News and Comment

The latest news and commentary from the Electoral Reform Society.

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Closing the EU’s democracy Gap

There is an ever-widening divide between the European institutions and the British people. We are members of the European Union, yet most of us don’t feel part of it or able to shape its policies....

Posted 28 Apr 2014

As long as it’s interim

Last week I attended two different events which discussed the possibilities a written constitution presents to Scotland. This week I am due to attend another. Scotland has already begun to think about what a constitution...

Posted 24 Mar 2014

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

North Korean elections: The veneer of democracy

This weekend the North Korean ‘election’ took place. Of course, it wasn’t exactly democratic; it wasn’t really even an election. Each seat had only one candidate, and voters had the choice of voting either for...

Posted 10 Mar 2014

Pyongyang North Korea Bronze statue

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