Lesson video

Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to our unit on where does power reside? My name is Mr. Henson, and I am going to take you through lesson five today in which simply we're looking at how do elections work? In order to access today's lesson, you are going to need some material, and what I'd like you to do is, first of all, grab some paper or something to write on and a pen or a pencil to write with.

You are also going to need some quiet working space, so please find that space and your resources.

Press pause whilst you do find them, and once you have all of that material and you have that space, please press resume on the video, and we will start today's lesson.

The first thing I want to think of, is just looking at what connection lies between these three images.

So you have a rosette, you have a box with some voting slips and you have a polling station.

And that really gets us focusing on what our lesson today is going to be about.

So just jot down task one on what is the connection between all of them.

They say, well, this is lesson five.

So we've already looked at powers of government, we've looked at local democracy and national democracy, in terms of the government and the powers.

We then looked at devolved administrations and what powers they have, we then looked at the structure of local governments, looked at what local councils do and now we're going to look at how those elections work in respective local council areas and in terms of a national election.

We've got a couple of things to look at today then, What is the general election? What is the process of a general election? What are political parties? And where does power reside in an election? Before we arrive at our exit quiz.

To remind ourselves, we're going to go back to the democracy tree and look at how power is distributed amongst the entirety of the UK.

As we're looking at elections today, those can be a local region, local level, sorry, a regional level or indeed a national level.

First thing that we have to consider then, is what is a general election? Now a general election is an opportunity for people in every part of the UK who are on the electoral roll to vote, to choose their new member of parliament, or simply known as an MP.

And this person, the MP, is a person who will represent the local area, in the House of Commons, for up to five years.

Now, the person that local area comes from is called the constituency.

So each member of parliament represents one constituency and you need to know that there are 650 constituencies across the UK.

Which means that there are 650 members of parliament who sit in parliamentary session.

Now you've got to imagine these constituencies are like little jigsaw pieces and each one of them fits together.

Now, regardless of the size of your town or city, you are just one constituency.

So in total those 650 MP's go forth to parliament.

Now, in order to choose your member of parliament, there's usually a choice of several candidates in each constituency, some of which are the local candidates for national political parties.

So you may get the current serving prime minister looking to gain their seat in a local constituency.

And people can only vote for one of the candidates at a time.

And the person who gets the most votes will become that constituencies member of parliament.

Now usually, and we stress that word usually, the political party who wins the most seats will form the government.

So in order to get a majority, you will need half plus one.

So half of your 650 constituencies would be 325, plus one making that golden number of 326 constituencies to secure a majority.

However, if we go backwards to 2010, no single party had a majority.

So what happened was a coalition was formed and that just meant two parties joined together.

Namely, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats.

Go forth seven years later in 2017, again, there was no majority.

So this time the conservatives came to an agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland the DUP, and their agreement was that the DUP would support bills going through the House of Commons to support the conservatives.

Now it's important that once we know what a general election is, we then look at how often that takes place.

So in 2011, a piece of legislation was created, namely, the Act of Parliament, it was called The Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011.

And what that act of parliament said was that there should be a five-year period between each election.

Hence the term, fixed term.

There has to be a five-year gap.

So, a general election took place in May, 2015 and this would have meant that the next general election would have taken place in May of 2020.

However, there is a but.

An early election can be applied if a motion is agreed by two thirds of the members of parliament in the House of Commons.

So this was evident in May 2017 when Theresa May was the acting Prime Minister.

And again, in 2019 where Boris Johnson held a vote in the House of Commons.

And again, two thirds of the MP's would have to agree that to call the election.

As a result of that successful ballot, there was a general election that took place on the 12th of December, 2019.

What I'd like to do now is, can you go over to the worksheet which is attached to today's lesson and pause the video here to complete that task whilst also watching the video clip that's attached to the lesson.

And then what I'd like you to do is, can you draw a diagram showing how the whole entirety election process works? Okay, so we've spoken about general election.

We now need to know who is elected to get there.

So, these are known as political parties.

And we can define a political party, as you see there in pink, as a group of people who share a common view on issues.

Now, if you're over the age of 18, individuals can choose to join a political party and become members of that party.

And this usually involves making a monthly contribution to that party.

Once you have secured that affiliation to a party, you can then become a candidate for an election.

And these are usually nominated by the party themselves.

However, if you do not want to be attached to a political party, you can choose to stand as an independent party so you don't have to be attached or affiliated to a political party.

You can just be independent and hopefully gather support in that respect.

In the United Kingdom then, we have four main, political parties, namely, The Conservative Party, The Labour Party, The Liberal Democrats and The Green Party.

There are others, but these are the four that are the most recognised on ballot papers.

So when you join a political party or when you're looking to vote for a political party, you have to look at what their policies are.

And we've looked at that word policies, those goals that the political parties are setting out to achieve during the term in parliament.

And that's known as a manifesto.

So as the election approaches, political parties will start to write and distribute their manifestos, their ideas, their policies.

And manifesto is the way that political parties let voters know what they will do if they are in power.

So if they are elected into position of authority they will say, this is what we intend to achieve.

Now, during campaigns that lead up to the election, people trying to vote will be given the manifestos, usually through their post or maybe through door-to-door knocking.

And they will use that manifesto to guide them in their response in order to determine who they are going to vote for.

If we look at something called PPC.

So the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates.

These are people who are prospective candidates for election.

What happens is, once they are determined to represent that party and that party feels they are important to move forward, they then go forward to something called a husting.

Now, a husting is where the public gets to ask questions of the candidates and hear what they have to say.

It's kind of like question time.

All of the parties, all of the candidates that are standing in their constituency get asked questions by the public on their policies, on their manifestos about what they will or set out to achieve.

Now, a prospective parliamentary candidate is usually nominated by their political party.

And again, we can have independent viewings.

We can have people that are not attached to the political parties and want to stand for election to represent just the town without being attached to a political party.

In order for that to happen we need to campaign and get support.

So organisers of political parties and people who are taking part, the prospective parliamentary candidates, usually launch campaigns.

And this is to allow citizens to know what they stand for and what they are going to set out to achieve in that session.

Sometimes they will deliver leaflets to residents about what policies they stand for.

Or they will make an effort to make sure that they visit people's homes and deliver those manifestos and deliver that speech in public to the voters themselves.

As we grow older, as technology becomes more developed, people are now relying more and more on social media to raise their profiles.

Instagram pages, Twitter campaigns, Facebook campaigns, are all there to try and gather support for those people looking to achieve seats in parliament.

What I want to do is have a quick pause here and at this stage, who holds the power? So thinking about the process so far, does the constituency have the power? Or to the people trying to get elected, have the power? And what I want you to do is as quickly formulate an answer, a little short paragraph explaining why do you think that person or those people have that power in this situation so far? So pause the video here, press play and hit resume once you're done.

At this stage in the process, we might say that the prospective parliamentary candidates are trying to gather support.

They're using their manifestos, they are appearing at hustings, they're answering the questions and they're trying to engage with the citizens in their constituency.

And they're putting forward why policies matter, why they're trying to do what they're saying they're going to do.

And also by going around door-to-door, they're having conversation with people trying to find out how they will vote.

So all of this information together suggests that citizens and the constituencies have the most power because ultimately they are the one that determines whether or not they are elected.

So the candidates are competing for vote and they have little power.

All they can do is submit their manifestos, deliver those speeches in public, attend the hustings, and if they are elected, then they might hold more power, but at this point in time, the ultimate power lies with the constituents, the people who are there to vote.

In terms of voting then, we need to look at what happens.

Now, we call this election day polling day.

And this is where people get to cast their vote by secret ballot.

One of the rights that we have in the United Kingdom is that you are not forced.

You do not have to tell anybody who you voted for in an election.

That vote is secret and if you choose to tell people, you are free to do so, but you are not legally obliged to tell anybody.

Polling stations are usually open between 7:00 a.

m.

and 10:00 p.

m.

to give people the most time to vote.

However, if you cannot get to the polling station in those times, people can choose to vote by post.

You are only allowed to cast your vote if you're on something called the electoral register.

So you have to register to vote.

It's not a guaranteed right.

You have to submit those forms and be on that register in order to cast your vote on polling day.

Once polling day has gone ahead, once the ballot stations are closed, we then have something called the count.

And the count takes place shortly after those stations close.

They usually take place in sports halls, in gyms, big open spaces where people from the local area spend their evenings, their night, counting their votes.

Now candidates and their agents watch over the process to make sure that it's transparent and fair.

And then what happens once we have a result, the returning officer, the person in charge of that local ballot station, will declare the winner for that constituency.

So again, going back to this who has the power? As is our title of our unit, Where does the power reside? At this point so far, now that we've had polling day, now that we've had the count, where does the power now reside? Is it with the parliamentary candidates? Or is it with the citizens again? So press pause in the video and add to your answer now using examples, who has the power? So again, some feedback for you.

At this stage, voting rights, or constituents get to use their power by choosing who they want to be their MP.

Who they want to represent them.

Something called representative democracy.

In that, the constituents choose who they are going to be represented by, in terms of voting.

Now, the MP here can do nothing but wait to find out the results.

So this suggests that the power still resides with the citizens, with the constituents of that local area.

And even if a candidate wins, So they will be declared the member of parliament for that constituency, they may not be part of the overall winning party.

So you might have a candidate who wins the local constituency, but that party does not get elected because they do not hold that magical 326 votes.

In order to decide the winner then, we have something called the first past the post method system, which is used in England.

Now the first past the post voting method is very simple.

And it's simple because the winner is simply the candidate who achieves the most votes.

It's also known as plurality or a winner takes all system.

All we have to do is determine how many people have had their X put next to this chosen candidate on their ballot form.

But what this does mean is that the winner of that election may not have the majority of the votes.

And I'll show you some examples now, to put that into perspective cause that might seem slightly confusing for you.

If we have a look at the results of a constituency then, the candidate that wins the most votes in each constituency becomes the member of parliament.

However, this can happen in different ways, in different constituencies.

If you look at this example on the right hand side here, you can see in this constituency that Labour won with a total number of votes of 45,780.

If we take all of the other votes from Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, the conservatives and UKIP, you can see here that their votes totaled go up to 29,348.

So the Labour votes do make up the majority of that town or that city.

If you then look at constituency two, the winner of the result here would be the conservative party cause they polled 37,621.

First past the post method said that they have the most votes, however, if we then add up the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Labour and UKIP, there are 44,356 votes.

So the majority did not vote for the conservatives, but the conservatives have the vote here.

And what I want you to do now, is again, look back at the power.

Thinking about the way that we elect the MP's, where does the power reside? Do you think that the people who voted for the candidates feel like they have the power? So look at the example in constituency number one, have a look at the example of constituency number two and think about who has the power.

So a little bit of feedback for you here.

And both example one and example two, the power's held by the voters.

The constituents of that constituency.

However, in constituency, number one, the majority of constituents voted for the winner.

Therefore, we could say that the power lies with them because they're happy with the outcome that more of them voted for the winning party, than didn't.

In example number two, in constituency number two, more constituents voted against the winner than voted for them.

And this could cause some conflict and allow a large number of people to feel frustrated by the process and feel as if their views have not been heard.

So that's one of the main criticisms of the first past the post method.

In that, whilst it's simple to understand that the most votes win, it can be disproportionate in that sense that the majority of people could vote for the parties that didn't win the election, then did vote and did win the election.

So now that you have been drawed, we need to know what happens next.

And quite simply your local member of parliament of that constituency now takes their seat in the house of parliament.

And their role is simply to represent their constituency.

This is really part of representative democracy, in that they have been chosen by you, the public to represent that town, that city.

And what they have to do, is they make sure that your views in that constituency are heard in parliament.

They look at considering and proposed new laws.

They ask questions that matter to the constituents and ask their constituency in the House of Commons.

And they put forward the views of your town.

The members of parliament will also meet with you as constituents to discuss areas and local areas in schools in surgeries for doctors, et cetera.

They will look at matters that are important to you And they will then take that forward to the House of Commons.

They're also there to sit on committees and to investigate any issues that are arising from important decisions.

And those important decisions are attended to by debates and voting.

So ultimately, they represent your views in parliament in terms of new pieces of legislation that are coming through.

So for the final time, I want to look at where does the power reside? So thinking about the election process and then the power an MP has once they've been elected, where do you now believe the power resides? I want you to now think of it in terms of the MP, in terms of the election process, the effect that the first past the post method has on people's rights and the role of the representative democracy.

So does it still lie with the electors or does the power now lie with the member of parliament? So for the final time, press pause on the video.

I want you to complete that task, hit play and return back to the lesson.

Some feedback for you then.

When you think about where power lie during elections, it changes once a candidate becomes elected because now they have actual power.

Leading up to the elections, they have little power, but when they are elected they then have some power.

They can now vote on laws that can affect everybody.

And they represent everybody in that constituency in the House of Commons.

Now although voters do have the power, many feel that power has now been taken away from them because they represented somebody through representative democracy to act on their behalf.

The MP now speaks for them on important issues in the House, rather than voting themselves.

And the second is that we could argue that there is a large number of votes that do not count in the first past the post method because it is disproportionate, if the winning party does not have the overall support, the overall majority in that constituency.

And that is the end of today's lesson.

And again, the amount of work you've done there is absolutely phenomenal.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing some of your flow diagrams of how an election works.

And I'm really interested to see where you think power resides in terms of elections.

There's only one thing that I've got to ask you now to do, and is that, as always make sure you please complete the exit quiz to consolidate all of your learning from today's lesson, just to make sure that you've got all of those key terms, all of those key concepts stored in your knowledge bank.

Until next time.

Thank you so much for attending today's lesson.

It's been really, really well attended to and really well thought out.

And I will see you again next time.