Welcome to the November 2024 edition of Democracy Club’s regular newsletter. All past emails are accessible in an online archive. The Electoral Commission’s election reportAt the start of the month the Electoral Commission published its report on the 2024 local general elections. As with previous EC reports it covers not only the administrative side of the election, but also incorporates opinion polling on public perception of the electoral process, and a survey of candidates. Most excitingly, we’re in it! The report’s first recommendation states: “We will also look at whether the Election Information tool we run with Democracy Club could be used to provide information for voters about the support they can access at their own local polling station.” We’ve taken a quick look at the report on our blog. The City of London, againA correction: the next City of London elections are in 2025 and not, as stated in the last newsletter, 2026. Apologies for any confusion. On which note, our most recent blog takes a look at the Square Mile’s unique franchise, which allows workers to register and vote alongside residents. To facilitate this the City keeps a separate electoral register solely for use in its council elections. Curious? Read the blog. A €1 million ideaThe main Democracy Club news this month is that we failed to win some money. Back in August we submitted a joint bid, alongside mySociety and The Politics Project, for the Google.org impact challenge ‘strengthening democracy in Europe’. Our project, tentatively entitled ‘WhoDoesWhat’, is a proposal to build on mySociety’s famous ‘WriteToThem’ tool, using our data to produce a new lookup which explains the layers of government which relate to any UK address (a bit like WhoCanIVoteFor’s ‘Your Area’ pages). We asked for a lot of cash - €1 million - but we believe that this project will have an outsized impact. mySociety’s Alex Parsons has written up an excellent overview of the idea on their blog. We may not have got the money (it was always unlikely, with so much competition and a relatively tiny €15 million pot), but in the process we accidentally got quite excited about the project. We’re meeting with mySociety and The Politics Project shortly to thrash out where we go next. So watch this space - and as Alex says, if you happen to have a million quid going spare, we’d love to talk… Join us in BirminghamWe’re planning a little afternoon get-together on 1 February in Birmingham, our first in-person event since 2019. If you’re a user of our candidate database, whether as a volunteer, researcher or campaigner, this is for you! We’ll be talking about our future plans for the site, other projects, and will be seeking input on how these are shaped. Sign up here. NotwestminsterNotwestminster is a free event for everyone who has something positive to say about local democracy and anyone who is up for the challenge of making it better. It’s happened every year for the past decade, and we’re delighted to be sponsoring next year’s event on 15 February. It’s in Huddersfield, and tickets are now available to book. Elections to watchThere are 18 council by-elections over the next four weeks. All the best, The Democracy Club Team |