Category Archives: Election law

The Election Law Channel is dedicated to coverage of UK election law, giving unrivalled detailed news of election law matters, explaining complex matters in plain English and setting out the practical relevance of technical legal provisions.

Mark Pack

Election hustings meetings: Electoral Commission relaxes rules

By Mark Pack | Tue 15th September 2009 - 2:20 pm

A wider range of meetings at which people get to question Parliamentary candidates should be exempt from election expense limits according to new guidance from the Electoral Commission.

The Electoral Commission’s previous guidance was that costs related to hustings meetings did not need to feature in any of the individual candidate election expense returns if all the candidates for a constituency were invited. This was a welcome simplification of the previous position where many meeting organisers (partly for good reasons and partly for more debatable ones) believed that in practice they could only organise a hustings meeting if everyone agreed to …

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Mark Pack

Peter Mandelson toys with electoral reform

By Mark Pack | Mon 14th September 2009 - 10:14 pm

Following his speech to the Progress conference earlier today, Peter Mandelson answered a question about electoral reform. After defending the existing system, he went on to say:

Now, does that mean to say that there is no change that could be made in our voting system in our country so that people really feel that it’s fairer and more representative? No,I don’t think we should reject contemplating any sort of change and I think that’s something that we’re going to have to address in the coming months.

Hat-tip: Left Foot Forward

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Mark Pack

What do the academics say? Ballot paper ordering

By Mark Pack | Sat 12th September 2009 - 4:55 pm

Welcome to a new occasional series covering what academics have to say about politics, elections and public opinion. As with most things in life, academic research comes in various flavours, including the good, the bad and the stating the bleeding obvious (though investigating ‘what everyone knows’ does have a role, as just sometimes it isn’t true after all).

Today’s selection is about the order in which names appear on ballot papers can affect election results.

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Mark Pack

Parliamentary candidates can now keep their home addresses secret

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th September 2009 - 11:20 am

A few months ago there was quite a controversy in Parliament over attempts to allow MPs to keep their home addresses secret at election time. A large part of the controversy stemmed from the unsatisfactory way part of the debate was handled in Parliament – which fuelled suspicion about some MPs wanting to keep their addresses secret in order to make it harder for people to work out whether they were exploiting rules over Parliamentary expenses.

Anyway, after debate back and forth the law was changed and the new rules are now in force, courtesy of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. These rules only apply to Parliamentary elections and by-elections, so the first outing for them is likely to be in the by-election to replace Michael Martin.

What, then, do the rules say?

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Mark Pack

New electoral registration rules now in force for elections

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th September 2009 - 11:50 am

Good news: this time, it is a change in election law that is a jolly good thing. In the past, although the electoral register is updated each month, there was a pause over the summer and early autumn whilst councils carry out their big annual update. That means that for elections held during the pause, there was no way for people who had recently moved in to the area to get on the register. They therefore lost their right to vote in the election.

But now new rules, which came into force on 4 September, mean that such people who have recently moved in can get on the register and vote.

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Mark Pack

Why should opting out of double-glazing direct mail stop you hearing about a local planning application?

By Mark Pack | Wed 4th February 2009 - 10:20 am

Use of the electoral register is, quite rightly, tightly controlled. The full register can only be used for running elections and a very small number of other tasks, such as if the police want to use it to help track down a person. As a database of names and addresses is also useful for a wide range of other purposes there is an ‘edited’ version of the register which anybody can buy – but which anyone can also opt out from appearing on.

However, by having just the one type of register available for wider use all sorts of different uses …

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Mark Pack

Missing: one marked register

By Mark Pack | Tue 3rd February 2009 - 11:54 am

News via the Press Association:

The SNP demanded an inquiry after it emerged that a record of everyone who voted in last year’s Glenrothes by-election has gone missing.

The party had asked to see the marked registers from November’s crucial by-election – which resulted in a shock victory for Labour.

I’m not hugely surprised by this, as after the 2005 general election there were numerous complaints from people who tried to access the marked register for their constituency about the records being in a poor shape, delayed for long periods on in part missing. The rules then were that marked registers were …

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Mark Pack

Did Labour’s Camden election campaign break the law?

By Mark Pack | Thu 7th December 2006 - 11:57 pm

Labour’s eve-of-poll election leaflet in Kentish Town looks like it could land them in legal hot water for breaking election law.

 

Photo of Labour's election leaflet

 

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Also posted in Council by-elections | Tagged and | 38 Comments
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