Recent Articles

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

Cheryl Gillan on women in politics

This is a guest post by Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham and former Secretary of State for Wales. The views, opinions and positions expressed within are those of the author alone and...

Posted 29 Sep 2014

Something in the air

Scotland is shrouded in a muggy haar today, and it feels as if we’ve been cut off from the rest of the world in order to concentrate and exercise our democratic right to vote: for...

Posted 18 Sep 2014

The government is still dominated by men

As the dust settles on the Government reshuffle, you would be forgiven for thinking that the genders are now fairly represented on the front benches. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite this week’s high-profile...

Posted 17 Jul 2014

The ailing dragon – healing Welsh democracy

There’s a crisis of confidence in politics, which cannot be allowed to continue. After countless scandals and inquiries, people are left thinking that politics isn’t working for them. The Hansard Society’s audit of political engagement found that...

Posted 09 Jul 2014

Women and Scottish independence

This blog was first posted on Engender As the date of the referendum draws ever nearer, and the gender gap in the polls shows no sign of closing, there seem to be more events targeting women...

Posted 03 Jul 2014

The new rotten boroughs?

How would you like to live in a one party state? You may wonder why anyone would ask given that this is the UK, not North Korea.  After all, we can all vote tomorrow if...

Posted 21 May 2014

38,000 denied a vote

Tens of thousands of people across England are being denied a vote in next week’s local elections, owing to the undemocratic phenomenon of uncontested seats. In this year’s elections there are seven wards which are...

Posted 16 May 2014

Just three out of 22 Cabinet ministers are females

What a dispiriting week for women. Following Maria Miller’s resignation, just three out of 22 Cabinet ministers are females – putting the UK government at a 15-year low and near rock bottom in comparison with...

Posted 11 Apr 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

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