A photo of Green Party campaigners in Bristol

The Green Party’s next leadership election has kicked off. Candidates have already started announcing their intentions to stand and nominations are now open.

Many people may be unaware of how these elections run. What’s the process and the timeline for the election? Who can vote? Who can stand? How does the voting system work? How long will the winner be elected for?

This is a run down of the key things you need to know about the election.

What’s the timeline?

  • June 2 – Nominations opened
  • June 30 – Nominations close
  • July 2 – Statement of Persons Nominated published
  • August 1 – Ballots open
  • August 30 – Ballots close
  • September 2 – Results announced

Who can stand?

Anyone who has been a member for two years is eligible to stand for the leadership. Other than that, the party has an extremely low bar of entry for leadership candidates.

Candidates require just 20 fellow members to nominate them in order to appear on the ballot paper. In theory, that means we could be looking at an astonishing number of candidates in the running – we’re talking literally thousands. Obviously, in reality that won’t happen, but it’s not outside the realms of possibilities that there could be a large number of candidates – most of them no-hopers – for either the leadership or deputy leadership.

Who can vote?

Anyone who is a member of the Green Party of England and Wales prior to voting opening can vote in the election. That means the deadline for new members joining is 31 July.

What’s the voting system?

This is where things get a little complicated.

Under the party’s rules, candidates can either stand on their own or as part of a co-leadership ticket. Should a single leader get elected then the party will separately elect two deputy leaders. Should co-leaders be elected, there will instead be a single leader.

The leadership election takes place using the Alternative Vote (AV) system. That means that every member will get to rank the candidates in order of their preference. If on the first round of counting no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the first preference vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Everyone who gave their highest preference to the eliminated candidate then has their second preferences thrown into the mix. This continues until a candidate has received at least 50 per cent of the vote.

For the deputy leadership election, there are two different things that could happen, depending on what happens in the leadership contest.

If there are two co-leaders elected, things are quite straightforward. In that scenario, a single deputy leader is elected. This deputy leadership election would then take place by AV.

However, if a single leader gets elected, things are more complex. Then, two deputy leaders will be elected, and instead of being run through AV, the election will be run by Single Transferable Vote (STV). STV is used in elections where there are multiple roles to be filled. Again, it works on a preferential system, where voters rank the candidates in the order of their preference. In the first rounds of counting, everything operates similarly to AV, but instead of candidates needing to receive 50 per cent of the vote, when there are two roles to be filled they instead need to receive 33 per cent to be elected. Once one candidate has surpassed the threshold, there is then a process by which surplus votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates. How much each redistributed vote is worth is dependent on how far the winning candidate got over the threshold. The more votes over the threshold, the greater the proportion of a vote each subsequent preference is worth. Once the surplus has been reallocated, counting continues with lowest placed candidates being eliminated until a second candidate reaches the threshold.

Still following? That’s only part of the story. The Green Party leadership election also has gender balancing rules applied to it. The rules are as follows: Candidates for co-leader standing on a joint ticket must be of different genders. If co-leaders are elected, the single deputy elected alongside them can be of any gender. If a single leader is elected, then the two deputies must be of different genders. That means that in addition to the complex counting mechanism above, once one candidate has been elected as deputy leader then all other candidates of the same gender are instantly eliminated and lower preferences of their voters are then allocated to the relevant candidates of other genders.

Simple, right?

What other roles are being elected?

Alongside the leader and deputy leader elections, Green Party members will be voting to elect members of the Green Party Executive (GPEx). That’s the body responsible for overseeing the day to day management of the party, including holding responsibility for finance and being the employer of the party’s staff.

The following roles will be elected this year:

  • Chair
  • Campaigns Co-ordinator
  • Elections Co-ordinator
  • Equalities and Diversity Co-ordinator
  • External Communications Co-ordinator
  • Finance Co-ordinator
  • Internal Communicatons
  • International Co-ordinators
  • Local Party Support Co-ordinator
  • Management Co-ordinator
  • Policy Development Co-ordinator
  • Publications Co-ordinator
  • Trade Union Liasion

Alongside these roles, the party’s leader and deputy also sit on GPEx. So too do the leader of the Wales Green Party and the co-chairs of the Young Greens. However, the latter two are elected by the membership of those bodies, rather than the wider Green Party of England Wales’ members.

Image credit: Matthew Philip Long – Creative Commons