Local election
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Local elections, vary widely across jurisdictions. In electoral system that roughly follow the Westminster model, a terminology has evolved with roles such as Mayor or Warden to describe the executive of a city, town or region, although the actual means of elections vary. Political careers are often made at the local level: Boris Yeltsin, for instance, as the top official in Moscow, was able to prove his effectiveness and eventually take the job of President of Russia after the collapse of the USSR. When he fought his first contested local election, he demonstrated a willingness to put his policies to the ballot.
Municipal elections-elections for a city or town- are virtually always local by design.
Contents
Local elections by area
Europe
Adopted by the Congress of the Council of Europe, The European Charter of Local Self-Government aims to establish basic European rules in order to measure and safeguard the rights of local authorities. The Charter commits the parties to applying basic rules guaranteeing the political, administrative and financial independence of local authorities. The Congress conducts two main activities so as to evaluate the Charter's implementation: local and regional election monitoring and observation. The Congress regularly observes local and/or regional elections in member and applicant countries, which allows to monitore progress towards and the state of local and regional democracy in the countries concerned. With regards to its monitoring mission, the Congress prepares monitoring reports.
Middle East
In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, local elections have proven to be easier to achieve than larger scale ones that affect the national or federal government. By giving voice to people on the smaller scales of government, over such issues as water supply, power, and sewer systems, confidence is thought to be built to eventually reform higher levels of government.
In more mature developed nations there is always an effort to get more information about candidates and options to people, and to keep the influence of larger national bodies like a political party to a minimum, as its ideological agenda is not typically that of any locality:
New Zealand
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Local elections are held every three years to elect local government politicians for the two tiers of local government in New Zealand.
United Kingdom
In the UK the term local elections refers to county, unitary authority, borough, district, city, town and parish elections. These take place on the first Thursday of May every year. Councillors generally sit for five years. The number of independent (non-party) Councillors has declined over the past forty years - nowadays the overwhelming majority of local Councillors belong to one of the major parties.
United States
In the U.S. there is more focus on electoral reform, including a call for instant-runoff voting to be used to select all major executives. This is thought to make it possible for small parties to compete, as in the case of Matt Gonzalez in San Francisco, California. Such a ballot reform is often a complement to moving towards a “strong mayor” system, such as in Baltimore, Maryland or as recently advocated in Oakland, California.
Residents of Takoma Park, Maryland can vote in municipal elections when they turn sixteen - the first in the United States. [1]
See also
References
External links
- Electing Local Authorities - article from the ACE Project
- Direct Local Democracy in Switzerland - article from the ACE Project
- "Democracy at the local Level" an overview from *International IDEA
- A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825
- Congress of the Council of Europe
- Explanatory report of the European Charter of Local Self-Government
