Exploring the franchise: Who can vote in UK elections? The franchise has been in the news recently due to Labour considering plans to extend the franchise to resident EU citizens and 16 and 17 year olds. The question of who gets to vote in... Posted 25 May 2023
What Electoral reforms have there been since 1997? While the need for reforming Westminster’s First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system is getting clearer every day, outside Westminster the process of reform has been slowly, but surely, going in the right direction. While... Posted 02 Mar 2023
Why does the Northern Ireland Assembly keep collapsing? In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, was reached by multi-party consensus to bring an end to the violence in Northern Ireland and establish the current political system. Unlike the... Posted 04 Nov 2022
For local democracy to flourish our representatives need the power to deliver New ERS research finds over two-thirds of councillors feel they lack the powers to represent the needs of their local community. Local government is at the front line of our democracy. It’s the closest level... Posted 10 Mar 2022
Democracy Made in England: Where Next for English Local Government? In the context of the changing nature of UK governance, England remains an anomaly. While the centres of power in the rest of the UK have shifted away from Westminster over the last two decades,... Posted 09 Mar 2022
How do Westminster election results compare to those of devolved institutions? This May, the sixth set of elections took place for each of the devolved institutions in the nations of Britain – the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament) and the London Assembly. It was a... Posted 20 Aug 2021
Here to Stay: Two Decades of Proportional Representation in Britain The 6 May 2021 was a milestone for the campaign for fairer votes in Britain. The date marked the sixth set of elections to take place for each of Great Britain’s devolved elected institutions –... Posted 31 Jul 2021
The PM’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda is another victim of Westminster’s warped electoral logic The Prime Minister’s Levelling Up agenda – announced with great fanfare on Thursday – risks leaving swathes of the country ignored. In not very subtle terms, the PM suggested new powers would only go to ideologically-aligned parts of... Posted 16 Jul 2021
As New Yorkers vote in their first preferential primary, in the UK it is under threat Voters in New York City were able to participate in their first preferential voting (called Ranked Choice Voting or RCV in America) primaries this week, making it the largest-ever American electorate for a preferential voting... Posted 25 Jun 2021
We need to talk about Westminster Debates about the future of the union and devolution to the UK’s nations and regions continue to dominate the constitutional sphere, as we have set out before, with the results of the May 2021 elections... Posted 04 Jun 2021