Welcome to the September edition of Democracy Club’s regular newsletter. All past emails are accessible in an online archive.

We’re looking for someone to chair our board

Democracy Club is seeking a new Chair for our board of non-executive directors. This is a voluntary role, with the successful candidate expected to serve for at least one term of three years.

Do you have experience chairing committees or boards? Good knowledge of UK politics, civic technology and/or digital service delivery? Want to get stuck in and help us build the future of digital democracy? If so you could be the person we’re looking for!

View the full advert and learn how to apply. Closing date 20 October.

Latest blogs

Summer’s been and gone. What do we have to show for it? In August we published two blogs looking at some of the less-public aspects of our work. The first considered Community Governance Reviews, the tricky-to-track method by which parish councils change their boundaries. This is key to our work because these can sometimes modify other council boundaries - but there isn’t even a comprehensive list of them.

We also published a summary of some work we recently completed for Walsall council. Working with their Electoral Services and GIS teams, we modified our polling station finder to display information about their review of polling stations and districts. Using the tool, the council was able to gather over a hundred responses, many more than they expected. Read the blog.

Scottish parliament and Senedd Cymru elections

Next year’s Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections are now available to view on Who Can I Vote For. Both of these elections will be held on new boundaries. Scotland has had boundary changes to take account of population changes since 2011, while the Senedd Cymru has had a complete change since the last election, with a new electoral system and expanded membership. We’re currently working on improving our postcode lookup to add precise details about these changes for voters in the two nations.

At time of writing we’ve identified 305 prospective candidates for the Scottish Parliament and 132 for the Senedd. You can download the full list from our candidates site (the official candidate lists won’t be published until early April). If you’re a candidate or party campaigner you can sign up for an account and add or edit details yourself.

On the Electoral Commission

Two interesting pieces on the recent history of the Electoral Commission were published this month. Computer Weekly carried an interview with the EC’s Head of Digital, which goes over the ‘cyber incident’ of 2023 in some detail.

Meanwhile, Spotlight on Corruption has published a detailed report on the implications of the 2022 Elections Act, which introduced a new power for the government to set out a ‘strategy and policy statement’ for the EC, which has the potential to seriously limit its independence.

Elections to watch

A by-election for the Senedd constituency of Caerphilly will be held on 23 October. This will likely be the last time First-Past-the-Post is used for a Senedd poll before the electoral system is changed in May. It’s a busy month for council by-elections too, including three seats up on Surrey county council on 16 October. You can see the full list of upcoming by-elections on the front page of Who Can I Vote For.

All the best

The Democracy Club Team