The Ballotin - Democracy Club

Dear [%first_name | Democracy Club Volunteer%],

Democracy Club’s mission is to make this year’s elections more accessible for everyone. To achieve this, we need your help.

Democracy Club runs the UK’s election candidate database. This powers websites that will be seen by hundreds of thousands of voters in the run up to May’s elections, including The Electoral Commission’s voter information page, and our own WhereDoIVote.co.uk and WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk. 

Nominations for Scottish Parliament and London Assembly are published tomorrow afternoon (1 April). Nominations for all other elections are published the following week.

Find out how you can help.

This year we are collecting: 

• Election Hustings This year’s elections will see many virtual hustings taking place which hopefully will mean many more people can take part! We need your help finding these hustings and how people can access them.   
• Local political parties. Information on regional branches of the major parties, all in one place! With candidates avoiding excessive door-to-door canvassing and leafleting this year, online resources are all the more important.  
• Candidate information. Our aim is to provide as many of our candidate profiles as possible with photos, election statements, and links to social media pages. Create an account on our Candidates Website to start making edits to May 2021 Candidates!

Find the links to our crowdsourced databases on our Quests page.

Please share these crowdsourcing tasks with anyone you think might be interested. The wider our network, the more coverage we get across the UK! 

What else have we been up to?

We’ve had a busy time of it since January. Here’s a roundup of some recent articles and blog posts. 

Research

Democracy Club’s WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk was featured as a case study in a report published by the European Citizen Action Service.

News and views

Kate had an article published in Nation.Cymru on the need for voter tools for the Senedd election.

Sym wrote a blog post about M&Ms, glam rock, and data management.

Polling Stations

We've been steadily collecting polling station data from councils and adding it to WhereDoIVote.co.uk. We're updating the finder each Thursday, and keeping track in this sheet.

Remember, our finder can be added as a widget to any site for free. We also offer a combined 'elections widget', which offers elections, candidates and stations.

Who Can I Vote For?

Our new developers have hit the ground running with a host of updates and improvements to WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk. This includes the exciting (well, we’re excited) addition of some referendums and parish councils to our website.

Questions or comments? Get in touch by replying to this email!