Richard Pope, Francis Irving and Julian Todd have developed a site – The Straight Choice – that allows you to upload election leaflets as they come through your door – with the intention of promoting consistency and honesty. It’s an interesting idea. And – as you come here partly because you often get unpopular arguments, [...]
Posts under ‘Elections’
Left front = a table?
One of the nice things about the dynamic way that the internet arranges things is that you sometimes stumble upon artifacts that you don’t understand, but that look fascinating. This Icelandic blog, for instance, is a complete mystery to me. I found it years ago and visit it once every few months. I’ve no idea [...]
India votes!
Over the next month or so, the worlds biggest democracy will go to the polls. That’s over 700 million voters. Here are some photos over on Flickr: Promoting positivity about democracy in Hyderabad. I love the pride with which some of the photographers annotate their pictures – a satisfaction in participation. Note the marks on the [...]
Should prisoners be allowed to vote?
Erwin James, writing in The Guardian, thinks so, and it doing so, makes an important wider argument about why democracy matters – and how important inclusivity is. “The lives of the people we imprison are usually unstable and dysfunctional, so much so that that few have ever experienced being involved in the democratic process. The [...]
Home PgDn
Time for a look at Chapter three of the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control. This chapter is the section of the green paper that focuses on democracy, so there’s a lot to talk about. The chapter says that a Conservative Government would: provide citizens in all our large cities with the opportunity to [...]
SysRq F12
Part three of a series of articles looking at the Conservative local government green paper, Shift Control. This time, chapter two. This chapter is about localism, and promises that a Conservative Government would: give local residents the power to determine the balance between the level of council tax and the level of services delivered; drastically [...]
Do a good deed over the weekend?
If you edit any website or blog, why not make sure that there is a link to the Electoral Commission’s ‘About My Vote‘ website. It encourages people to register and makes it all as easy as possible to do it online. It’s even not that bad from a usability point of view which isn’t a [...]
Ballot design
Before politics stopped being fairly boring in the late summer last year, the book of the year looked like it was going to be Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge. It’s still worth a look when you need a break from Robert Peston – and one of their areas of interest has been ballot design [...]
Reading Pads
(Pronounced ‘Redding’). The UK Labour Party – like most political parties – has a fairly well-tested ‘Voter ID’ system. This is a means of ensuring that – on election day – they can nag everybody who they think is a Labour voter into the polling booth before polls close. Essentially, carbon copies of voter lists [...]
