News and Comment

The latest news and commentary from the Electoral Reform Society.

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Conservative manifesto: Missing pledges to improve our democracy

The launch of the Conservative manifesto yesterday was conspicuously light on democratic policy with little mention by way of reforms desperately needed to strengthen our democracy.   Voter ID Policy The Conservatives made only one proposal...

Posted 13 Jun 2024

Rishi Sunak

Changing boundaries shouldn’t change election results

For the past 30 years, political scientists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher have been investigating how new boundaries will impact the political makeup of Parliament. Whenever new constituency maps are designed, they estimate what the...

Posted 16 Jan 2024

Shouldn’t MPs win or lose their seats based on voters changing their minds

The Non-Battleground Election: Millions of voters are ignored

Last week, the Labour Party started the process of selecting their general election candidates for 211 ‘non-battleground’ constituencies in England. The description of these seats as being ‘non-battleground’ is telling, implying that Labour will not...

Posted 18 Dec 2023

Around 400 seats will see very little, if any, local campaigning from either of the two major UK parties