It should be always at least a month.
