East Wight Primary is a diverse group of volunteers who want for the Public to choose one Progressive candidate to stand against the Conservative candidate at the next General Election. Our voting system means that we have to be clever and vote together to ensure our voices are heard, and bring the change we so desperately need.
It is a locally democratic way to inform our tactical voting choice.
A series of public Q&A sessions will be held with Labour, Lib Dem and Green Parliamentary candidates in Town Halls and venues around East Wight, enabling residents to come and put their question forward to the candidates. People will vote individually on who they feel is best placed to oppose the Conservative candidate. Votes will be counted and the overall winner will be declared the Peoples Champion. This information will be broadcast widely, including on Tactical Voting websites.
Before the public Q&A sessions, we need to get the word out to the whole of East Wight. We aim to leaflet the whole East Wight area with information on the East Wight Primary process, and on how to register & ensuring the correct voting ID. We will be bringing the ‘Democracymeter’ to the streets to get the word out, as well as social media campaigns.
We want more people than ever to vote, as we face multiple crisis in our Public Services, Climate and Ecology. Many people feel so disempowered.
While the success of this campaign will depend on volunteer time, there will be costs including leaflets, other printed materials, web hosting costs, booking halls.
£10 will pay for 100 leaflets to be printed and delivered through letterboxes
£45 will pay for tech costs for 1 month
£60 will pay for the booking of a Q&A venue
£100 will pay for 15000 High Street Volunteer leaflets
£300 will pay for a 1 month advertising spot in local news media
Any contribution large or small would be greatly appreciated. As a non party organisation, regulated by the electoral commission, we can spend a maximum of £9,700. We would like to raise close to that to give our campaign the maximum chance of success
If you can’t contribute cash (and we know times are tight, which is in part why we are doing this) we have lots of roles for volunteering time and energy to this campaign. There will be volunteer training sessions in the coming weeks - please sign up at www.EastWightPrimary.org . We already have some enthusiastic volunteers ready to donate their time and we need more!
This Primaries model started with South Devon, and is being replicated all over the country where the Conservatives are expected to win on a minority of the vote. We are excited to be organising the Primary and the door is open to volunteers wanting to help, go to the EastWightPrimary.org website for the signup form and the important FAQs page .
I’m Julie, I’m a town councillor in Ventnor and have been an environmental campaigner for years. I’m helping to organise because I see that getting the locally decided right candidate elected is the first step in making the changes that this country so desperately needs now. My colleague Charity is also a campaigner. We feel we have to do this, and we need support to cover costs.
Our hope is that the East Wight Primary process will bring people together from different political groups, to unite around our shared values, and prove that when we work together, change can happen.
Please come and get involved and support us here if you can.