On Tuesday, the Senedd approved regulations establishing the Welsh Voter Information Platform, as required by Section 26 of the Elections and Elected Bodies (Wales) Act 2024. This platform will centralise election-related information, making it easier for voters to access key details about elections, candidates and polling arrangements.

For years, the third sector in Wales has advocated for a centralised voter information resource as a way to build a more informed electorate. Following the 2022 Local Elections, Democracy Group Cymru, coordinated by ERS Cymru, held a workshop exploring ways to boost turnout and voter engagement. A key takeaway was the need for a single, reliable source of election information to help voters navigate the electoral process.

The platform forms a wider package of democratic reforms introduced during this Senedd term that aim to modernise Welsh democracy, remove barriers to participation and ensure that every voter has access to the information they need to make informed choices.

So, what will the Voter Information Platform do?

The platform will be managed by the newly established Election Management Board (EMB) within the Democracy and Boundary Commission Cymru. It will serve as a one-stop shop for election information, ensuring voters have access to key details about devolved elections. At a minimum, it will provide:

• Election notices, such as official announcements of elections and polling details.
• Candidate and party information, including election addresses and candidate statements.
• Polling station information, covering locations and accessibility arrangements.
• Election results, with official declarations post-election.

The EMB has scope to expand the platform’s remit, potentially including information on electoral systems, devolution and the voting process, ensuring Welsh voters have the tools they need to participate fully in democracy.

International lessons

The Welsh Elections Information Platform will not be the first of its kind – there are other examples of similar systems that have been used by democracies across the world.

Canada

In Canada, Elections Canada offers a centralised website offering key election details, including election dates, voter registration, candidate lists, polling station locations, and election results. A key feature of the platform is its integrated voter registration system, allowing voters to check and update the registration details online. It also provides guidance on different voting methods such as advance voting and mail-in ballots.

Australia

Australia’s Electoral Commission hosts a comprehensive voter information site covering elections at all levels – local, state and federal. Beyond voter resources, the site also includes extensive guidance for candidates, outlining nomination rules, campaign conduct and electoral regulations. This ensures not only that voters are well-informed but also that candidates understand the democratic process and their responsibilities.

New Zealand

New Zealand has two major voter information platforms. The first, Elections NZ, provides core election details, including how to vote, candidate information and interactive polling location maps. The second, policy.nz, is an independent initiative that allows voters to compare candidate statements and party policies side by side. At the 2020 general election, around 1 in 6 voters used the platform to help them make an informed decision.

While Wales’ platform will focus on providing election information for voters, there may be opportunities to learn from these models in the future.

Breaking down barriers to voting

Like with any new initiative, there are likely to be some challenges, particularly in raising public awareness. That is why the platform’s success will depend on a strong communication campaign to ensure voters, parties and candidates know it exists and how to use it. The platform in its initial form is also very centred around elections, and the EMB should look into expanding the remit of its information to show voters how they can engage with democracy 365 days a year.

That said, this platform presents an exciting opportunity to strengthen voter engagement and knowledge in Wales. The platform marks a significant step forward in improving voter engagement. With busy lives and multiple levels of government, it can be challenging for people to stay informed about elections. The voter information platform will simplify the process, ensuring voters have easy access to essential information about what they’re voting for and how to participate. When combined with broader democratic reforms – such as automatic voter registration – Wales is making the democratic process more accessible than ever before.

It’s great to see the Welsh government picking up ideas from civil society, and it also shows the impact that ERS Cymru can have in bringing these groups together. There are currently 60+ organisations from across Wales involved in Democracy Group Cymru, and we’re looking forward to more of our ideas being turned into legislation.

You can support the work of ERS Cymru by joining the Electoral Reform Society.

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The first election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will be on our TV screens tonight, at 9pm on ITV. We’ve already seen a debate between party leaders in Scotland (none of whom are actually standing in the general election) and more debates are coming up on the BBC and ITV.

Televised election debates are a ubiquitous part of election campaigns now, so it’s odd to think that the first televised debate was in just 2010. But as much as they have become a part of the normal political landscape, their existence at every election is a result of behind-the-scenes wrangling between party leaders and broadcasters.

When are the TV debates and how to watch them?

• Monday 3 June, 9pm, STV  – Leaders of five Scottish political parties
• Tuesday 4 June, 9-10pm, ITV – Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer
• Friday 7 June, 7.30pm-9pm, BBC One – Leading figures from seven political parties.
• Thursday 13 June, 8.30pm, ITV – Leading figures from seven political parties.
• Thursday 20 June, 8pm-10pm, BBC One  – Leaders of the four biggest political parties.
• Wednesday 26 June, 9pm-10pm, BBC One  – Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.

Do TV debates make a difference?

In 2017 we published Debating the TV Debates, a study on the impact of the BBC’s Question Time Leaders’ special. The study, by the respected academics Professor Jay G Blumler, Professor Stephen Coleman and Dr Christopher Birchnall, found that a third of viewers thought that watching had helped them decide what party to vote for in the General Election  – with young people particularly engaged.

TV debates create opportunities for headlines and for winners and losers to emerge, such as 2010’s Cleggmania, 2015’s debates around UKIP’s inclusion, accusations that Theresa May was dodging debates in 2017 and the legal challenges of 2019 for who should be involved.

Yet, there is a vital democratic aspect to TV debates too. For democracy to properly function it needs strong lines of communication between representative and represented. The age of mass media provides many such tools. Still, the TV debate is a direct opportunity for voters to compare and judge political leaders directly and for those same leaders to make a pitch directly to the public. Vitally, debates are a shared event for supporters of all parties, which is becoming a rarity in the age of hyper-targeted campaigns.

Much of what we see and read about politics today is micro-targeted and atomised. But TV leaders’ debates offer a rare shared event for supporters of all parties – one reason why the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has long been broadly in favour of the broadcasts.

How could TV debates be improved?

If there is one thing that we can predict about TV debates, is the debates behind the scenes about who should get to take part. Each major party can threaten to drop out and dare the broadcaster to empty chair them – in the knowledge that those broadcasters need to be impartial. Should organising debates be taken out of politicians’ hands entirely?

In Canada, an independent Leaders’ Debates Commission was set up in 2018 to organise the debates for the 2019 federal election.

The Commission clearly set out and enforced the criteria for inclusion in TV debates and sought submissions from broadcasters who wished to organise TV debates. They also hosted roundtables with experts and practitioners to decide on their format, structure and style. We could go a step further and get feedback from the public on what formats they want to see.

Who knows what will happen tonight and in the upcoming election debates. But we shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel for every election. TV debates are a major part of our elections, let’s treat them that way.

Last week, the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee published a new report on Electoral Registration. Even though electoral registration is mandatory, millions of people are missing from the electoral register, and the ERS has long campaigned to lower this first barrier to voting. It is unacceptable that millions of eligible voters are missing from the electoral rolls.

We submitted evidence to the Committee and were pleased to see that they supported nearly all our recommendations.

The report recommends the following:

A move to Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) and better data sharing

Moving house is a big deal and registering to vote can often be a low priority. Many people may only realise they didn’t register when it is too late.

The Committee called for a system of automated voter registration and asked for The Electoral Commission to complete “a detailed plan including milestones and dates for moving towards implementing automated voter registration with a clear outline of how people can protect their data privacy.”

Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) also need a better system for updating records. The Committee suggested data sharing between the DVLA, DWP, and HM Passport Office to allow EROs to use that data fully. The Committee also highlighted the need to ascertain whether people could be added to the electoral register when they interact with these agencies.

A single electoral register

The Committee also called on the Government to look into creating a single national electoral register for England. A single register would address the issue of duplicates and registration being lost when moving house.

Better education and signposting for 16-year-olds

While you can’t vote in a general election until you are 18, you can register in advance as an ‘attainer’ from 16. To increase the number who register from 16, the Committee recommended that when national insurance numbers are issued, they should include signposting to ways to register to vote.

Places of learning should also be supported in their efforts to “better educate young people about the importance of voting and to encourage them to register to vote”.

Reviewing voter ID

The Committee had various common-sense recommendations surrounding voter ID including:

• The Electoral Commission should properly assess the impact of voter ID before the next general election.
• The Government should work with specific groups, such as disabled voters and those with learning disabilities, to raise awareness of the voter ID requirements.
• The ID list should be broadened to include other forms of ID such as police warrant cards, emergency services passes and non-London travel passes.
• Central and local government and the Electoral Commission need to work together to ensure that the Voter Authority Certificate is known about and accessed by all those that need it.

This is the fourth parliamentary committee that has recognised the problems with voter ID. The government needs to act on these recommendations and create a system that works for voters not against them.

Reducing pressure on electoral administrators

The Committee acknowledged the evidence from the Association of Election Administrators and highlighted the “insufficient practical detail” given to help prepare for the changes the Elections Act 2022 brought in. They also recommended that the burden on local authorities and administrators due to the Elections Act 2022 should be assessed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. If the findings indicate further funding is required, “this funding should be provided as a matter of urgency”.

Consolidating Electoral Law

At present “electoral processes and administration are more costly, burdensome and inefficient than they should be”. The Committee urged the Government to prioritise time and resources to “update, consolidate and simplify electoral law for the 21st century” within a reasonable timeline.

We support the committee’s conclusions that our electoral registration system desperately needs updating.

Not only are voters being let down by an unworkable and out of date registration system, they are also facing additional hurdles in the unnecessary and damaging voter ID scheme.  The government should be focusing on increasing the amount of people who vote, not throwing up extra hurdles.

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We could submit in-depth evidence to this committee thanks to the continued support of ERS members, who pay a small amount each month to contribute to our activities. Could you join them?

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You may not know, but there are Parliamentary debates that occur outside of the Commons or Lords and these occur in Westminster Hall. Here’s a quick primer on some of the key features of a Westminster Hall debate:

Westminster Hall Debates take place between Monday and Thursday and give MPs the opportunity to debate any issue, ranging from major constitutional questions to concerns about the local surgery closing, outside the Parliamentary calendar set by the Government. Westminster Hall debates tend not to actually happen in the Hall itself but in smaller committee rooms. When debating, MPs sit around a horseshoe-shaped table, this is designed to promote cooperation and is in stark contrast to the Commons chamber where rows of seats face off against each other.

MPs can apply to hold a 30, 60 or 90 minute debate through the Speaker’s Office. The Speaker’s Office then hold a ballot to decide which debates occur when. Debates in Westminster Hall are more informal than the House of Commons chamber. For example, there is no division to vote on the matter and there is no tabling of amendments.

Any number of MPs may attend a Westminster Hall Debate, but the debate is always chaired by a Deputy Speaker. Westminster Hall debates have no legal power and are not able to impact legislation, but they are still useful for MPs. These debates can be used to establish an MPs position on different matters, highlight political support and facilitate detailed discussion when there is not time in the main parliamentary chamber. Westminster Hall debates are therefore key to facilitating good political discourse in Parliament.

Westminster Hall Debate on proportional representation

If you would like to find upcoming Westminster Hall debates they will be listed here: https://whatson.parliament.uk/

If you would like to find historic Westminster Hall debates they are listed here: https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debates/search

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Members support our work in parliament, in the press and online – making the case, and backing it up – for how we can fix Westminster’s broken system.

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Next year’s Senedd election will see 16 and 17 year olds in Wales be able to vote for the first time in our nation’s history. This move has the potential to be game-changing, but when this particular issue is mentioned there is always one stock sentence rolled out by those who disagree.

‘But they don’t know enough…’

Ignoring the fact that the same statement could apply to plenty of adults, there is an easy answer to this claim that should unite naysayers from all political perspectives.

Teach them about politics.

It’s hardly a radical idea but right now it’s rarely done properly. It’s a simple step to make political education mandatory in schools and ensure that the next generation will be the most politically savvy we’ve ever had. And the benefits will last a lifetime.

How many of us had a proper political education in school? For those who did it was probably not a full and in-depth look at politics and its impact on our lives. More likely was a brief thirty five minute session somewhere in a general studies class or a visit by a single local politician one year in secondary school? 

In 2018 ERS Cymru spoke to 200 young people in thirteen schools throughout Wales to find out what they wanted to learn as part of a political education curriculum.

The overwhelming response in every school was that they all wanted to learn about politics, they wanted to be taught basic life skills and they wanted to see more of their politicians. What became clear to us was there was a huge disparity in basic knowledge of things like the names of parties, leaders and what politicians actually did between different schools and even between pupils in the same classes. Political education now, as it was in my day, is patchy and usually dependent on teachers being interested or knowledgeable in politics in the first place. 

Despite continued calls from politicians and young people themselves, Welsh Government still hasn’t ensured that political education is a required topic in our classrooms. It remains missing from their new upcoming curriculum offered neither as a distinct subject or compulsory topic in schools. 

What they do offer is a range of new resources that are being developed for schools to be able to deliver political education ahead of next year’s elections. I am not attacking them, if those resources are anything like what’s being produced by Welsh Government, the Senedd and the Electoral Commission in preparation for new voters in May 2021 then our young people will be very lucky indeed. But resources specific to the election will not be sufficient in giving every young person a broader understanding of politics in Wales.

The new curriculum that is to be introduced in Wales is ‘purpose-led’ and one of its four purposes is for our young people to be ‘ethically and informed citizens of Wales.’ Our concern is that learning about politics in Wales is not a compulsory part of this, so while they may be informed on numerous issues the basics about the country they live in won’t be covered. It may mean that, again, there will be pupils with different levels of understanding about how decisions in Wales are made and those on the narrowest understanding will struggle to better know how they can make their voices heard within society. Knowledge is power, so they say.

I know teachers reading will be groaning at my call for yet another subject being shoehorned into their already jam-packed week but surely the basics of society should be a fundamental part of our learning?

I do not recall a time when terms such as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘once in a generation’ have become such common parlance but here we are. There is an historic election to our new Parliament next year and a radical overhaul in the way our young people are taught will follow. This must be the time to make certain we don’t repeat the same mistakes of the past but ensure young people in Wales are fully prepared to understand and participate in what sort of country we live in for decades to come. 

Read ERS’ Cymru’s Manifesto for Democracy

Education is key to ensuring that newly enfranchised voters understand the system they can now have a voice in. That 16 and 17 year olds in Wales can now vote in Senedd elections offers us a chance to create a much more informed and confident electorate than has gone before.

One of the major challenges we have in Wales is how to tackle the democratic deficit. We know three things; that turnout is low in Wales-only elections, that there is a poor provision of local/Welsh media and that understanding of devolution in Wales is very limited across all ages.

These are major issues, with very few easy answers. The next Welsh Government will have only a limited ability to create a stronger Welsh media, for example. So, we have to think how governments can compensate for these limitations.

Political education in schools is a good, and relatively easy, place to start.

In the last two years we have been working with young people to co-produce recommendations to improve political education in schools. ERS Cymru’s Our Voices Heard report details the findings, developed through conversations with hundreds of young people.

Through the course of our work across Wales, young people consistently told us they weren’t receiving sufficient political education, but that they very much wanted to learn about the way Wales worked. The recommendations from the project were all proposed and voted on by the young people themselves.

The principal recommendation from the young people was that statutory political education should be introduced into the curriculum. Given the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds we believe this is even more important.

While there are currently plans for a new curriculum in Wales which includes aims to have learners become ‘ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world’, and a progression step around participating in decision making, we need statutory political education implemented as soon as possible with much more explicit expectations of schools across Wales.

Parties should also consider how this could be extended to post-16 education, given the average age people will vote for the first time will be around 18. This could be delivered in further education settings and through youth workers.

Manifesto ask 4: A commitment to statutory political education within schools to tackle the democratic deficit, and ensure young people leave school with much more knowledge and confidence in the political system than previous generations of school-leavers.

Read the full report

ERS Cymru has advocated for the use of deliberative democracy and citizens’ assemblies for many years. But it’s an idea that has renewed importance when it comes to the Covid pandemic.

Our manifesto published ahead of the 2021 Senedd Elections specifically calls for the use of citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting to create a society where ownership of political decisions is shared – with the public directly involved in finding ways forward. 

As Wales eases its way out of lockdown, now is the perfect time for commitment to a collaborative future. Deliberative practices result in a more engaged and democratic society. 

This is vitally important in rebuilding trust with politicians in a system where people largely don’t see their votes as counting, and where power too often feels distant. The complex nature of the challenges faced by countries across the world in the 21st century – from climate change to economic pressures – needs input from the wider public to ensure policies are produced that work for everyone. 

This input can’t be distilled down into simple referendum questions, but must encompass full and open discussions of the issues along with their potential solutions. What better place to start that deliberation in Wales than with a citizens’ assembly focused on our post-lockdown economic recovery?

The pandemic has fundamentally altered the way we’ve been living and interacting over the past three months. It has highlighted many things, including: the fragility of our consumerist economy, the need for strong local food networks and the importance of our key workers in society, to name just a few. A citizens’ assembly on Covid recovery planning could help us rebuild in a way that is more resilient and able to respond to these realisations. 

Learning from experience

Citizens’ assemblies are formed using a cross-section of society, a ‘mini-public’, that is selected to encompass the demographics across a whole population (gender, age, ethnicity, socio-economic background). For the recent ‘Climate Assembly UK’, members were also balanced to take into account ‘level of concern over climate change’, to ensure fair representation across this spectrum too. 

Over a given timeframe the assembly meets to engage in open, respectful and informed discussion and debate with their peers on an issue before providing recommendations. 

Their structure uses three phases: learning, consultation and deliberation/discussion, which gives the participants the time and resources to move beyond newspaper headlines and political slogans on an issue. Time to dig much deeper allows appreciation of the complexities of an issue, often altering personal opinions in the process. This empathy is vital for democracy to work.

Citizens’ assemblies are already in use in response to pressing contemporary issues. In France the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate was set up in the wake of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protests, sparked due to rising fuel tax and social inequalities. It offered a way to ‘co-produce’ policies around climate change with the French public. It is in these thorny moments that citizen’s assemblies shine. Their deliberative approach is particularly suited to complex problems and can be used as a uniting tool in polarised societies.

The Republic of Ireland’s use of citizens’ assemblies allowed it to discuss controversial topics, such as abortion, in a measured way. The resulting call for a referendum on the issue and eventual legalisation change is an example of how even those with opposing views can come to a shared and more nuanced conclusion through the process.

We’ve seen the continuation of some of these citizens’ assemblies despite lockdown restrictions, with a move to online platforms. The French Citizens’ Convention on Climate produced their 50 priorities to tackle economic recovery and greenhouse gas emissions while improving health and well-being in early April via Zoom. Similarly Climate Assembly UK recently published its interim briefing on post-lockdown steps to aid economic recovery, with nearly 80% of assembly members agreeing that these steps should be designed to help achieve net zero.    

A Welsh Citizens’ Assembly

Wales is a diverse nation with a similarly diverse set of needs. A citizens’ assembly will help ensure that post-Covid economic recovery works for the whole of Wales, whether that be rural areas with poor broadband speeds or the urban South-East with its congestion issues.

Many feel cut off from Cardiff and disengaged with the Senedd, so there is a direct need for these practices to build communities and provide more effective links between the people and decision-makers.

Deepening our democratic processes could be crucial to rebuilding in an inclusive and participatory way. The type of recovery a citizen might want to see could be influenced by one of more demographics including their location in the country or age. We need to lean into these differences, learn from them, deliberate on them and collectively construct solutions for all. Citizens’ assemblies provide the perfect tool for this.

Let’s move away from the centralised approach we’ve seen in Westminster, and find a way forward together.

Chelsea Oware reflects on the research undertaken during her university placement at the ERS.

General elections are prime fodder for news outlets, who tend to focus on the ‘horse race’ between the two main parties, rarely pay much attention to smaller parties, and frequently report on the ‘drama’ of the election.

One aspect of election campaigns which seems to receive a lot of media attention are the electoral processes themselves – the non-policy aspects of campaigning that relate to issues such as tactical voting, electoral pacts, marginal/safe seats, voter registration, and party strategies (e.g. targeting voters online). Informing the public about these issues is important, especially given our one-person-takes-all First Past the Post electoral system, which makes considerations about tactical voting and electoral pacts highly salient.

But they take a lot of attention away from the substantive policy issues of a campaign. If voters did not have to vote tactically in order to keep out the party they dislike the most, and if parties did not have to enter into electoral pacts and/or concentrate campaign efforts on marginal seats, we might hear less about the ‘two-horse race’ and tactical voting, and more about the policies of all parties.

If voters did not have to vote tactically, and if parties did not have to enter into electoral pacts, we might hear less about the ‘two-horse race’ and more about the policies Click To Tweet

As part of my placement, I decided to investigate what the news was focusing on – whether electoral processes, policies or other aspects of campaigning – and whether there was a shift during the course of the campaign. I analysed 179 news headlines covering the period 7 November-10 December, coding the main topic for each headline and any relevant sub-topics (e.g. ‘tactical voting’ as part of the ‘electoral process’ sub-category).*

Results

As my analysis shows, almost half of all media coverage (44.4%) in the first week (6-12 November) related to electoral processes – information about policies did not feature at all in the sample, though to be expected given that parties were yet to launch their manifestos. Though it decreased over time, coverage of electoral processes was still significant in the following weeks. In week two, a quarter of news pieces looked at this topic, which included tactical voting, marginal/safe seats, voter registration and TV debates. Even in the last week analysed, 12 news headlines (15% of the total) referred to electoral processes, including three to tactical voting, and two each to voter registration and disinformation.

Party policies received the most coverage out of all topics most in weeks two and four, while discussions about polling dominated the headlines in week three. In general, non-policy topics counted for over two-thirds of news coverage in all weeks, indicating that the media does seem to focus on the horse-race and other aspects of campaigning, as opposed to substantive policy issues.

Table 1: Number of articles (raw number) and proportion coverage (percentage)

My results display similar trends to the findings of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, which has been conducting rigorous audits of news coverage for every general election since 1992. The Centre finds that coverage of electoral processes dominated the news in the first week of the campaign – with around four in 10 articles talking about this topic – before dropping to between a quarter and a third of coverage from week two onwards.

Table 2: Percentage coverage of the ‘electoral process’ theme within the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture’s analysis of media during the election

Source: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/has-the-media-focused-on-brexit-in-this-election/

The Centre also finds that, throughout the campaign, smaller parties and female politicians received considerably less coverage – with Jo Swinson and Nicola Sturgeon being marginalised from the election debate compared to similar male politicians.

If we had a fairer, more proportional voting system, the news media and parties themselves would not have to pay so much attention to the horse race and strategic logistics of the election, but could rather extend their coverage to all parties and focus on the issues that really matter to voters – party policies.

Chelsea was a research placement student from the University of Nottingham.

* News articles were found using the search term ‘general election’ on Google News. While this is an imperfect resource, given Google’s algorithms and limits around date settings, it still provides a snapshot of what the main media outlets were talking about during the last five weeks of the campaign.  All articles belonging to the main national news outlets (BBC News, Telegraph, Guardian, Sky News and so on) were included in the analysis. Given time and search limitations, it wasn’t possible to keep the sample size consistent across weeks.

This election’s televised leaders debates have taken place against a backdrop of endless rows over who should be allowed to take part, in what has become a recurring feature of our election campaigns.

Arguments over format can partly be explained by the fact that they have a relatively short history in the UK, and don’t have the same kind of history and precedent to draw on like other aspects of our political campaigns. Despite the idea first being mooted in 1964, the first TV debate only took place during the 2010 general election.

Organising TV debates is still largely ad hoc, and the exact shape and format the debates take varies from election to election. It remains reliant on backroom negotiations between parties and broadcasters.

Despite some initial criticisms about adopting ‘US-style’ debates, we now know TV debates are an important source of information for UK voters. In 2017 ERS research found that 56% of people believed that leaders’ debates were important in helping them make their decision.

Over four million people tuned into the BBC Question Time debate during the 2017 election campaign, with over a third of viewers saying that it influenced their vote. Similarly, the Hansard Society found that 74% of those surveyed said that leaders’ debates and political interviews were at least ‘fairly important’ in deciding how to vote in the 2017 general election.

Today, many parliamentary democracies across the world have TV debates. One of the most interesting examples is that of Canada, where an independent Leaders’ Debates Commission was set up in 2018 to organise the debates for the 2019 federal election.

TV debates have a much longer history in Canada, having taken place since 1968, traditionally in both English and French. Until the 2015 federal election, a consortium of broadcast media organisations would organise the debates and negotiate with parties to determine format, dates and other formalities – very much like here in the UK.

From the 1990s onwards, however, the fragmentation of the party system and media landscape meant that organising TV debates became much more complex. Growing public dissatisfaction about the closed-door negotiations culminated in the 2015 federal election, when then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decided not to take part. The election debates themselves became the story of that election, leading the new PM, Justin Trudeau, to review how the contests were organised and run.

The independent Leaders’ Debates Commission was established with to organise debates between party leaders during the 2019 federal election, and to improve ‘Canadians’ knowledge of the parties, their leaders, and their policy positions’.

The Commission is headed by the former Governor General of Canada, with a former journalist as its executive director, and overseen by a seven-person advisory board comprising former parliamentarians, academics, and other stakeholders.

The Commission sought submissions from broadcasters and media organisations who wished to organise TV debates and hosted roundtables with experts and practitioners to decide on their format, structure and style.

The roundtable participants recommended that the Commission should be fully supported by public funds; be a permanent operation; have broad support from political parties; and report to the public, not government.

The Commission clearly set out and enforced the criteria for inclusion in TV debates, with parties having to satisfy at least two of the following three criteria to take part:

1. A party must have at least one MP elected under the party’s banner in the House of Commons at dissolution.
2. A party must run candidates in at least 90% of all constituencies.
3. A party must have obtained at least 4% of the vote at the previous election, or be considered by the commissioner – on the basis of public opinion polls – to have a legitimate chance of electing some of its members to the Commons.

Following the 2019 election, the Commission is due to present a report to parliament with recommendations on how to organise debates in future elections.

Though it was faced with some challenges (primarily relating to the effectiveness of the format of the English-speaking debate), Canada’s experience shows how, even in a multi-party parliamentary democracy, a Debates Commission can help parties and media outlets reach agreement – shifting the focus of TV debates away from arguments about their format, to the important role they play in informing voters and helping them make their choice on election day.

Democracy relies on voters being able to make free and informed decisions on who to vote for – for which having access to information they can trust is vital. With the rise of micro-targeted dark ads and information overload, TV debates offer a rare shared opportunity for voters to hear directly from those wanting to lead the country. An independent Debates Commission would help enshrine TV debates as part of the UK’s electoral framework and guarantee voters the right to informative, vibrant debates.

Tonight’s first round of television debates has been mired in controversy. Not over policies – but the format, with the SNP and Lib Dems mounting an unsuccessful legal challenge to being excluded.

It’s not necessarily who will but who won’t be taking part in these televised debates that has hit the headlines. Of the debates confirmed so far some exclude the leaders of smaller parties such as the Greens and the Brexit Party despite including the Liberal Democrats and the SNP whilst two will only be between Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and the Conservatives’ Boris Johnson.

Nicola Sturgeon told BBC Breakfast that excluding her “would be not just wrong democratically but letting down voters.” Plaid Cymru are also rightfully concerned that the multi-party, multi-national nature of the UK may not be reflected on people’s screens, while the Lib Dems believe it is unacceptable that an anti-Brexit voice will not be heard in the Labour-Tory head-to-head.

At the heart of these conversations is a battle over the party system, which has been blown wide open in recent years as voters ‘shop around’ more than ever. Old party allegiances are fading: but so much of our political system and debate often fails to reflect that.

There is also disagreement over what the debates are for, with Sir Keir Starmer arguing that “we have to have a debate between the only two people who are capable of, or likely to become, Prime Minister”. Similarly, the Conservatives would prefer a one-on-one debate with more focus on the two parties who are most likely to form a government. It jars with the view that the debates should represent the political diversity of Britain more generally.

The debates are set to take place on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News. However, many believe that the whole legitimacy of these contests will be undermined if other leaders of the main political parties aren’t formally represented. Hence legal threats and rows over ‘empty chairing’, or the debates being ‘held to ransom’ by political party leaders. Shambolic, in sum.

It reflects a wider failure of the political system to move on from a binary two-party system. Despite people wanting to cast their vote for a wider range of parties and candidates, often shifting at each election, Westminster has failed again and again to represent this: an inevitable consequence under the First-Past-the-Post voting system.

Instead of having these rows each election, we have to recognise that politics has changed hugely this past decade – with voters wanting more choice and a stronger voice in elections.

As Darren Hughes wrote on Wednesday: “So much of our politics feels broken because it happens behind closed doors, rather than with voters’ input. It’s time for citizens’ to shape a proper structure for TV debates that will last, and bring these perpetual ‘empty chairing’ rows to an end.”

With a new Speaker in the Commons, perhaps they could establish a ‘Debates Commission’, to ensure elections are not a plaything of parties but a tool for voters to learn, engage and hold leaders to account during a campaign.

Sabine McGinley is a Placement Student with the Electoral Reform Society from the Unversity of Nottingham.

Read our 2017 report on the debates, Debating the TV Debates.

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