What’s SOS doing raising issues about the VEC? The VEC is responsible for both State and Local elections, and it’s conduct and support (or in some cases, lack of support) for open democracy directly impacts many issues to do with the politics of planning.
In particular, if they
- refuse to provide contact details for candidates that can actually be used to contact candidates.
- Won’t allow open access to election data, so that results can be checked and analysed
- Limit public access to candidate statements.
- Hide information that can be used by the public for making political choices.
you have to wonder what’s going on.
Unfortunately, they are doing all those things! As a result, we sent them a letter (download here, it has been edited to remove staff names and email addresses for privacy reasons).
The response we got wasn’t very good (get a copy here), and confirmed our impressions that the VEC was not interested in supporting open and transparent democracy.