Hopefully by now you will have caught your breath! 
The count will seem an awfully long time ago, but for the new councillors, and indeed for those of you who are back on the council, now the real work commences - to represent those people who put their faith in you via the ballot box.

Whether you won or lost, or a local activist, there is one vital task immediately after the election and that is to say thank you to your helpers, deliverers and campaign colleagues.  Often this is over looked and assumptions are made that ‘people will already know that their help is valued, so we don’t need to say thank you’ – WRONG!  Use letters, cards, phone calls to people who helped in your election, don't forget paper candidates and people who helped on polling day. Hold a wake/post mortem and a "thank you party" in the next couple of weeks.  There are some places that have already had their party, organising for just two days after polling day.

Saying "Thank You" to voters is traditionally done with a "thank you" FOCUS delivered as soon as possible throughout your ward. This includes saying thank you when we lost. If you're short of money why not do an A4 thank you FOCUS rather than A3? Templates are available here to ALDC members. Here’s how Hull did it last year.

Why not expand this and send a letter those who were canvassed as Liberal Democrats ("D&Ps"). Use the opportunity to inform them of the result and ask them if they would like to be help in the future, perhaps delivering FOCUS down their street? Don’t forget to email your email list and to post on your MyCouncillor site.
 
The ‘tidy up’ period starts from here.  If you have not already done so please ensure that all your stake boards are taken down and recovered.  Also remove posters from windows, trees, walls or wherever you were inventive enough to place them!

Here at ALDC we are still trying to analyse what happened and to do so we need YOU to tell us what you think!  Please help us learn and improve from the 2012 local election results by taking our short online survey. We will use the aggregated information to inform the work of ALDC and the rest of the party, but otherwise your comments are anonymous and will not be attributed.

TAKE THE SURVEY NOW

Thank you for your help.

John Bridges
Campaigns Officer

PS. If you can't read the some of the attached articles it is because they are in the members only area of the ALDC website.

• If you are already a member of ALDC you'll just need to log on when prompted. Your login and password are listed at the bottom of this email.
• If you're not already a member of ALDC, to access these materials you’ll need to join ALDC.
  

Deadlines:

Timetable for Elections Expenses returns
All Scottish local elections and most in England and Wales were declared on Friday 4th May (if yours were declared before midnight on Thursday take each deadline a day earlier). We will circulate guidance on completing election expense returns next week.

25th May 2012 - All bills to be sent to the agent. The agent should not legally pay bills received after this date.

1st June 2012 - All bills to be paid by agent.

8th June 2012 - Election return and agents declaration to be received by the Returning Officer.

Within 7 days of submitting the return - The Returning Officer must receive the candidate’s declaration (though usual practice is to submit these forms at the same time).

It’s time to pull together!   - there's only one week to go!
Tempers in elections often get frayed. Competing priorities, the frustrations with computer systems and printers combined with activist exhaustion and grotty weather are a recipe for friction.  After canvassing,  in the next few days try and get your core team together, perhaps at a stuffing party or over a pint and agree your strategy for the final week. To quote somebody else, we’re all in this together…..

With a week to go your campaign should be peaking and your thoughts should be on getting the vote out and polling day.
Polling day is one of those occasions when you can ask friends, relations and colleagues from other local parties without elections this year to help out. It does not matter where in the country they are. Offer them accommodation or just get them on the phones. The new virtual phonebanks in Connect make this easier than ever. Going through your phonebook and talking to your members should give you a clearer idea of the resources you’ll have available and thereby inform your strategy.

Use your casework record.
If you’ve done more than the opposition in your ward or neighbouring wards,  make the comparison. Make sure they can see that the choice is between a hardworking Liberal Democrat or another Tory/Labour time server. If you can clearly evidence this, it will  be a very strong message in your final literature.
However much casework you have done, flag those you’ve done it for in EARS or Connect and  then send them all a letter. Do an analysis of voting intention on this group. It ought favour us and if it does it is key group to add to the Shuttleworth and target for last weeks canvassing.

Connect and Polling Day
Connect is a new system for everybody using it. We discuss building your Shuttleworth in the article below but for Connect users particularly it is vital that you learn how to do this now and make sure it’s prepared well before polling day, so that any problems can be ironed out. So there are some things that every local party with elections needs to do:

• Work through the two polling day training courses on OSKAR. It is absolutely essential that everyone who is going to run a committee room does this before polling day.
• Download the PDF guide to using Connect on and before polling day and send a copy to anyone who’ll be using Connect on Thursday.
  
• Build your shuttleworth and cut it into turfs. Don’t leave this until polling day, use the instructions in the above PDF or the OSKAR courses to do it now.
  
• Connect Managers and Deputy Managers have access to the Polling Day tools already, but other users will need to be given access to them. Make sure you’ve got access to the tools well in advance of Polling Day. Make sure that everyone who needs a Connect login has one set up before polling day. Don’t leave this to the last minute!
  

Richmond/Chester Formula Calculator
Last week we talked about taking the tough decisions on targeting and polling day strategy. The department of Election and Skills have helpfully produced a handy calculator for the Chester formula with an accompanying instruction sheet for you. The Chester formula is a slightly modified version of the Richmond formula, that distributes “not Lib Dem”, “Refused” and a half “Probables” by the proportion of expressed voting intentions for the opposition parties.

Deadlines
Today, Thursday 26th April: The last day for the appointment of local election counting and polling agents.

Checklist for this week

• Assess your canvass returns and revisit your targeting strategy.
• Start planning for polling day
• Attack the Tories locally.
• Sort out the writing, stuffing and batching of your blue letters for next week
• Sort out target mail and squeeze letters for next week
• Flag your casework contacts and send them something!
• Sort out volunteers for phone canvassing  and phone knocking up and set it up on Connect if you’re using it.
  

Good Luck and please send/email your own leaflets and letters and those of your opponents to ALDC so that we can spread good practice and monitor the activities of the opposition.

John Bridges
Campaigns Officer

PS. If you can't read the attached articles it is because they are in the members only area of the ALDC website.
If you are already a member of ALDC you'll just need to log on when prompted. Your login and password are listed at the bottom of this email.
If you're not already a member of ALDC, to access these materials you’ll need to join ALDC. For candidates in the 2012 election joining by Direct Debit it only costs £3.41 per month.

Keep going!   - there's only three weeks left!

It’s a 40 horse race in this Saturday's Grand National, but second place in politics is not an each way bet. Winning is what matters not good second places.

I don’t know about you, but having helped deliver my old ward fully once and been on four canvass sessions since the last email, I’m feeling battle hardened already. The wind, rain, sun and dogs have done their worst and I’m tired, but in total election mode.

With just a week till postal vote ballot papers start hitting doormats you need to target postal voters hard. Make sure they receive some quality literature this weekend together with some direct mail.
With three weeks left and lots still to do, we're all probably pretty tired by now.  But keep up the hard work and we'll hopefully see some better results in May.

Deadlines

Next Wednesday 18th April is the deadline for people applying for proxy votes except for medical emergencies.

Thursday 26th April: The last day for the appointment of local election counting and polling agents.

Checklist for this week - this week should be all about postal voters

• Deliver a quality campaign leaflet  to peak for postal voters over the weekend – ideally, leaflets and direct mail
• Deliver a mailing to postal voters and a postal vote recruitment letter to supporters without  if not already done.
  
• Get blue letters to postal voters addressed and stuffed and sent.
  
• Canvass postal voters.
  
• Start planning for polling day
  

Good Luck and please send/email your own leaflets and letters and those of your opponents to ALDC so that we can spread good practice and monitor the activities of the opposition.

Happy Campaigning!

John Bridges

Campaigns Officer

PS. If you can't read the attached articles it is because they are in the members only area of the ALDC website.

• If you are already a member of aldc you'll just need to log on when prompted. Your login and password are listed at the bottom of this email.
• If you're not already a member of ALDC, to access these materials you’ll need to join ALDC. For candidates in the 2012 election joining by Direct Debit it only costs £3.41 per month.

At 10pm in 100 days time and it will "all be over bar the counting" for this year's local elections. I do not need to tell you that the next 100 days are going to be tough for Liberal Democrats up and down the country to get the message across and campaign to have more Lib Dem Councillors representing local people on the 3rd  May 2012. 

Target Ruthlessly
If you've not done this already the campaign from now on should be only about targeted seats. This means campaigning in the local elections where we plan to HOLD a Lib Dem seat, or WIN a new Lib Dem seat. Remember ALL your historic canvas data will need to be revisited before May 3rd.  This will require a lot of extra work in wards which we have historically regarded as safe and targeting plans need to reflect this. If you don’t recruit new members, canvassers and deliverers in the next few weeks you will need to target your existing resources on fewer wards to be successful. It’s that simple.

It’s cold, wet and dark but there’s just 20 weeks till polling day on May 3rd 2012.

Welcome to the first of our campaign emails. These are being sent to our target candidates and key activists in the run up to the local elections in May 2012. If you should not be receiving this email, or you know of others who should but don’t contact me at ALDC and we’ll update our records!!!

In many wards we will need to identify 2,000 supporters between now and polling day to give us a chance of winning. That’s 100 a week. Start now, don’t wait until this becomes an insurmountable problem. 
Here are some things you can do to gather voter ID, even at this time of year…..

• Knock and drop surveying
• Chat canvassing
• Canvass old people’s homes and sheltered housing
• Tower blocks
• Phone surveying

Spreading the load is important, so take some time over the holiday period to say "thank you" to your helpers and supporters, whether it’s a card or a phone call it will pay dividends over the coming weeks.