Posts Tagged ‘Ballot’

The House of Commons will elect a new Speaker on Monday 22^nd June.

There are, at the last count 10 candidates who have all attracted enough nominations to be able to stand. It is always with looking at the procedure for a rare event like the election of the Speaker to help us to understand how this will work.

Nominations

Monday 9.30 - 1.30am - written nominations must be submitted to the to the House of Commons Table Office.

Candidates for Speaker must submit the signatures of between 12 and 15 MP who support their nomination and a signed declaration stating that they are willing to stand for election.

11.00am - the final list will be published on the Parliament website.

Any MP is entitled to stand and at present, there are 10 candidates thought likely to be nominated, including Margaret Beckett, John Bercow, Sir George Young and Ann Widdecombe.

Election

Monday 2.30pm - the House of Commons will meet to elect the Speaker - the Father of the House (the longest serving MP), Alan Williams, will preside over the election.

Each candidate will give a speech to the House; the order will be decided by ballot.

If there is only one nomination, that candidate will automatically be proposed to the House as the Speaker. Once all the candidates have spoken, MPs will vote for their preferred candidate.

Voting

The vote will be by secret ballot and will take place in the Division lobbies and each MP will be given a ballot paper to fill in and they will have 30 minutes to vote.

Results and further ballots

If any candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, they will be proposed to the House as Speaker. If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, MPs will be asked to vote again.

This time the following will be eliminated:

• any candidate with less than 5 per cent of the votes
• the candidate who came last
• any candidate who withdraws within ten minutes of the result

Successive ballots will be held until only one candidate remains or a candidate obtains more than 50 per cent of the votes. The remaining candidate will then be proposed to the House as Speaker.

If the motion for the Speaker is contested, there will be a vote. If the motion is agreed to, the successful MP will be dragged to the chair. The Speaker elect will then need to be approved by the Crown.

With each vote possibly taking up to two hours, MPs could be in for a long night.