Great Britain holds local elections on May 2. The Green Party has more than 900 candidates on ballots for local office around the country, according to this story. This is what a small or new party can accomplish when the ballot access laws are lenient and non-discriminatory.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
The UK gerrymander regime is one timebomb mess waiting to go really off — due to the gerrymander/plurality election systems
– the IDIOT *First past the post* stuff [taken from Brit horse racing mania]
= about 20 percent indirect minority rule in the infected regimes.
THE problem – the FPTP IDIOCY infected the Brit-Am colonies in the 1600s – infected the States in 1776 – and infected the USA regime in 1789.
Many generations of gerrymander ROT brain disease —
Result – the current USA national bankruptcy, undeclared wars, etc. etc.
——-
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
England holds local elections in some areas on Thursday. There is one council in Wales, but that is because it was delayed.
There is no British Green Party. The Scottish Green Party is separate from the Green Party (England and Wales).
What Jim said is correct. The Greens are a well established minor party in England – not only do they have 135 Councillors elected in partisan elections but they also have an MP at Westminster (all elected under FPTP which is far from friendly to parties outside the big two).
The Green Party elected 22 county councillors out of a total of 2362. UKIP elected 147 on a 23% vote share.
These elections probably were not the friendliest areas for the Green Party. County councils for the most part exclude cities, which have what “unitary authorities”, which are vaguely equivalent to city&county governments.
Where the Green Party was successful was in smaller cities and towns, and the Green candidates who won were essentially running as independents. The county divisions from which councillors are elected are small, with just a few thousand votes cast, and where personal campaigning can be effective. In addition, there was only office on the ballot. Voters were not voting for a slew of offices.
Ballot access is similar to that in California under the Top 2 reforms. Candidates do not qualify on the basis of political party, though parties may endorse candidates. The difference is in the magnitude of the districts. A close similarity would be with Montana if it adopts Top 2. House districts are small enough to permit personal campaigning, and it should be possible for 3rd party candidates and independents to win based on personal campaigning.