Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru	National Assembly for Wales
Y Pwyllgor Materion Cyfansoddiadol a Deddfwriaethol	Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee
Bil Senedd ac Etholiadau (Cymru)	Senedd and Elections (Wales) Bill
CLA(5) SE02
Ymateb gan unigolyn anhysbys	Evidence from anonymous individual

Franchise changes

I don’t understand why this splits the franchise between local government and Assembly elections. I think there are two problems with this:

1. It creates more work for electoral administrators. They’ll need a parliamentary list, local government list and now this weird different list of electors for Assembly elections. With resources tight, things could go wrong. This way of doing things is also untested in the UK- Scotland made franchise changes for LG / SParliament at the same time.

2. It confuses voters. A 16 year old could vote in the Assembly election in May 2021. That very same person would not be allowed to vote in a local gov by election that very same day or even within the following year. This is weird and could cause confusion / apathy. I understand another Bill will make changes for LG voters. But what if that Bill fails to pass? You’d have voters that are different between devolved elections. This seems odd.

Qualification

I note that the Welsh Gov intend to allow local government officers to run for local gov elections (pAra 6.7 omwards: https://beta.gov.wales/sites/default/files/consultations/2018-01/consultation_document-en_0.pdf#page25)

For the same reason as WG, I think this is a good idea. The WG are hinting that they’ll allow officers to run for office. But on election- they must choose to either be councillors or an officer. This seems like a fair balance.

I also think the Assembly should adopt this approach for civil servants. As I understand it, civil servants are banned from running to be AMs. Wales has a huge number of civil servants. Imagine Swansea and the DVLA - all prevented from being AMs because they are civil servants. Surely it’s fairer to allow civil servants to run for office but only for them to quit IF they are elected. Can this be added to the Bill?