The Ballotin: Democracy Club's newsletter
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Welcome to the February 2024 edition of Democracy Club’s regular newsletter. All past emails are accessible in an online archive.
In this newsletter:
- Dates, deadlines, and drama for the May elections
- Our latest blog posts
- News from our friends
- Developments in electoral law
- Elections to watch
Dates, deadlines and drama
Two months to go until the 2 May local, Mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections! Will a general election be called for the same day? We don’t know! But what we do know is that the Government has until midnight on 26 March to decide. After that there won’t be enough time to fit a parliamentary election into the 2 May timetable.
Some other dates for your calendar: the deadline to stand as a candidate in the London Mayoral and Assembly elections is 27 March, and 5 April for the other English and Welsh elections. The official candidate lists will be published between 27 March and 2 April in London, and between 5 April and 8 April everywhere else. The voter registration deadline is 16 April.
There remains a little uncertainty around the PCC and Mayoral elections in the West Midlands and South Yorkshire. The Government has decided to abolish these two PCCs and transfer the powers to the respective Combined Authorities. Legislation to this effect has been laid in parliament, but the PCC in West Midlands has applied for a judicial review. This is further discussed in our electoral change blog, below.
Latest blog posts
Dealing with electoral change and uncertainty
The electoral landscape isn’t static - boundaries and organisations can and do change over time. In this blog we look at some of the work we do to manage this change, and discuss a current knotty problem introduced by English devolution, replete with a little legal drama. Read the blog.
The Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill
We take a look at the newly introduced Scottish electoral reform bill, which introduces a range of changes to local and devolved elections, as well as suggesting some interesting electoral innovations such as digital poll cards. Read the blog.
Fawcett Society case study
Democracy Club’s election candidate data allows the Fawcett Society to produce hard-hitting research on gender inequalities in British politics. Learn more about this partnership.
News from elsewhere
Our friends at mySociety recently launched the Local Intelligence Hub. A joint project with the Climate Coalition and Green Alliance, the hub allows you to find and interrogate data about local MPs, constituencies, public opinion and the climate and nature movement. The Hub also incorporates Democracy Club’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate data in a browsable map. mySociety recently began writing ‘democracy month notes’ to keep track of their work in this area.
Meanwhile our pals at Newspeak House have launched the GE2024 Election Tech Handbook, a crowdsourced resource for technologists building things for the upcoming UK general election, both partisan and non-partisan.
Recent developments in electoral law
Earlier in the month the UK and Denmark signed a voting rights treaty, allowing citizens of each country to vote in one-another’s elections. This is the fifth such treaty the UK has signed with other nations since June 2019.
Elections to watch
The Rochdale parliamentary by-election is being held on 29 Feb. The Lewisham Mayoral by-election takes place on 7 March.
Another parliamentary recall petition is on the cards after the suspension of the MP for Blackpool South.
Is it unusual to see so many by-elections over the course of a parliament? By recent standards, yes: the Institute for Government has dug into the numbers.
All the best, The Democracy Club Team