Written by Thomas Worth

While the focus has been on the 30 councils who saw their elections delayed and then undelayed at short notice, it might be easy to miss some of the positive changes coming up for local elections. The 2026 local elections look promising when it comes to new democratic innovations.

The government has partnered with 4 local authorities across the country to launch flexible voting pilots. These councils, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, North Hertfordshire and Tunbridge Wells, will allow voters to try out new ways to cast their ballots, in schemes designed to inform future decisions about how we all vote.

Early voting trials

For people with busy lives or complex caring responsibilities, it can be hard to get to the polling station. What if there were more options?

For Cambridge, North Hertfordshire and Tunbridge Wells, this will take the form of early voting in hubs. This means that voters will have the option to go to a central hub, rather than their assigned polling station, and will be able to cast their vote in the days preceding election day on Thursday, 7th May.

This will include the weekend, allowing voters to cast their ballot at a time that fits their schedule. In town picking up some shopping? Why not pop in and cast your ballot. The hubs themselves will take the form of centrally located notable buildings in the local area, for example, the Guildhall in Cambridge.

This is not the first time similar schemes have been piloted in the UK. In May 2022, Wales piloted early voting, with a report into the findings of the pilot being published a few months later. The report found promising results with 1.5% of voters turning out early in Bridgend, where 20 polling stations allowed early voting in traditionally low turnout wards.

Outside of the UK, early voting is a common practice. In fact, the government identifies 60 countries in which some voters are allowed to vote before election day. Recent years have shown how impactful early voting can be in terms of turnout, giving voters a better chance to have their say in crucial elections.

In Canada, the 2025 Federal Election saw unprecedented levels of early voting, with 7.3 million people voting in advance out of the 19.6 million who voted. This election also saw a large increase in turnout, helped by the flexibility afforded to voters.

Findings from elections in New Zealand also follow a similar pattern. A study of early voting in the 2017 New Zealand election found that early voting increased turnout by 7.6%. Crucially, early voting was found to be most effective in increasing turnout in areas with ‘low turnout culture’, with the study concluding that early voting is one way in helping to attract population groups that do not vote.

New central voting locations

In Milton Keynes, the scheme will also take the form of a central voting hub where voters can choose to vote in the city’s main shopping centre. However, they will not be able to vote in advance of election day.

Say you were planning on voting on the way into town, but are delayed? Residents of Milton Keynes will have the option to pop out at lunch and vote centrally or try and vote at their normal polling station on the way home.

This pilot will give voters, who live busy modern lives, the opportunity to have their say in a more convenient and accessible way, something the ERS has called for in the past.

Voting Should Fit Around our Modern Lives

This, therefore, is an important pilot, with the government itself acknowledging that the way we vote at the polling booth has not changed since 1872. The schemes being trialled better reflect the realities of modern living and will give voters a better chance to engage with democracy. Importantly, similar schemes have already achieved positive results both at home and abroad and will help to improve the health of our democracy if rolled out more widely.

While these pilots are welcome, it is crucial that the government engages with the findings of the report, due to be published in the latter half of 2026. Similar pilots occurred from 2000 to 2007, including trials of electronic voting and early voting. After years of trials, the government ultimately failed to decide on a future direction for early voting. Instead, they merely acknowledged the call from the Electoral Commission for it to come to a decision about implementing early voting and delayed a decision.

While these trials may be limited this year, we hope that in the future, both early and hub voting will be rolled out more widely across the UK so that voters are given more opportunities to play their part in the democratic process. Ultimately, voting needs to be built around people’s lives; time constraints should not prevent people from exercising their democratic right.

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In May’s local elections, four areas in Wales trialled a different way of voting – allowing people to cast their vote before election day. As well as polling stations being open on the Thursday 5 May election day there were also a range of places where people could cast their vote early – either the previous weekend or on the Tuesday or Wednesday before election day.

The Welsh early voting pilots

Those four places each trialled this in a slightly different way:

In Blaenau Gwent the council opened the Ebbw Vale Learning Zone as an advanced polling station for everyone in the county on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the election, including eligible students studying there.

In Bridgend over 20 polling stations in low turnout wards were open for advance voting on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the election. A new polling station was also created in Cynffig Comprehensive School where eligible students could cast their vote on the Tuesday before the election.

In Caerphilly any eligible resident of the county could vote in the Council headquarters in Ystrad Mynach on the weekend before the election.

Similarly in Torfaen the council offices at Pontypool were open the weekend before the election for any resident to cast their vote.

Electoral Commission’s evaluation of Welsh early voting pilots

This week the Electoral Commission’s evaluation of these pilots was published, reviewing how these trials went. While this was only a first, and relatively small trial the early indications are that the pilots went well.

For many, whether the trials could work was a real test, with the advanced voting and the ability for residents of anywhere in the authority to vote in a polling station outside their ward posing a challenge to administrators. This required the introduction of digital registers, an online system where polling station staff could tick off who had turned out to vote in advance.

There were also questions over whether voters would find the experience accessible but the report found no notable issues on the advance voting days or on Thursday 5 May and that the voters who did take part were satisfied with their experience.

The commission surveyed voters who had turned out in advance, and although the sample size was small, over three-quarters (77%) said they would be very likely to vote early again if there was an opportunity to do so and a further 15% said they would be quite likely to take advantage of early voting in future.

These were only small and localised pilots and, as expected, the turnout was relatively low. Indeed the Counsel General, Mick Antoniw, responded to the evaluation on Tuesday in a written statement, saying “As expected, the pilots did not increase turnout dramatically but demonstrated that flexible and more convenient ways of voting can be provided securely and with voters’ confidence”.

Promising results from the pilots

In spite of this low turnout there are a couple of promising results within the evaluation. In areas where a single polling station was open for advanced voting, 0.2%-0.3% of registered voters cast their votes in advance. But in Bridgend, where over 20 polling stations in low turnout wards were open, turnout was 5 times this amount at 1.5%.

There are also positive signs from Bridgend with a polling station open for the first time in a comprehensive school for eligible students to vote. This follows the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds in Wales. In that school 18% of eligible voters cast their vote early.

ERS Cymru has long called for pilots on voting in different places and on different days and these four pilots demonstrate both the challenges and opportunities of doing democracy a little bit differently. While small, they have shown that the model can work logistically and give us an indication of the challenges in staffing and resources that will need to be met.

We have to accept that there is no magic bullet to low turnout but that a range of measures will likely be needed. Making voting more accessible has a part to play in that. The indication that a polling station in a school has had a higher turnout than expected is a promising one. With 16 and 17 year olds able to vote, we must endeavour to bring voting to young people directly. Voting is a habit and if we can reach young people in schools and make it easy for them to vote we can begin to create that habit.

In addition to making voting more accessible, we need to be looking at removing other barriers, such as improving voter communications, introducing automatic registration for voters and not introducing voter ID. It is notable that in Cynffig Comprehensive School a fifth of eligible voters said they were not registered.

Following the publication of the evaluation of the pilots the Counsel General Mick Antoniw has responded positively, saying “The learning from the pilots and the evaluation will be used to inform longer term improvements to the way people vote and to help reduce the democratic deficit. I look forward to consulting on our proposals in the coming months.” This consultation is to be welcomed and we hope that at the next Senedd and local elections in 2026 and 2027 advanced voting will be an option for all eligible voters.

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This week the Welsh Government announced an exciting series of pilots on flexible voting – trialling, for the first time, new ways to make it easier for Welsh voters to access the ballot box. 

Since 1931 every UK General Election has been held on a Thursday and typically local elections and elections to our devolved parliaments and administrations have followed suit. There are a number of reasons for this, including one commonly cited being that it was traditionally market day in many towns. Yet, just because something has traditionally been done one way doesn’t mean that this is necessarily the right way to do it now.

Now four local authorities in Wales will be using the local elections in May to trial new ways for voters to access the ballot box. The pilots will be testing whether voting on different days and in different places might make it easier for people to vote. 

Early voting trials in Wales

In Blaenau Gwent, the Ebbw Vale Learning Zone (a local college) will be used as an advanced polling station for early voting on the Tuesday and Wednesday ahead of the election, which all residents in the county will be able to access. This will include students of the college, who are above the age of 16. 

In Bridgend, some wards where there has traditionally been low turnout will be given the option to vote early. In these areas polling stations will be open on the Tuesday and Wednesday before election day. A school in the area will also have an advance polling station where students will be able to vote. 

Weekend voting in Caerphilly and Torfaen

In both Caerphilly and Torfaen council offices in Ystrad Mynach and Pontypool will be used as an advance polling station for all residents of the county on the weekend before election day.

Early voting and weekend voting are common in democracies around the world, so it will be interesting to see how they work for Wales.

These pilots herald an exciting development for Welsh democracy, trialling ideas that ERS Cymru has long called for.  

Just last year we saw the franchise in Wales extended for the first time for Senedd elections, allowing every resident of Wales above the age of 16 to cast their vote. This now also applies to local elections meaning 16 and 17 year olds and all foreign nationals resident in Wales will be able to cast their vote in May. 

But we know that extending the franchise alone doesn’t guarantee that people will turn up to vote. To do that we need to look at removing barriers from our democracy and creating opportunities that make it easier for people to vote.

It’s not just the newly enfranchised who need encouragement to vote either. At the last local elections in 2017 turnout was 41%. Turnout for Senedd elections has never hit 50%. Overhauling and improving Welsh democracy is a big task. 

We know that we have to do more to tackle Wales’ democratic deficit and the pilots look set to be the first step in a big emphasis on this within Wales. The Counsel General, Mick Antoniw, spoke about this at a Fair Vote fringe at Welsh Labour conference recently. He made the point that the pilots would play a role in showing the mechanics of how things like early voting and digital registers might work, ahead of more detailed legislation next year. 

These flexible voting pilots could be part of that picture, alongside better political education in schools and stronger public information campaigns. This feels like a really exciting time for innovation in our elections, bringing democracy much closer to where it should be in 2022. 

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Two news stories stood out this week. As early voting opened in some US states, images of voters queuing all day to vote were greeted as signs of enthusiasm in America but confusion outside, while early voting in New Zealand was marked by the delightful ‘scent of democracy’ – the pleasantly lemon-scented hand sanitiser available for voters.

In the UK we don’t have early voting, with all in-person voting happening on a single Thursday. Even though polling stations in the UK are open from 7am to 10pm, it can still be hard for some people to get to the polls between work and family commitments. If you are getting your kids to school in the morning, working two jobs and caring for an elderly relative in the evening it can be hard to get to a polling station even if it is nearby.

How and when you can vote is itself a political issue. If you are comfortably retired or working a 9-5 job it is easy to pop to the polls on election day. If you are struggling to juggle multiple jobs, childcare or shift work then the more ways to vote the better.

Early Voting

Early voting doesn’t work the same everywhere and different places have very different attitudes towards it. Take the US state of Georgia and New Zealand. The two countries are going into very different elections but both places, on paper at least, offer voters the same chance to cast their ballot early.

But that is where the similarities end. Georgia and New Zealand go about organising their elections very differently – in the US the First Past the Post winner-takes-all mentality is given free rein, while in New Zealand power is distributed, so no party can bend the rules to their advantage.

Long waits to vote in Georgia

In Georgia, elections are overseen by the elected Secretary of State, currently a Republican. In fact, Georgia’s current Governor served as Georgia’s Secretary of State while he ran for Governor, meaning he effectively oversaw his own election.

The rules for elections are set by Georgia’s state legislature, the General Assembly, whose powers include the ability to draw Georgia’s electoral maps. Effectively the party that wins a majority gets to decide on the boundaries under which they’re elected, moving voters between constituencies to produce a result to their favour. While formally this happens every 10 years to coincide with the census, it can also happen during each two-year term of office. In 2015, Republican legislators changed district lines for House Districts 105 and 111 to protect two Republican representatives who had barely won re-election the year before – to ensure they got more votes at the next election.

As a result, the seats in Georgia are designed in such a way that it simply isn’t worth parties fighting over them, with around 43% of seats in the upcoming elections going uncontested with the incumbent party facing no opposition at all. At the last election, just 31 of the 180 state House districts featured both Republican and Democratic candidates.

Georgia is an example of winner-takes-all to its extreme. First Past the Post produces an assembly that doesn’t represent the spread of political opinion in the state, winners can redraw the boundaries to ensure they win again. They can also set voting rules that remove people likely to vote for their opponents and have them implemented by an elected member of their party.

Some have argued that the party in charge knows that the people who use early voting tend to vote for their opponents, so don’t provide enough early voting locations.

Distributing power in New Zealand

New Zealand, however, is different. It has used the proportional Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP) to elect its governments since 1996, which means that no party can gain a disproportional advantage and change the rules in their favour. An independent electoral commission organises their elections and ensures the voting rolls are up to date. They also support the work of the Representation Commission who reviews the electoral boundaries after every census and sets the new boundaries to be used in the following two general elections.

While in the UK, the government can threaten to scrap the Electoral Commission and has the power to do it, New Zealand’s system of proportional representation entrenches consensus and cooperation in their parliament. The New Zealand Labour Party would need the support of representatives of at least half the population to change the rules, while the Conservatives have the power to change anything they like on just 43% of the vote.

The best way of protecting our democracy is to only give as much power to parties as their popular support warrants. In the UK, we should be moving as far from Georgia’s winner-takes-all model as we can.