Voters across England will be turned away from polling stations today for lacking IDMay 4th 2023 was a historic local election for all the wrong reasons. For the first time, voters in England were turned away from polling stations as they lacked the right forms of ID. The...Posted 04 May 2023
Why do so many parties use transferable voting for their leadership elections?The 27th of March sees the announcement of the results of the SNP leadership election. As we wrote a few weeks ago, the SNP uses the Alternative Vote to elect their leader – and they’re...Posted 24 Mar 2023
Why will the government’s voter ID scheme cost us up to £180,000,000 a decade?Making it harder for people to vote is an expensive business. The government’s impact assessment of the Elections Act suggested the new scheme demanding certain forms of ID at polling stations could cost up to...Posted 22 Feb 2023
Will I need photo ID to get a postal vote?Slowly, the country is waking up to the fact that the government have changed the rules for who can vote. Voters on the 4th of May who want to take part in local elections across...Posted 10 Feb 2023
All the ways the government decided not to make their voter ID rules fairerThis May, millions of people will be asked to bring photo ID to the polling station for the first time. We’ve raised concerns that the list of ID options published by the government gives few...Posted 23 Jan 2023
What are the alternatives to First Past the Post?Westminster’s First Past the Post system means we don’t get a parliament that fully represents the voting public. Millions of people can support one party and get a single MP, while a few hundred thousand...Posted 19 Jan 2023
The top 5 most-read ERS articles from 2022Every year we have a look through the stats to see which of our articles were the most popular with readers in the year coming to a close. So if you missed them the first...Posted 15 Dec 2022
Brown Commission reforms offer first blueprint for much-needed democratic renewalGordon Brown has now released A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy – the findings of his Commission into how to repair our political system. In publishing this report, Keir Starmer is...Posted 06 Dec 2022
Life-time appointments to Lords should not be handed out as rewards for failureA seat in the House of Lords is a lifetime appointment to make our laws, not a gift to be handed out by a prime minister as they head out the door. Yet the prime...Posted 01 Nov 2022
Cash-strapped councils to spend £1.3 million on 40,000 mirrors as part of voter ID schemeA parliamentary question has revealed yet more details of the government’s expensive scheme to demand ID at polling stations. Luke Pollard MP asked the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities how many mirrors would...Posted 01 Nov 2022