Have you (and your members) had their Euro ballot papers yet?

Perhaps it’s the increasing freedom for people to use social media during Liberal Democrat selection contests. Perhaps it’s the increasing proportion of party activists who take part in online discussions. Or perhaps it’s hiccups with the Royal Mail, party data or others involved. Whatever the cause, as with the party’s recent federal committee elections there seems to be more chatter about people not receiving ballot papers for the current European Parliament election selections than in previous contests.

Whether it’s a greater awareness of hiccups or whether there genuinely are more issues than in the past will be something that it is important to examine properly in due course (and kudos to Party President Tim Farron for responding so positively to the issues raised on social media during the committee contests).

In the meantime, an all-postal ballot of party members is currently underway to select Euro candidates in England. So if you’ve got your ballot paper and not yet posted it back, remember to do so.

The original deadline for returning ballots was Wednesday 28 November. However, a problem which resulted in around 550 party members being missed out by mistake from the original ballot mailings has been identified and ballot papers have been posted out to them by first class post earlier in the week (along with first class freepost return envelopes).

In addition, the return deadline for all ballots has been extended to noon, Friday 30 November.

If, even after those replacements, you are entitled to vote and haven’t yet received your ballot paper (or are not sure if you should have), contact returning.officer@libdems.org.uk ASAP so that any necessary replacements can be issued.

And whether or not you have got your own ballot paper, if you are involved in local communications (e.g. you run your local party’s email list for members or you are the local council group secretary), why not pass this information on to other members too? If there are people who haven’t received ballot papers as yet but should have, it may just be that if you don’t tell them, no-one will.

UPDATE: A couple of further pieces of information. The Euro selections are a ballot of party members who have had continuous membership for more than a year. If you have asked for a replacement already then that request will have been dealt with and the replacement is on its way to you.