IN a medieval market town in rural eastern England, locals are looking to vote tactically at the July 4 general election by taking part in a primary to choose a challenger to the Conservatives.
Former local councillor John Lodge has been organising an informal "people's primary" to pick a candidate to oust Kemi Badenoch, who is vying to be returned as Saffron Walden's MP.
The commuter town, part of the North West Essex constituency, has been part of a largely safe Tory seat since before World War II.
The primary, however, is a response to "a really poor government over 14 years", Lodge said. "Every day, someone comes up and asks, 'who shall we vote for to get rid of Kemi?'"
He directs them to a website where voters can sign up for an online poll on the candidate they like best from the UK's centre and left parties: Labour, Liberal Democrat or Green.
"We've got around 400 subscribers to the website," Lodge told AFP, as he showed his friend in a vinyl record store how to sign up.
The primary subscribers have voted overwhelmingly to back the Labour candidate in the constituency, crowning the candidate the "people's champion".
Primary organisers are recommending that anti-Conservative voters tactically back Labour instead of their usual party, claiming that if 50 per cent of Lib Dem voters were to lend their support, the constituency could get rid of Badenoch.
Mark Starte, who runs the vinyl store in town, is unconvinced the primary will unite voters enough to succeed but hopes Badenoch will get a "much smaller majority" as a result.
Right-winger Badenoch is hotly tipped to be a future Tory leader, but with Labour's candidate just over two points behind her in one poll, Lodge hopes tactical voting will secure the town's first non-Tory MP.
The UK's winner-take-all electoral system has been criticised for disadvantaging smaller parties, who struggle to win seats despite gaining a chunk of the votes.
Voters on the left say it is particularly unfair for them because the left-wing vote is often split across multiple parties. In contrast, the Tories have largely remained the dominant force on the right.
The North West Essex primary is part of a network of informal primaries aiming to make the system "fairer" for "progressive" voters.
Simon Oldridge helped organise some seven hustings in South Devon, southwest England, in March, in what he says was the country's "first community-led political primary".
In it, the public grilled the hopefuls before voting for who to back to defeat the Tory candidate in their constituency.
Voting to coalesce behind one candidate rather than guessing who to back tactically, people felt that "for once their vote was going to count", said Oldridge.
Over 1,000 people voted to back Lib Dem candidate Caroline Voaden.
Oldridge said the primary has "caught people's imagination", with people putting up banners "all over the place" saying they will "lend their vote" to Voaden.
Since then, however, Labour and the Lib Dems have forbidden their candidates to take part in the primary process.
Recent primaries have found ways to side-step candidate involvement by directing interested voters to hustings organised locally and holding secure online votes.
The decision was a sign, Oldridge said, that the main parties "didn't like the loss of control to the electorate, that the electorate are actually starting to make these decisions themselves".
Best for Britain, a campaign group that makes tactical voting suggestions based on nationwide polling, released recommendations for ousting Tory lawmakers in 451 seats last week.
"People are fed up," said Cal Roscow, the group's director of campaigns, adding that there was a huge appetite for tactical voting.
The organisation suggested that more than a third of voters in 621 of the 650 parliament seats said they would vote tactically to change the government.
Like the primary organisers, Roscow emphasised that tactical voting was only important because the UK did not have proportional representation.
"Best for Britain doesn't like tactical voting. But until we change the voting system, it's going to be something that's part of our general elections," he added.
"We're trying to improve the way our politics works within our broken first-past-the-post system," added Oldridge. "We're starting something that's potentially going to change politics.
"Our message to the parties is: bring proportional representation in, otherwise we're just going to work around this."
* The writer is from AFP