FAQs

No. The winning candidate will stand for their own party as normal. Think of the primary as taking the guesswork out of tactical voting.

Absolutely! We expect losing candidates to remain on the ballot paper, but with clarity on who everyone is getting behind. It’s actually more democratic - because for the first time in generations, there’ll be a real chance of change!

Our First-Past-The-Post voting system discourages co-operation, and breeds tribalism, short-termism and complacency. The only other country in Europe that fully uses our system is Belarus, Russia's ally in Ukraine.

We are totally independent from all the political parties. Our costs are almost entirely time, and we all work as unpaid volunteers. This is a community-led, grassroots effort.

No. Our aim is to stop Michelle Donelan, the Conservative candidate, with whichever of the progressive candidates the majority of people attending the Town Hall Q&As and/or responding to our surveys think is best-placed to win the seat. The public will choose the candidate in a secret ballot, overseen by Primary officials.

An important feature of the Primary is that information supplied by the three progressive party candidates will be made public so that voters can assess their suitability to represent us.

Definitely not. It takes a lot to overturn a large Conservative majority, and the parties are starting work now.  Once the 'People's Champion' is chosen, you can pivot towards helping them. In the meantime, all three progressive parties are working with the very similar goal of shining a light on this Government's appalling track record.

Democracy is a continual process, and to work, it needs your help. Sign up using the link at the top of the page.

We are not asking any candidate to stand down if unsuccessful. Once we have a Melksham & Devizes Primary winner, the losing candidates will remain on the ballot paper. This is similar to what happened in the Tiverton & Honiton by-election where there was general acceptance that the Lib Dem was the best placed candidate, and in Wakefield where the Labour candidate was the clear choice.

By uniting behind a single candidate, the Conservative majority was overturned in Tiverton & Honiton and Wakefield.

We hear this from all sides every election time. Yet the Tory MP is still polling to win.

Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different result’.

We sincerely hope that this is the last election under the current FPTP system, but for now, the only way to avoid an unfair result is to choose a single opposition candidate in order to avoid the vote being split and handing victory to the Conservatives.

We are in touch with these organisations via https://themovementforward.com and will be keeping them updated on our progress. The Melksham & Devizes Primary is, in a way, like a highly informed tactical voting exercise. People will be voting tactically for the people's choice, but based on a far more comprehensive data set than used by these national sites. We have been informed that the tactical voting sites are very likely to use our results to produce their advice. So in short, we are confident we will be fully aligned.

We are in communication with the local opposition parties and locally, on the ground, they are aware of our aims - we have made it easy by not asking for any commitment from them. We are committed to proceeding with the Primary as a ground-up, voter-led initiative rather than something driven by the parties. There has been a huge level of interest so far, and the more people that get involved - there are noises off from party HQs that they do not want candidates to engage but we have had a huge level of interest in the constituency.

So we will still meet, carry out surveys and compare each party's statements, manifesto, promo materials and printed matter against the Q&As you - the voters - ask!

The Q&A sessions will take place as soon as practicable once all three candidates are in place - at the moment, we are thinking of September, but that may change if a General Election is announced.

The Primary process is designed to platform candidates from the Greens, Labour and the Lib Dems. In the rare case that an opposition independent candidate were to be a serious contender in the constituency, with a proven electoral track record, then we would consider platforming them if circumstances were right. We would have to be confident that any inclusion of an independent would not lead to further fragmentation of the progressive vote.

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