As scholars such as Susan Hyde have documented, it is now an international norm for national elections to be observed by overseas government officials and international organisations.  Even governments that intend to deliberately manipulate the electoral process, counter-intuitively, invite electoral observers to document the quality of election. Election observation was once limited to newer democracies…Read more International electoral observers at the UK 2015 general election

I was delighted to be invited to give the Opening Speech at the Association of Electoral Administrators conference in Brighton on Sunday night.  The topic of my talk was ‘From here to where? Modernisation of electoral administration in Britain.’ Elections receive widespread coverage in the news and media.  Many (normal) people will already be fed…Read more The future of UK electoral administration

Gordon Brown announced his decision to stand down as an MP at the next general election this week. His time as Prime Minister has been much criticised but Jim Buller and I have recently published an article in Parliamentary Affairs arguing that we should factor context into our assessment of political leaders.  This leads to…Read more (Re) Assessing Gordon Brown as Prime Minister

Coming back from paternity leave this week, I was pleased find the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform's report on Voter Engagement in the UK had been published. I was honoured to give to be invited to give oral evidence to the committee earlier in the year.  Here are my written submissions of evidence…Read more Improving Turnout: The Voter Engagement Inquiry

The Scottish independence referendum took place yesterday.  Thankfully, it seems that this was not one poling day which suffered from problems with electoral management.  I've written a blog post that explains more on Eastminster and the Democratic Audit. Scotland has voted no in the referendum. National soul searching, political repercussions and significant constitutional reform may (or…Read more Electoral management in the Scottish independence referendum: a new blog post

I was on the BBC's Sunday Politics Scotland show yesterday, briefly speaking about postal voting and voter fraud, in the context of the forthcoming Scottish referendum.Postal voting has become increasingly popular in the UK in recent years, but there have been some accusations that it allows electoral fraud:For the next few days, you can watch the clip…Read more In defence of postal voting

How have the British political party leaders performed during austerity? What is a fair way of assessing them? Dr. Jim Buller and I have recently edited a special issue of Parliamentary Affairs, based on a University of East Anglia workshop that addresses these questions. The special issue includes our own article which further develops an approach…Read more New Research on assessing British party leaders during austerity