I’m currently sitting in the election services office of Horsham District Council, waiting for my nomination forms to be checked, and I’ve learned a couple of new things.

Agent Appointment Form

If you don’t nominate an agent, you act as your own agent. The notes say this happens by default, but you still need to fill in the agent appointment form with your own details.

I left my blank one at home, so I’m waiting for a printout so I can fill it in. Oops!

Subscribers and election officials

One other thing that’s not mentioned on the notes; the people who nominate you can’t be working on the election, (definitely not) in a polling station or (a bit less bad) on the count.

I’ve almost caused myself a bit of a problem, as one of mine has independently volunteered to work on the count. Fortunately for me, Horsham DC covers two constituencies, and so there will be two counts going on at the same time. They will make sure that my nominator works on the count for the other constituency, not mine. Normally you wouldn’t get away with that so easily.

I have offered to redo the forms, but apparently it’ll be OK.

So, to summarise my understanding so far, your nominators must:

• be on the electoral register in the area for which you are standing (constituency, ward, etc)
• not be an employee or volunteer staff for the council running the election
• not have nominated more candidates than the number of available seats in the area (1 for parliament, >1 for many council wards)

Bear all that in mind when you do your forms.

Party description

Last thing - the party description that you write on the form will be the only textual thing that identifies you as a party. You don’t automatically get the party name as well. I didn’t realise this, but fortunately our description includes the party name, and the logo includes the name text, so I’m sticking with what we had.

So, if your description doesn’t include the party name and your logo is a bit more abstract, you might want to think again.