So it’s general election time, the third time in five years that the British electorate has been asked to go to the polls to elect or re-elect their Member of Parliament. The campaigns are in full swing, psephologists are much in demand and there is an awful lot of fake news out there. Remember, the Britain Elects team works tirelessly to bring you cold, hard unadulterated facts; beware of scammers and imitators who may have their own agenda.

This is a good time to read out some notices relating to arrangements for the general election. Parliament was dissolved November 6th, and the Clerk of the Parliaments has sent out writs to the Returning Officers ordering them to organise an election: those were formally received on Thursday. Nominations open no later than 10am on Tuesday 12 November (possibly earlier at the discretion of the Returning Officer) and close at 4pm on Thursday 14 November. The dissolution may appear to have come a day earlier than the prescribed timescale of 25 working days, but that’s because Monday 2 December is a bank holiday in Scotland in lieu of St Andrew’s Day; accordingly 2 December doesn’t count as a working day for the general election timetable.

In order to stand as a candidate in the general election you will need to fill out rather a lot of paperwork, but the important things you need are (a) the signatures of ten people registered to vote in the constituency you want to contest, (b) if you want to stand for a political party, the relevant form to certify that (your party and the Returning Officer will be able to confirm exactly what you need), and (c) £500 in cold hard cash, which you will get back if and only if you poll over 5% of the vote. If you are in any doubt about this process check with the Returning Officer.

The deadline to register to vote in the general election is midnight on Tuesday 26 November. There is a helpful centralised government website (https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote) which will take down your details and forward them to your council elections office. Your council will have sent out a canvass letter in September or October to confirm your details for the December 2019 electoral register; if you responded to that then you are already registered to vote and you don’t need to go through this again. However, if you’ve recently moved home or changed your name, than it may be prudent to put in a new application to register to vote as soon as possible.

If you need to obtain a postal vote for the general election, then the deadline for this is 5pm on Tuesday 26 November. If you miss that deadline or you will be out of the country on election day, then you can apply for a proxy vote by 5pm on Wednesday 4 December. Polling will be open on Thursday 12 December 2019 from 7am to 10pm, and if you haven’t got a postal vote you will receive a polling card in due course giving you the details of your polling station. If this doesn’t happen, check wheredoivote.co.uk/ nearer the time. There will probably be a few dozen council by-elections combined with the general election, and Andrew’s Previews will of course cover those in due course.

Your columnist has marked the dissolution of Parliament by doing the most obvious and rational thing possible: fleeing the country. By the time you read this I’ll be in Sofia, Bulgaria, as part of the Welsh team for the European Quiz Championships; and once the quiz is all over I’ll be taking a leisurely road trip to Plovdiv, Edirne and İstanbul, returning a week today. Fear not, the text for next week’s Previews has already been filed and will be published in due course. I do not intend to reply to or indeed read any messages while I’m out of the UK, so pestering me will get you nowhere; if by some mischance you wish to complain about something that went wrong in this week’s Previews, please address your communications directly to the Britain Elects team and accept my apologies in advance.

This holiday is good timing, for September to November is the busiest time of year for local council by-elections and there are plenty of real polls to chew over for this week and next. This week’s six votes are evenly split with three by-elections in England and three in Scotland and Wales. The Scottish and Welsh polls aren’t going to tell us much about the upcoming general election because they are in areas politically dominated by independent candidates. The English polls may have more predictive value, particularly…

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