Membership and the Leadership Ballot

The West Kent Office is receiving a lot of email traffic regarding membership and the forthcoming leadership ballot. We thought the following information might be useful to members.

Our Members of Parliament are presently voting in the leadership ballot. After each round of voting the lowest placed candidate will be eliminated. When there are two candidates remaining their names will be put to the wider membership in ballot. This will be a postal ballot of all paid-up and qualifying members. 

1. In order to vote in the leadership election, a party member must be 'paid-up' and have been a member for a minimum three months. There are no exceptions to this rule, which was introduced to prevent "entryism" of the kind which secured the election of Jeremy Corbyn. 

 
2. Ballot papers will be issued in the first week of July 2019 and the ballot will close on 22 July 2019. Therefore, in order to qualify to vote, you will have need to have been a member since 22 April 2019. If your membership has lapsed and you rejoined the party after 22 April 2019 you will not be entitled to vote. 

 
3. There will be a series of regional hustings where members can hear the candidates and have the opportunity to ask questions. To attend you will need to pre-register. CCHQ sent all members an email on Friday 14 June 2019 inviting them to register. If you did not receive the email please check your spam or trash folder. However, you can register to attend by clicking HERE  

4. To register you will need to enter your name, address, contact details (email and telephone), the Association of which you are a member and your membership number. You may choose to attend any of the hustings, not just the one most local to you if another date is more convenient. However you may only book to attend one event.  

 
5. Your membership number is printed on your membership card, which should have been sent to you by Conservative Campaign HQ in London. To assist, the West Kent office sent you an email on Monday 17 June 2019 with your membership number in the body of the text. If you did not receive a membership card and did not receive our email, then you should contact leadership@conservatives.com for further advice and guidance. 

 
6. As far as I am aware, proxy voting is not allowed. If you are likely to be away for the duration of the postal ballot you could ask a family member, friend or neighbour with a spare key to forward the ballot paper to your holiday address. If this is not possible, I would suggest you contact leadership@conservatives.com for advice.

I hope the above is helpful. The leadership ballot, process, registration, hustings and the count are all being handled by CCHQ, not the local Association or the West Kent Office. If you have any questions please direct these to CCHQ in London via this email address: leadership@conservatives.com

Thank you
Andrew Kennedy