brass monkey wrote:
I vote for a person.
OK, so you think "s/he's a decent person, s/he gets my vote for
wanting protection for ducks in my local park?" ******** to the
party line?

Yes, ******** to the party line. Especially important if who
you vote for can't change the control of the council, like
this year where it was a choice of Labour staying in control
or Labour increasing their majority.

I was in the position - increasingly rare nowadays - of being
able to observe the actions of three of the candidates (one was
a parish councillor, two were active on the community forum, I'd
worked with all three of them myself) and was able to come to a
judgement of who to vote for based on their actions and on my
assessment of how effective they would be as a city councillor.

JGH