Last night, in the final hours before the EU voter registration deadline, the official registration website crashed.  Many people who were wanting to register because they were inspired by the TV debates, or were planning to register late, were locked out of the referendum.  Many of these were young people wanting to vote for the…Read more EU Voter Registration Website Crashes

As the UK heads to the polls for 'Super Thursday' today's headlines are being taken over by events in Barnet.  Reports are that many people are being turned away from the polls because their name is not on the register.  It seems that many polling stations had wrong/incomplete registers.  The Independent are reporting that: 'An estimated…Read more The #Barnet blog: context and research on today’s polling problems

Earlier in the month I attended the 13th meeting of Electoral Management Bodies organised by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, held in Bucharest, Romania.  Leontine Loeber and I presented our proposed research project on 'Improving electoral management: The organisational determinants of electoral integrity'. The aim of the project is to increase the existing…Read more Our survey of European Electoral Management Boards

Last month, Bite the Ballot and I presented a draft report to the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation.  The report pointed out, at a time when millions are missing from the electoral register, what can be done to bring about a more inclusive electoral register. The APPG has now published a final version of…Read more UK Parliamentarians endorse voter registration reforms

Elections could not happen without the hundreds of thousands of people who give up their time to staff polling stations and ensure votes are issued, cast & counted. These poll workers are a crucial resource for electoral officials and many countries experience problems recruiting sufficient numbers of poll workers. Indeed, approximately 120,000 people are estimated to…Read more Why do poll workers volunteer?

The number of people on the UK electoral register has been in long-term decline.  It was estimated that up to 7.5 million people were not registered in 2014.   At the end of the transition to individual electoral registration, there are another 1.4 million fewer names on the register. Dramatically, the number of attainers, our…Read more New report: Getting the missing millions back on the electoral register

I have recently sent out a survey to electoral officials in local government to try to assess the full effects of individual electoral registration in Britain. The questions posed are based on statements from interviews with electoral officials in 2011 about what they thought the effects would be.  The aim is to see whether what was…Read more Individual Electoral Registration Survey

Our British Leaders books, published earlier in the year, made The Times Top 6 politics books of 2015, it was announced last weekend. I recently gave a talk which explained the method we used to assess political leaders at Churchill College, University of Cambridge.  The video is below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h02ETZAkd74