Generally a hustings is a meeting at which candidates in an election address potential voters.
Cambridge’s Petersfield Hustings have been more specific. These were two zoom-based meetings that lasted 70 and 90 minutes, starting at 7:30pm on Sunday 25th & Monday 26th April 2021 (respectively). They sought to enable the Petersfield community to ask questions to their May 6th 2021 Candidates for the County and City Councils.
Six Intro Questions to All Candidates
Every candidate standing for these two elections was invited to attend, and to answer the same 6 introductory questions prior to both Hustings.
Attending the Hustings
Other questions for posing at the Hustings were submitted by people who live, volunteer, work or study in Petersfield. The public could attend these Hustings live via Zoom or watch the Recordings.
All the Questions & Answers
Candidates standing for election who did not attend the live Hustings were invited to provide prompt answers to the live questions via email; all responses received were posted.
How Questions were Managed
Questions submitted by the public via Petersfield.Hustings@gmail.com and the Zoom-based Chat stream were collected before the two Hustings. Guidance was provided on what was a City vs a County issue. Similar questions were merged, and edited to 50 words maximum. The order in which questions were ranked depended on their importance & specificity to Petersfield and on their frequency of submission. As more questions were received than Hustings time allowed, the extra questions were emailed immediately after each Hustings to all relevant candidates for their responses by midnight on May 5th 2021.