Recent Articles

Explore the Electoral Reform Society's home for articles and insights, or scroll through the Society's article archive below.

South Shields: Why bother with a by-election?

After David Miliband’s shock resignation we’re looking at a by-election in South Shields. At the Electoral Reform Society we care about elections. But in the case of South Shields we’re wondering what’s the point? The...

Posted 27 Mar 2013

What Scots really think about devolution?

Scots currently aren’t keen on independence, but most of us would like all major powers – including welfare and tax – exercised in Edinburgh, not Westminster. Today we launch a joint report with Scotcen to show what...

Posted 18 Mar 2013

Reviving the Health of Our Democracy

Political and constitutional reform has had a tough time of late but going into the next General Election has never been so important. Too often shoved into the ‘too difficult’ box, reform of our democratic...

Posted 12 Mar 2013

Scottish Public want bigger voice in politics

Last week politicians in Scotland were queuing up to call for more power to be exercised at local level. But it seems our politicians are coming late to the party on localism. Today we launch the...

Posted 12 Mar 2013

The 300 women ‘missing’ from Welsh public life

It’s International Women’s Day. And it seemed the right time to show just how badly women are faring in Welsh public life. Our Welsh Power Report assesses the levels of women across politics and public life,...

Posted 07 Mar 2013

STV’s Second Outing

In 2007 Scotland began using the Single Transferable Vote (STV) for local government elections. The First Past the Post system – once used for all public elections in mainland Britain – was consigned to history....

Posted 27 Feb 2013

Where are the women in local government?

At first glance, UK local government statistics aren’t exactly the most exciting topic for a blog. But they’re really important as they give us an insight into gender and politics in the UK today. The...

Posted 25 Feb 2013

Blanket ban on broadcasting ‘shutting voters out’

While some communities still face barriers accessing the internet, for others online channels like council websites, Twitter and Facebook are important ways of finding out information.  From big decisions like planning applications, through to everyday...

Posted 20 Feb 2013