April 6, 2011 3.11 pm This story is over 154 months old

52 run for Lincoln local elections

Elections: 52 candidates have put themselves forward for the Lincoln local elections 2011.

More than 50 candidates are in the running for the 11 City of Lincoln Councillor positions up for grabs at the May 5 local elections.

Nominations for the Lincoln local elections closed on April 4 and candidates can withdraw up until April 7 at noon.

Fifty-two candidates have put themselves forward to the 2011 local elections in the city, from Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems, TUSC and the Green Party.

Around 65,000 people are registered to vote in Lincoln on Thursday, May 5, with about 9,000 being postal votes.

In the 2010 local election voters returned a ‘hung’ council, with 16 Conservative, 16 Labour and 1 Liberal Democrat seat.

Last year 39,386 Lincoln residents voted in the local election, putting the overall turnout was at 60.40%.

After discussions with both parties, the Liberal Democrat councillor voted in favour of a Conservative administration but this did not form a coalition.

The Liberal Democrat councillor remains independent of the Conservative administration and votes in Full Council on an issue by issue basis.

A proposal to have all-out elections every four years for the City of Lincoln Council did not get enough votes at the Full Council in December 2010.

A referendum on the parliamentary voting system will also be held on May 5.

This will ask voters if they want to switch from the ‘first past the post’ system for parliamentary elections to the ‘alternative voting’ (AV) system, where voters rank constituency candidates in order of preference.

This referendum is being held because it was one of the things the Liberal Democrats demanded in return for their part in forming the coalition government.

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