Dear Editor,

I’m all in favour of secret ballots, but secret candidates is taking it a bit far.

I looked on the West Midlands Police website for information on the candidates before voting for a new commissioner. The route to find out who they were was by no means obvious, but patience and persistence eventually rewarded me with of list of four names.

So I was very surprised when I got to the polling booth to find six names on the voting slip.

While it is up to candidates to get their own publicity in front of the public, surely an important duty of the returning officer is to ensure that we can at least find out who is standing. And the most obvious way to do that is to provide a list of candidates on the police website.

We can hardly make an informed choice if such basic information is missing.

Ellen Davies

Ross-on-Wye.

Editor’s Note:The Ross Gazette aimed to provide our readers with information about the six candidates in the lead-up to the PCC election. Their statements were featured on page two of the Gazette on Wednesday, April 20th.