Katie Green

Research:

MCS 1000 Research

Voting statistics of 18-30 year old in the UK:

Policies:

Conservatives:

Would give people the power to elect an individual who will set the policing priorities for their community  Would provide detailed data about crime in all areas  Redevelopment of the prison estate and increase prison capacity as necessary to stop that happening  Introduction of a system of honesty in sentencing where judges can give some categories of offender minimum and maximum sentences and prisoners who want to be released after serving the minimum will have to earn their release through participation in education, rehabilitation and work programmes  Contracting with the private and voluntary sectors to provide post-release support, and paying them by results with the savings made in the criminal justice system from lower crime  Will replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights  'Roll back the current surveillance state'  Curtail powers of entry for state officials  Introduction of new protections over the use of personal data  Conduct reviews of family law, legal aid and the libel laws  Scrap ID cards immediately  Reform of the current DNA system to more closely resemble the Scottish system  Change the rules on the DNA database to allow a large number of innocent people to reclaim their DNA immediately  Allow people with historic convictions for consensual gay sex to have those convictions removed from their criminal records

Labour:

Maintainance of central funding for the Police so that police numbers remain steady  Against the politicisation of policing and political interference in operational decisions  Would build on the 3,600 Neighbourhood Policing Teams now in every area of England and Wales through the Policing Pledge  Would give police access to DNA and CCTV among other tools  Would ensure that the most serious offenders are added to the database no matter where or when they were convicted whilst also achieving a proportionate balance between the rights of the individual and the wider interests of public protection  Would give people more of a say over where CCTV is used, and give them a right to petition their local authority for more CCTV  Would give the police and local authorities new powers to deal with alcohol disorder and anti-social problems in their area  Alongside measures like Family Intervention Programmes, would empower communities to address the problems that affect them, giving them more information and a greater say in decisions on crime, policing and justice and other factors that affect their quality of life  Would maintain measures to keep drunken disorder under control  Would not tolerate illegal drug use  Plan to provide a total of 96,000 prison places by 2014  Plan to address unnecessary increases in the prison population, including reducing the number of women and the mentally ill in prison, transferring more foreign prisoners to EU jails, and new approaches to cut reoffending From April, rolling out a National Victims' Service guaranteeing all victims of crime and anti-social behaviour more support including seven days a week cover; and a named, dedicated worker offering one-to-one support, staying with them through the trial and beyond.

Lib Dems:

3,000 more police officers on the street paid for by scrapping the ID card scheme  Reduction in bureaucracy for the police  Would make hospitals share information with the police so they know where gun and knife crime is happening  Prisoners will work to pay for victim compensation  Creation of Neighbourhood Justice Panels to have the power to tackle minor cases of anti-social behaviour and determine offender punishment  Scrap Control Orders and replace them with measures intended to secure convictions of terror suspects  Reform of the courts to prosecute terror suspects more effectively  Would support efforts to make it easier to charge suspects genuinely suspected of terrorism through a temporary lowering of the 'threshold test'  Would reach out to the communities most at risk of radicalisation

How the voting system works:

An election to the Westminster parliament must take place within five years and a month. The last British general election took place in May 2005, in which Labour won. This means that Gordon Brown, the UK Prime Minister is now obliged to ask the Queen to allow a new general election to take place before June 3rd 2010, which happened last year and resulted in the Conservatives winning.

Elections are held in the 650 constitutions across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each area will see a number of MP’s from different groups trying to win the votes of the local public, which on an average is 60,000 people. Once the voting system has closed the votes are counted and whoever gets the majority of votes wins a seat in Parliament. To then figure out who has won overall and who’ll be the next Prime Minster, they then count who has the most seats in Parliament and they then give the leader the right to be Prime Minster.

In 2010 Conservatives won with 306 (36.1%).

FULL UK SCOREBOARD

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bdc37cd6-3cf9-11df-bbcf-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1HLLHNf2W

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/

How, when to vote:

People can vote either by going in person to a Polling Station that is found in their local area, but they must be registered to vote or they’ll be turned away. To register people can either do it by the internet or by post. Another way to vote is by post which is the second highest way that the public choose.

The public can’t just vote when they feel like it, there must be an election in place and the public only have one day to vote, and at the time they give you a certain times to vote. Voting normally closes at 10pm which gives everyone a chance to vote as they have to think about people who work.

When you vote you must specify on the ballot paper which party you are voting for by placing a cross in the box given. There are instructions to show people how to do this.

Why register?

Below is the voting website, and it gives many reasons why the younger audience should vote:

http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/why_should_i_register_to_vot1/reasons_why_you_should_regis.aspx