This week, the Constitution Unit publishes a series of new and updated briefings on key constitutional topics. In this post – covering one of the series’ new topics – Alan Renwick and Lisa James describe the principles and mechanisms that underpin free and fair elections, and discuss the opportunities for strengthening these in the UK.
Continue readingOver the summer, ministers published plans for extensive electoral reforms. The headline proposal is the reduction of the voting age to 16. A raft of other measures will affect voter registration, campaign finance, election administration, and the role of the Electoral Commission. In this post, Alan Renwick argues that much of what the government proposes is good. But the newly appointed set of ministers responsible for elections policy will need to make further progress on some crucial matters.
Continue readingToday the Constitution Unit publishes a wide-ranging new report. The Constitutional Landscape: Options for Reform briefly summarises 31 areas of constitutional policy, describing the current state of affairs and the options for reform. In this post Lisa James, one of the report’s authors, explores its contents.
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John Pullinger, chair of the Electoral Commission and a guest speaker on the Unit’s summer conference panel on Elections and Electoral Reform, sets out four key areas where electoral law is in need of reform, arguing for improved access to registration, increased transparency when it comes to political donations, stronger and simpler electoral regulation, and a modernisation of electoral law.
Elections are at the heart of our constitution, giving people a voice when choices are made about how we are to be governed. They are a mechanism for the people to hold their governments accountable. A key test for a healthy democracy is whether people trust, value, and participate in elections. So how can we ensure that our electoral system remains effective?
An effective electoral system
An effective electoral system starts by putting the voter first. This means ensuring that as many eligible voters as possible are correctly registered, and that the process of voting is both secure and accessible to all.
The electoral system should support candidates, campaigners, and parties to get their message across, free from abuse, intimidation, and threats. It should provide transparency about campaigning activities, so we all know where campaigners’ money comes from and how it is spent.
It also needs to work for electoral administrators, supporting them to run elections effectively and efficiently, so that voters across the country receive the same high standard of service. There must be resilience in the system, so administrators can cope in the face of unexpected pressures.
At its core, it requires a simple and comprehensible canon of law so that everyone understands and can follow the rules without risk of being inadvertently caught out. The law also needs to work effectively in the context of the differences in approach to elections policy between the UK’s governments.
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With a general election due before the end of next year and numerous other elections set for the next 12 months, concerns have been raised about the ability to recruit enough temporary poll workers to staff polling stations, check voter ID and count the votes cast. Sarah Birch, Ferran Martínez i Coma and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino argue that sortition might provide a solution, allowing us to staff elections in the same way that we recruit jury members.
As the UK gears up for the 2024 electoral season, serious concerns are being voiced about the ability of local authorities to carry out the tasks entrusted to them. New requirements such as checking ID at polling stations have placed further strain on what was already a daunting challenge for many Electoral Returning Officers: staffing elections.
When we go to vote, few of us stop to think about the army of temporary workers who are regularly recruited to run polling stations and to count ballots. However, a recent report by the Association of Electoral Administrators has voiced considerable disquiet about the ability of local authorities to continue finding the people needed to do these jobs.
In the light of this, it would make sense for the UK to consider a system used in Spain, Belgium, Greece and a number of other countries: the recruitment of poll workers by lot (with training, compensation and exemptions). Juries have for centuries been composed via random selection, and this is a practice that has widespread legitimacy. Not only would such a system address the recruitment challenges faced by returning officers, it could very likely also help to address problems with popular confidence in the voting process and citizen engagement in elections.
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