Since Finanical Crisis of 2007-8, austerity has been the dominant theme of UK public policy. Successive governments have sought to cut back on public spending to reduce the budget deficit. Austerity has been a key election issue, with cuts to schools and hospitals featuring prominently in election campaigns. In this new article, with Tyrone Jervier,…Read more The effects of public sector austerity on voter outreach
Jeremy Corbyn summarised many with his party's result in the 2017 UK General Election. Immediately after the election, I put his result into historical context in a piece for The Conversation: Jeremy Corbyn’s stock has been on a wild ride in the last couple of years. When he was elected leader of the British Labour…Read more Jeremy Corbyn: where does his ‘success’ stand in Labour’s long history
It is general election night in the U.K. In advance, here was my guide that I wrote for the night on The Conversation
I recently jointly presented research that I'm doing with colleagues from the Electoral Management Research Network (Leontine Loeber, Holly Ann Garnett and Carolien van Ham) at the 14th Conference of European Electoral Management Boards. The conference took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. The research looks at how the management of elections can be improved. My focus…Read more The 14th Conference of European Electoral Management Boards
Are on you on the electoral register? Can you remember? The UK recently introduced online electoral registration, but there is no mechanism for citizens to check if they are already registered. The result is an avalanche of duplicate applications for electoral officials as citizens register again 'just in case'. Green Party co-Leader Caroline Lucas MP…Read more Why isn’t electoral registration fully online?
Introducing individual electoral registration into Britain was long predicted to have had an impact on student registration. Previously, they were automatically enrolled by their universities; now they are not, and many have fallen off the electoral roll as a result. But an amendment passed in the Lords this week would let them register at the same time as they enrolled…Read more Getting students onto the electoral register
Would elections be better run if they were organised centrally by the state? Or should local electoral officials be given more discretion to accommodate local preferences? This debate has ran most prominently for decades in the US. But there has been little academic research on the topic. I'm therefore pleased to see my article on…Read more Centralising Electoral Management
