How to be eligible to create a party
Anyone can start a party and run to be elected but there are some things you need to make sure apply to you. You have to pay a £500 deposit in order to prove that you are serious about wanting to try and apply for this. You also must be 21 or over. You must not be declared bankrupt. This is so we know you are mature and serious enough to do this. It filters out the people who want to joke around and the people who want to change the country for good
Advertisements
When you are allowed to run in the election you must raise awareness of your party. This will consist of:
Speeches - This will help get your ideas across to many people as you can play your speech on the radio, TV and even on the internet. Speeches are a quick and easy way to get your message spread as far as possible.
Handouts - leaflets and flyers are a cheap and easy way to get people to look at some information about your party.
Newspapers - putting your party in the paper will most likely reach an audience that are willing to read about what you stand for. This is better than the handouts as handouts may be thrown away or might not be read or understood as much. On the other hand newspaper advertisements are quite expensive to buy.
Social Networking - Running your ads on Facebook or Twitter will reach a lot of people as they are always getting a lot of traffic to those websites and these will have more chance to reach people.
This just gets the word out to people, help them get interested in who you are, what you stand for and what you can bring to the table.
Voting Process
People vote for the MP candidate and the party they belong too. Each party has its own election manifesto which is a list of things they promise to do if it gets into power. This does not mean that they will have to actually follow through with the promises but it does hurt them for when they want to get reelected. So when its time to vote, polling stations will be located in easy to access places like a school, church or a town hall.
They are also held there as people normally visit places like this a lot and its more convenient for them. In this country you do not need to vote but to vote you do need to be on the electoral register. This is a list of names of everyone who is allowed to vote. To get on this you need to be 18 or over.When all the requirements are satisfied you can now vote. You are given a ballot paper (voting slip). You take your slip into a booth and put a cross on the name you would like to vote for. This is the fairest way to decide on who will be in power.
This is the easiest and most fair way to decide who will become the next leader of the country.
Counting the votes
Once the voting process is over they are now ready to be taken and counted. Firstly they are separated into different sets of piles.
Spoilts votes - Votes in which do not fit they way that was suggested. E.g if you put two crosses or if you scribbled one and crossed another. Spoilt votes do not get counted but they also don’t get thrown away. One reason for this is there might be some countable votes that were misplaced
Countable votes - Votes that fit the guidelines. (One clear cross in the box provided thats next to candidate)
Then all the countable vote are given out to counters. They are counted by hand and not computer. This is to make sure that there is little compromise to the counting process due to how easily the computers could be hacked or tampered with.
Once they votes are counted and verified the winner is selected. The winning party is the party with the most MP’s. This party will go on the lead the county for the next 4 years when this process is repeated.
State Opening of Parliament - This is when all the votes have been counted. Now the new prime minister will be selected. Now we need to reopen the government. The Queen holds an event which has special meaning.
