News and Comment

The latest news and commentary from the Electoral Reform Society.

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How do elections work in Latvia?

Latvia’s election this Saturday (1st October) has been in the calendar for a while – a referendum is required to dissolve the Latvian parliament early. Such a vote can be called either by the president,...

Posted 15 Sep 2022

In Latvia most parties are broadly right-of-centre

How do elections work in Sweden?

Sunday 11th September is election day in Sweden – where voters can elect a new parliament and decide the make-up of the country’s regional and municipal councils – all Swedish political bodies are elected to...

Posted 29 Aug 2022

Swedish ballots

How did New Zealand get proportional representation?

Prior to 1996, MPs were elected to New Zealand’s House of Representatives using the same unrepresentative First Past The Post (FPTP) system that is used to elect MPs to the UK’s House of Commons. Since...

Posted 02 Aug 2022

New Zealand’s journey provides lessons for the UK

Proportional representation would end the scourge of tactical voting

The losses in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton, where the Liberal Democrats overturned a 24,000 Conservative majority, were both the result of declining support for Johnson’s government, but also it would appear, the result of widescale tactical voting....

Posted 03 Jul 2022

Tactical voting is often presented as the answer, but the truth is it is just a symptom

Jersey’s new electoral system has first outing

Two years ago, the Electoral Reform Society looked at the island of Guernsey’s new voting system where voters had to choose up to 38 candidates in a single island-wide ‘thirty-eight past the post’ election. But...

Posted 23 Jun 2022

Jersey 2022 even a simplified plurality system will still lead to unfair, distorted results

A big victory on Senedd reform

When Ron Davies described the idea of devolution as a ‘process not an event’ back in 1999 he had little idea his words would come to describe a quarter of a century of reform in...

Posted 16 Jun 2022