Articles by Electoral Reform Society

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Tackling Europe’s democratic deficit

Over the last few years, the European democratic deficit has reached almost epic proportions. Nearly three-quarters of the British people believe their voice doesn’t count in the European Union, and 68% don’t trust it. At...

Posted 24 Mar 2014

Defending the postal vote

A BBC radio programme on postal vote fraud was aired last night, and it contained a call from a high court judge to scrap ‘on-demand’ postal votes. This knee-jerk reaction to the problem of fraud represents...

Posted 12 Mar 2014

Paying for parties

With party funding in the news thanks to Labour’s special conference last weekend, we thought we’d find out what the public thinks about the relationship between money and political parties. And it turns out that people...

Posted 05 Mar 2014

Clegg v Farage: good for democracy

A date has now been set for Nick Clegg’s debate with Nigel Farage on the merits of Britain’s membership of the European Union. And it’s good news for our democracy. People who are disengaged from party politics...

Posted 05 Mar 2014

We need to talk about PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions hit the headlines last week following a Hansard Society report that found nearly half of their respondents thought it ‘too noisy and aggressive’. The Speaker, John Bercow, supported the report, criticising the ‘orchestrated barracking’...

Posted 26 Feb 2014

Neglecting Wythenshawe

Voters in Wythenshawe and Sale East are getting an unusual amount of attention as they go to the polls today. In a by-election, the might of parties’ national infrastructure can be concentrated on a single...

Posted 13 Feb 2014

Time to Bite the Ballot

Today is the first-ever National Voter Registration Day – a fantastic initiative by Bite the Ballot to get as many (particularly younger) people on the electoral register as possible. A large number of schools, businesses, associations and...

Posted 05 Feb 2014

On dual candidacy, let’s play nice

The UK Government has confirmed its intention to lift the ban on dual candidacy in its Draft Wales Bill. In a nutshell, dual candidacy is when an individual contests both a constituency seat and a party...

Posted 18 Dec 2013

Senedd Cymru Welsh Parliament

Tomorrow’s Party: share your vision

This post was originally published by Democratic Audit. Contribute to our Tomorrow’s Party consultation here.    Kind words are rarely spoken about political parties nowadays. If members of the public think of them at all, they tend to...

Posted 09 Dec 2013

Pausing the Lobbying Bill

The Government’s concession this week to pause and briefly consult on the worst aspects of the deeply flawed Part 2 of the Lobbying Bill demonstrates the power and importance of collective organising and co-operative campaigning....

Posted 07 Nov 2013