Recent Articles

The Electoral Reform Society's article archive.

Voter fraud: the nut and the sledgehammer

Last week, the Former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, published his report into tackling electoral fraud in the UK. While we should of course take all instances of voter fraud very seriously,...

Posted 15 Aug 2016

Driving Licence Voter ID

David Cameron’s Farewell Gift

Now that David Cameron has moved out of Number 10, the staggering bill he has left behind is starting to become apparent. Since 2010, he has appointed 205 new life peers to the House of...

Posted 08 Aug 2016

House of Lords

Why electoral reform is a trade union issue

This is an article from Rory Scothorne and Josiah Mortimer ahead of the Unite union’s policy conference starting this weekend. The text is from the ERS’ new trade union leaflet ‘Trade Unions and Electoral Reform‘, and follows an overwhelming vote at last year’s...

Posted 08 Jul 2016

5 things this EU vote has taught us about referendums

Whichever way you feel about the result, most people are glad the EU referendum campaign is over. To put it diplomatically, it wasn’t the highest quality debate in the world. Particularly for those on the...

Posted 05 Jul 2016

How do Conservative Party leadership elections work?

(Updated for October 2024) Historically there weren’t elections for the leader of the Conservative party, but, following the machinations surrounding the appointment of Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1963, elections among the MPs were brought in,...

Posted 05 Jul 2016

Tories don’t use First Past the Post to elect their leader. It’s one rule for us and one for them

Brexit and our broken electoral system

This is a guest blog, originally published by Noel Longhurst. The opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Electoral Reform Society. Ever since the result of the EU...

Posted 01 Jul 2016

We can do referendums better in the UK. Here’s how.

This article was first published by Times Red Box Last week’s referendum raised some serious questions about the nature of the democracy we have – and the type we want to create. Unlike other countries,...

Posted 30 Jun 2016