Ruairi Kendall is standing as an independent candidate to be York Central's next MP and has one goal: to change the country’s voting system.

The 21-year-old, who works at Sainsbury’s, describes himself as a “protest candidate” and admits that his chances of winning are slim, to say the least.

But he feels first-past-the-post doesn’t work – favouring the biggest parties – and wants to make a stand to change this.

“I’m not just a protest candidate, I’m going to be the protest candidate,” Ruairi said. “If you want to vote for anyone that isn’t Labour or Tory, I’m the only protest candidate.

“No one else is going to win and neither am I, but at least I express the desire to want to vote for anyone who isn’t those two.”

He wants to implement STAR voting, where voters score each candidate out of five stars and the person with the most stars wins. It aims to elect “majority preferred winners” and let voters focus on the candidates and issues rather than political parties, according to the Star Voting website.  

Ruairi also wants to implement mandatory voting (also called compulsory voting), where every registered voter is required to take part in an election.

He told The Press he is standing in the general election because he “felt dissatisfied in only able to vote for one candidate”.

“I thought I needed to express that, although I wasn’t satisfied with Rachael Maskell, I’m not keen on any of the other candidates,” he said. “And I want to judge each candidate, rather than just choose one candidate that I was only marginally satisfied.”

He added: “Under first-past-the-post it’s so easy for politicians to become entrenched because of the duopoly between the Tories and Labour. They don’t really need to be great; they just need to be not as bad as the other one.”

If elected, I'll stand down if I can get electoral reforms passed, says Ruairi

When asked how he expects to do at the election, Ruairi replied: “Oh, terrible. My hope is that I might get my [£500] deposit back.” Candidates must receive at least five per cent of the votes to have their deposit returned.

Ruairi, who moved to York from Northern Ireland to study in 2021, admits that he has little to offer in tackling key issues in the city – like poverty and housing – and his only goal is to push for electoral reform.

Read next:

“If I get elected, once I get those reforms through I will resign," he said. "I appreciate I do not have enough experience in the world to be an MP and represent all of York forever – I just want these reforms through.

“If I get elected and I can’t get those reforms through I will still resign. There’s no point in me taking up that space and that voice if I cannot actually represent.”

Asked why people should bother voting for him if that’s the case, Ruairi said: “Every issue is an electoral reform issue. If you cannot vote for a candidate that you feel represents you, you don’t have a way to express your views on the issue.”