What price democracy?

The Council has been reviewing where it locates its polling stations on election days. This may sound like a seriously dull issue, but research has shown that the further away from a polling station someone lives, the less likely they are to bother to vote.

One of the areas where this problem is most starkly highlighted is in the northern part of Roehampton ward. This is the area that covers Priory Lane, the Lennox Estate and Woking Close. For residents in most of this patch they vote fairly locally at the Brookside Community Centre. But also included in this polling station's catchment area is the main Roehampton University campus in Roehampton Lane. From here, the distance to vote is well over a mile.

Now you may say - as the council does - that students are "active and mobile", so a mile hike is nothing. The problem is that it's off-putting enough that in the council elections last year a total of seven - that's seven students, not 7% - out of almost 800, decided to go to the trouble of walking it.

We can either take the view that it's just too bad or - my view - that we have to make a bigger effort to engage students so that they get a voting habit that will stay with them for life. That's why we in Labour argued for a new polling station in the Roehampton campus.

To my regret Council officers recommended rejecting this idea as "not cost-effective" (even though it's the government, not the council, that foots the bill of staging elections). So my question is: what price democracy? I hope that Councillors, who on all sides are genuinely concerned about engaging residents in the democratic process, will reconsider this issue and make voting much easier for Roehampton University students.

You can find out more about the review of polling stations here.