After nearly a hundred years without serious modification, the Victorian system of electoral registration in Britain was radically reformed by the Coalition government from 2014, as a new online system of electoral registration was introduced. Not only that, registration was switched to be on an individual basis. And you had to provide your national insurance…Read more Good news: automatic re-registration may be on the way

It’s been a chaotic week in Parliament this week following the announcement of a proposed deal between the UK and EU for the UK’s withdrawal.  And yet we can expect much more in the weeks ahead of the Commons vote. In advance of this, I noticed that Number Ten Downing Street is placing adverts on…Read more Should Number Ten pay Twitter to promote Brexit?

The London School of Economics Press has published a new book on The UK's Changing Democracy today.   My chapter on Are UK elections conducted with integrity, with sufficient turnout? is free to download along with the rest of the book.  Enjoy!

Last week, I was one of the co-chairs (with Holly Ann Garnett) of the conference on '“Building Better Elections: New Challenges in Electoral Management', held at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA, last week. The workshop considered how elections could be better run during times when electoral officials face major new challenges…Read more The Boston Building Better Elections Workshop

How well run are UK elections?  As part of the 2018 Democratic Audit, I look at how well elections are run in the UK, and whether the systems for registering voters and encouraging turnout are operating effectively and fairly.  My audit has just been published on the Democratic Audit website. The headlines are that UK elections…Read more An Audit of UK Electoral Integrity – 2018

The UK government introduced pilots for voter ID at the recent 2018 English local elections.  There is an ongoing debate about the need for voter ID in Britain.  In a  study of electoral integrity at English local elections Alistair Clark and I undertook a poll worker survey - a well established tool to work how…Read more Voter ID: our first results suggest local election pilot was unnecessary and ineffective

It was a great honour to be a finalist in the ESRC Impact Awards last month.  An even greater honour was to receive a silver medal from former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Find out more about the work on the ESRC website, or watch this video below, which profiles the UEA collaboration with Bite…Read more UEA Impact Recognised by ESRC

Since March, I've been in Sydney, working as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Electoral Integrity Project. While in Australia I've been presenting draft material from a forthcoming book on Comparative Electoral Management.  Having presented at ANU and Canberra over the past few weeks, this week I presented in Sydney. Two draft chapters can…Read more Comparative Electoral Management – draft chapters

Calling all electoral officials in England! Alistair Clark and I are running a survey of the 2018 local election poll workers. Email invitations have been sent directly to all Returning Officers. Please look out for the email invitations get in touch with any questions. For more info: http://www.electoralmanagement.com/2018-english-local-elections-survey/

The English local elections of 2018 are just behind us.  Turnout, as is usual, was low. Next time around universities will have a statutory role to play in getting their students registered to vote.  But they need not wait. Here's a short piece on this for HE Fortnightly. Universities face new directions from the Office…Read more How universities can encourage their students to vote