News and Comment

The latest news and commentary from the Electoral Reform Society.

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Our top 10 most read blogs in 2016

It’s been a busy year for the ERS – from a big set of elections in May, to the EU vote, Lords scandals (an annually-guaranteed affair, it seems), voter registration drives, party funding spats, and...

Posted 20 Dec 2016

5 simple ways to improve how we do democracy

It seems like the distant past now, but in the few weeks up to the registration deadline for the EU referendum, more than 1.35 million people applied to register. On the day of the deadline, 525,000 people applied to...

Posted 20 Sep 2016

The next four years for reform: our 2020 strategy

Over the past few years, the Electoral Reform Society has gone from strength to strength. As the world’s oldest pro-democracy organisation, we have a long history of fighting to build a better democracy. And now...

Posted 07 Sep 2016

Referendums are in vogue – so let’s get them right

Referendums are becoming increasingly popular, internationally and domestically. Since the first UK referendum in 1975, the UK has held three nationally, and 11 in UK countries or English regions, with even more at a local...

Posted 05 Sep 2016

Polling Station

Doing referendums differently

There’s no denying it: referendums have become a central feature of our politics. So it’s about time we started thinking seriously about how we should run them. Since 2011 we have had two UK-wide referendums...

Posted 01 Sep 2016