ERS in the Press – March 2019Brexit might be dominating the news, but the rolling constitutional crisis that we call Westminster is still up to its usual tricks. We’ve spent the last month getting press attention for some of our biggest...Posted 29 Mar 2019
New figures demolish the government’s argument for mandatory voter IDThe government’s case for excluding voters who lack ID is getting weaker by the day. Last week the Electoral Commission released its latest round of statistics on voter fraud for 2018. The numbers were revealing....Posted 26 Mar 2019
Five New Year’s resolutions ministers should be signing up toIf 2018 has shown us anything, it’s that the debates over the state of our democracy are as crucial as ever. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the controversial ID trials at the local elections,...Posted 31 Dec 2018
How does mandatory voter ID disenfranchise the public?The government is set to face a legal challenge to its plans to ban people without ID from voting across the UK – starting with the trials it intends to run at the 2019 local...Posted 04 Dec 2018
ERS in the Press – November 2018Here is just a highlight of the coverage our campaigns have received in the press this month. MPs call for end to ‘political gender gap’ at Westminster We coordinated the media for the Centenary Action Group’s campaign...Posted 30 Nov 2018
Foreign influence, not voter fraud, is the biggest threat to our democracy“Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’, so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” wrote one Republican businessman earlier this year. “Yes” came the...Posted 12 Nov 2018
The government is wearing blinkers over Voter ID – and it’s voters who will sufferThis week the Cabinet Office launched its call for councils to join a second-round of voter ID pilots, due to take place in next May’s elections. In the prospectus, ministers are keen to frame the...Posted 28 Aug 2018
Government figures have revealed the potential cost of voter ID – and it is enormousFrom the get go, the government’s plans to force voters to show ID when voting was a solution looking for a problem, and risked shutting out tens of thousands of voters. Now we have learnt...Posted 16 Aug 2018
Our democracy faces many threats – but the government has picked the wrong priorityIt’s not just campaigners saying it any more: democracy is officially at risk, according to parliament’s digital, culture, media and sport committee. Britain’s main campaign rules were drawn up in the late 1990s, before social...Posted 02 Aug 2018
What were these ‘so-called’ trials of voter ID supposed to prove?One of the great mysteries of the voter ID trials in May’s English local elections was what exactly the trials were meant to be testing. Out of 44.4 million votes cast in 2017, there were...Posted 19 Jul 2018