Er why are the local Lib Dems stuffing an application form for a postal vote through my letterbox at the same time that they are delivering their Standpoint Newletter...? I'm all in favour of encouraging people to vote, but if unsolicited postal vote application forms are to be stuffed through letterboxes, shouldn't it be the job of the Electoral Registration Dept at Eastleigh Borough Council to do so...? It just doesn't seem right that the Lib Dems or any other political party should use this trick to try to win votes by linking the postal vote to their campaign material...

I'm not sure that any of the local lib dems come here much now, but I would guess that it was a case of mistaken letterbox identity. It's not unknown for electors to contact a party for this sort of thing rather than the council. If the address was taken down wrongly or not passed on properly to the deliverer, you may have ended up with a form intended for a lib dem supporting neighbour.

The application form is freely available to download from the council web site, so it would seem to be a waste of paper and money to deliver one to every household. As far as I can see it does not contravene the electoral commission guidelines (http://tinyurl.com/4cgs6tt) for a representative of a party to deliver an application form. There are very strict rules about the postal vote form itself (and quite rightly).

I withdraw my speculation then. Shows how out of the loop a chap can get in less than a month!

I agree with you about the experience of voting in person if it's at all possible.

Would you like me to take it up with the Council? If yes, email me at hedgeendblogger@gmail.com.

I've just retrieved the covering letter from my wheelie bin (n.b. The campaign material can stay there..!). I've scanned the covering letter, but haven't been able to upload it to HedgeEnd People, for technical reasons. I'll therefore email it to you Keith and I'll probably write something on my blog about it later. My first impressions still stand. The covering letter is unambiguously linking a postal vote with the Lib Dems. I reckon the whole business is wrong and symptomatic of what is wrong with the Lib Dems locally. They've got far too much of a stranglehold on local politics and seem able to to do whatever they jolly well like. As I said earlier, if this postal vote form had dropped through my letterbox in an unpoliticised form, I wouldn't have had such a problem with it. I still wouldn't have appreciated the suggestion that I should have a postal vote, but I wouldn't be so outraged at the blatent attempt to win votes by doing so...!

Its high time we broke the LIb Dems stranglehold on local politics...

Well chaps I just have to have my say on this one, you are not alone TGR to have received the postal vote form already pre-printed with your details on it, and whilst it may not contravene the guidelines, it most certainly sails very close to the wind, I think you have shown TGR the true colors of the Lib Dem's. I wonder how many people will fall foul of it. On a different subject, I was out delivering my campaign leaflets yesterday evening when I happened to bump into Keith House, he did not know me and thought I was just a conservative helper delivering leaflets, he asked me for one of them and looked quite put out when I said no, and even more so when he then tried to bribe me by offering me one of his in a swap, again I said no, unbelievable I know, but very true!!!! I'm still laughing about it.

Reading Keith Day reply here is sounding more and more to me like someone who has either beeen found out and doesn't like it or someone who has no idea what his party is doing. He suddenly brought the council into it offering to speak to them about it, it wasn't the council it was the lib dem party that's who he should be taking it up with. Why can't we fight a campaign on what we're going to do for our community and not run other party's down. Am I alone in this

I'm happy to confirm that Keith left the Lib Dems well before we started this conversation. I appreciate his interest/involvement. Thanks Keith.

I agree with Colin Atters though, that I prefer to see campaigns fought on the issues rather than kicking the other parties. For the record, I'm not currently a member or an active supporter of any party, but I really don't like the stranglehold that Lib Dems currently have on the Borough and locally in Hedge End. I think that's almost as unhealthy as the autocratic regimes currently being overthrown in the middle East...!