ELECTION candidates are inviting school pupils to a special hustings meeting next Tuesday.
The event – for the new teenage voters who will be taking part in this year’s elections for the first time – is being held at 4.15 pm at Hautlieu School.
School pupils are being invited to go down and give the candidates a grilling. Candidate Daniel Wimberley set up the event after speaking to the Education Department and the Privileges and Procedures Committee, who are responsible for States reform.
He is passing the hat around the 21 Senatorial candidates because they are being charged £250 to use the school.
Education’s assistant director for policy and planning, Jeremy Harris, said that the department were not trying to make a profit out of the event, but that they had to cover the school’s costs. He said that if the event was free, it would have cut into Hautlieu’s budget for other things and left the school out of pocket.
Earlier this year the States agreed formally to reduce the voting age from 18 to 16. That adds another 2,000 potential voters to the voting pool – and according to the electoral officer of St Helier, lots of them have been signing up.
Young people are already playing a bigger role in the campaign – at 21, Jeremy Maçon is the youngest ever Senatorial candidate. And two of the candidates had even younger signatories on their nomination papers. 17-year-old Letitia Pryor proposed Trevor Pitman for Senator, and Deputy Peter Troy’s nomination was seconded by 18-year-old David Le Marquand.
