Tag Archives: jury service

Lib Dems need to do something about jury duty

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The importance to our judicial system of having a jury of ‘ordinary’ people who are the sole judge of guilt in a case is a thing of which we should be immensely proud but, having done my jury duty I feel it is in need of huge reform.

In October a dreaded letter arrived out of the blue. Some malevolent machine had drawn my name out of the unlucky lottery, and I was summoned to appear for Jury Duty.
It is quite an inverse lottery. According to the letter about 200,000 are chosen at random every year from the electoral register for two weeks jury duty.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 14 Comments

Individual electoral registration: consultation response

Here’s the response I’ve sent to the Electoral Registration Transformation Programme ([email protected]) in response to the consultation on the draft legislation for individual electoral registration, which closes on 14 October. For the background on the benefits of individual electoral registration, see What’s the point of switching to individual electoral registration?

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft legislation which has been published to implement individual electoral registration in Great Britain. The publication of a full draft for public consultation is a very welcome improvement on the way …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged , and | 16 Comments
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Recent Comments

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    It seems rather loaded language to say we are taking from the poorest people in the world when what we're actually doing is not giving as much. If I spent £70...
  • Suzanne Fletcher
    Interesting and relevant article from Bradley Hillier Smith: this is the beginning, I don't have the article weblink so just copy an pasting 1st page. message...
  • Cassie
    An eye-opening, and brave, article. Changing the recording system seems a very simple change to make, and it seems crazy no government has ever done it....
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