1735 British Virgin Islands Assembly elections

Background

In early 1735 Governor William Matthew established a Council and Assembly for both Tortola and Virgin Gorda. Although the six-member Councils were appointed by the Governor, the nine-member Assemblies were elected.[1][2]

Electoral system

Tortola was divided into three three-member constituencies; Fat Hog Bay, Road and Saka Bay. Virgin Gorda had two constituencies, with Valley electing six members and North and South Sound electing three.[1] Voters were generally the residents rather than the freeholders.[1]

Aftermath

Following the elections, it became apparent that Governor Matthew had misinterpreted his commission. As a result, the creation of the Assemblies was illegal. Matthew was reprimanded by the Lords of Trade and the Assemblies were subsequently disbanded, although the Councils continued to meet.[1] Elections were not held again until 1773.

gollark: GEORGE *is* to be made more mobile friendly || cryoapionic entities of class ς.
gollark: That wouldn't make sense unless you actually have a pointer type, surely.
gollark: And if it's not bidirectional you can just require messages to be cryptographically signed and drop a lot of complex bits.
gollark: In this situation you can even avoid the bootstrapping-y issues of P2P networks as you can probably just connect back to whoever infected you.
gollark: But making your own probably wildly insecure P2P network to propagate commands is cooler!

References
  1. Isaac Dookhan (1975) A History of the British Virgin Islands 1672 to 1970, Caribbean University Press, p26
  2. Pearl Varlack and Norwell Harrigan (1977) The Virgins: A Descriptive and Historical Profile, The Caribbean Research Institute College of the Virgin Islands, p20
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.