“Slovenian nationalist party wins parliamentary election” declares the Guardian. “Anti-immigration party wins Slovenia elections” says CNBC. “Anti-immigrant party wins divisive Slovenian election as coalition talks set to begin” says the Telegraph.

The Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) has indeed clearly won the most votes and seats. With 99.89% of the vote counted though, it is on just 25% of the vote and has won 25 seats out of the 90-seat National Assembly. So, when one considers the rest of the Assembly it is unclear if it will lead the next government. Let us consider the result in full.

As we can see, the SDS won the most votes and seats, but to form a government they need to have the support of at least half the assembly. When you look at who they could go into coalition with, there aren’t enough obvious partners to get them across the line.

[bctt tweet=”Unlike in the UK, the Slovenian Parliament matches how Slovenes vote. As most people in Slovenia voted for centre or centre-left parties there is a centre / centre-left majority in parliament.” username=”electoralreform”]

They comprise of the three parties of the outgoing government, the Modern Centre Party, the Social Democrats and the Pensioners Party (25 seats together), along with The Left, The List of Marjan Šarec and the Party of Alenka Bratušek.

Slovenia, in common with many European states, uses an open party-list proportional electoral system. The country is divided into eight regions, each represented by eleven MPs (plus two for the Hungarian and Italian minorities). Voters can choose which party they support and which candidates they want to take up the seats.

[bctt tweet=”Were these exact election results to play out under the system used in Westminster elections it is likely that the SDS would win far more seats than they would deserve. Instead, the centre-left was not punished for supporting multiple parties.” username=”electoralreform”]

With a proportional system, vote splitting is not the issue that it is in the UK. Parties under Westminster’s broken voting system are often said to be broad coalitions. It is just that they are coalitions that the voters have no say in their composition. A voter in Slovenia who wanted a more left-wing government could vote for The Left in the knowledge that every extra MP they have would strengthen their position in the coalition.

The SDS is a controversial party. Since the European migrants crisis, it has employed increasingly anti-migrant rhetoric, with its leader, Janez Janša utilising “drain the swamp” style rhetoric and allying with the nationalist leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Accusations of corruption around Janša have also led to controversy, nonetheless the party’s status as largest party speaks to its enduring popularity amongst a section of Slovene society.

It is possible, therefore, that despite SDS getting the most seats, the centre-left parties could work to lock Janša out of power. For Janša to reach power he would need the support of at least 10 MPs from centre-left parties – even the addition of the largely single-issue Pensioners’ Party would still leave Janša’s party five seats short of a majority.

For journalists versed in British or American politics, it’s easy to see why they would hail the SDS’s seat haul as a victory. Elections to Westminster and Washington aren’t designed to produce government that represents the country. Only with a proportional voting system can we ensure that we get the government we voted for.

Back in May 2017 I brought you the story of the British Columbian general election which had seen no party get half the seats in the Legislative Assembly of Canada’s Westernmost province, leading to a deal between the New Democratic Party and the Greens set on electoral reform.

Yesterday the BC government presented their plans to hold a referendum on electoral reform at the end of this year.

This will be the third referendum British Columbia has held on electoral reform in 13 years. The first, in 2005, saw 57.7% of British Columbian voters vote for the Single Transferable Vote (STV) form of proportional representation.

However, the rules of the referendum stated that to pass, STV had to get 60% of the vote and so the referendum was re-run in 2009, with STV support falling in the face of a better-organised opposition.

Yet, the issue ran on. And rightly so – British Columbia has seen almost all the worst outcomes that Westminster style voting produces in recent decades. From an election where the party with the most votes failed to win the most seats, seeing another party govern instead (1996), to a party winning all but two seats leaving it with almost no real opposition (2001).

British Columbia has seen almost all the worst outcomes that Westminster style voting produces in recent decades. Click To Tweet

Politicians that continue to support Westminster style voting, always argue that a referendum is vital to change the voting system.

It seems that a minority of the popular vote is good enough for a government to fundamentally change how the economy works, or redesign a social security or healthcare system, yet making every vote count is something that needs 50% support.

Thanks to their NDP/Green Coalition government, British Columbians finally have a government that over half the population support, where both parties had electoral reform in their manifestos. Yet somehow even this isn’t enough to just implement their manifesto promise.

The government’s plan for a referendum is to hold it from the 22^nd of October to 30^th of November by postal vote. Postal votes tend to raise turnout and reduce cost and this long period will allow for maximum engagement.

Two questions will be asked of voters. The first is whether to switch to a proportional system, the second on what type of proportional system with a choice of three systems the most familiar of which is the Mixed Member Proportional system used in Germany, New Zealand and very similar to that of the Scottish, Welsh and London devolved institutions.

Two questions will be asked of voters. The first is whether to switch to a proportional system, the second on what type of proportional system Click To Tweet

The other two are systems designed in Canada with Canada in mind. In the first, Dual Member Proportional Representation, constituencies would double in size and elect two MPs, the first being from the most voted for candidate and the second awarded to one of the remaining candidates in a way designed to achieve proportionality.

The final system is Rural-Urban PR, which would use the Single Transferable Vote in urban areas and Mixed Member Proportional in the vast stretches of sparsely-populated country size.

The final details of these systems will be worked out in parliamentary committee should the bill pass.

However, the British Columbian government has decried that no region of the province would lose seats under PR, with the legislature only allowed to grow by a maximum of eight and that a 5% threshold will be used to keep out the smallest parties to deal with potential criticisms.

Around the world, country after country that was left with a Westminster style voting system have either upgraded to a proportional system or tried to. Even in the UK, it has become the norm that devolved institutions adopt modern proportional voting systems.

A majority of people in British Columbia have already voted for parties that support electoral reform. If that were to happen in UK, one possibility would be for the government to summon a randomly selected Citizens Assembly to learn about the options and suggest a system for the government to then implement.

Last week’s local elections were a textbook lesson in why we need to change the way we elect our local councils. From the wrong party winning, to councils with zero scrutiny, using Westminster’s voting system to decide who controls council’s multi-million-pound budgets is a disaster waiting to happen.

But it doesn’t have to be like this in England. Just across the border in Scotland, local councils reflect how local residents vote. In Northern Ireland, local government has functioned perfectly well for decades with a democratic voting system.

Most of the councils up for election last week are elected in one of two ways, usually electing more than one councillor from each ward.

In the first, as is typical in the London boroughs, you have three councillors in a ward, three votes you can cast and the top three will be elected. Typically, voters will cast all three votes for one party’s candidates and hence three councillors of the same party will be returned.

This means that councils often do an even worse job reflecting how people vote than even Westminster. With three separate wards there is a chance that different parties’ candidates might win each one. With a single ward that elects three, typically, one parties’ candidates will get all.

Another way is elections by thirds, typically used in the urban North. These wards are once again multi-member except that one councillor is generally elected a year, with a fourth year with no election. Once again the same party tends to win all three, plus voters get tired of voting every single year which reduces turnout and engagement.

Both these statements were born out last Thursday.

For instance, three London boroughs, Barking and Dagenham, Lewisham and Newham are now 100% Labour councils with no opposition councillors whatsoever.

Three London boroughs, Barking and Dagenham, Lewisham and Newham are now 100% Labour councils with no opposition councillors whatsoever. Click to tweet

Even with a voting system that is famous for not respecting how people vote, you might expect that the vast majority of residents voted Labour. Perhaps 80%?

In Lewisham, for instance, only 52% voted Labour, with three other parties gaining more than 10% of the vote. The Greens (18.4%) the Conservatives (13.0%) and the Liberal Democrats (11.8%). While just over half of Lewisham residents wanted a Labour council, a substantial minority voted for other parties. Had a few percentage points been different, labour could have gained 100% of the seats on less than 50% of the vote.

Lewisham Council Elections 2018

But it was not just Labour who gained an advantage from disproportionate results. In the City of Westminster Council, the Conservatives won by a narrow margin in votes, 42.8% to 41.1%, but won 41 seats to 19 for Labour.

We’ve been crunching the numbers on how people voted in #LocalElections2018

Westminster could very easily have had Labour in the lead on votes, but losing on seats. pic.twitter.com/QZWOW0CFwj

— Electoral Reform Society (@electoralreform) May 4, 2018

The politicians who benefit from Westminster’s voting system often argue that one of the advantages is that it produces clear winners for whoever wins the most votes. But in Wandsworth Labour won the most votes, 38.7%, and got 26 seats, while the Conservatives got 38.3%, but won 33. In Plymouth (elected by thirds) the Conservatives won the vote 44.9% to 44.2% but Labour won the most seats up for election, 11 to 8, seeing it take control of the council.

It’s very narrow, but looks like more people voted Labour in Wandsworth than Conservative.

Sign the petition for a fair voting system: https://t.co/l0oFRHUrTZ pic.twitter.com/r6p3GItlci

— Electoral Reform Society (@electoralreform) May 4, 2018

The Conservatives actually beat Labour in terms of votes in Plymouth. Yet Labour won the most seats.

Westminster style voting can’t even do the one thing its supporters say it does. Sign the petition: https://t.co/l0oFRHCQvp pic.twitter.com/ByEWMLxqBs

— Electoral Reform Society (@electoralreform) May 4, 2018

The results of Westminster style all-or-nothing elections can often be changed completely by a small number of voters. This is why parties fight hard in some wards and barely show up in others. A change of 141 votes in Wandsworth in the right wards would have seen a Labour administration elected for the first time since 1971.

In Wandsworth Labour won the most votes, 38.7%, and got 26 seats, while the Conservatives got 38.3%, but won 33. Click to tweet

Local councils are important – they have multi-million pound budgets, control major developments, trading standards, bin collections, social care, transport and so much more. According to research ‘one-party councils’ could be missing out on savings of around £2.6bn when compared to their more competitive counterparts – most likely due to a lack of scrutiny. £2.6bn is a lot of potential extra cash for our struggling authorities.

People should have the opportunity for their votes to truly count and to have vibrant councils as diverse as the communities they represent, with the power to hold their leaders to account.

Sign our petition for local voting reform

For the past fifteen years, the Hansard Society – a thinktank which promotes parliamentary democracy – has published its Audit of Political Engagement. The Audit is an attempt to measure the level of engagement of Britons in politics, through an annual survey.

This year’s has just been released – and it features some fascinating findings.

There’s some cheering news. 57% of respondents say they are interested in politics, for instance, and 52% say they are knowledgeable – and overall the report shows an uptick amongst traditionally less engaged groups such as BME respondents, more working-class respondents and women. This is to be celebrated – though it should be noted that the Hansard Society has often found that such scores tend to spike before and after general elections.

Yet the report also highlights some yawning deficits in Britain’s democracy, particularly with regards to people’s satisfaction with the political system.

67% of respondents say the political system either needs a lot of improvement or could be improved quite a lot. Only 29% say they are satisfied with the system. This is a fall from previous years.

[bctt tweet=”67% of respondents say the political system either needs a lot of improvement or could be improved quite a lot. Only 29% say they are satisfied with the system.” username=”electoralreform”]

There are divides even within this findings. In general, satisfaction with our democracy appears to fall as one gets further from London. It is 41% in London, and 37% in the South West and South East of England.

Yet the figure plummets to just 28% in the Midlands and Eastern of England, 23% in the North of England, 23% in Wales and just 14% in Scotland.

When asked about different facets of the system, the public continue to demonstrate cynicism. Only 22% believe it ensures the views of most Britons are represented, 21% believe it allows ordinary people to get involved in politics, and only 22% believe that the system allows voters a final say over Britain’s future direction.

Perhaps most damning is the finding that only 23% believe that the political system is good at delivering what is supposed to be its key strength – delivering stable government.

[bctt tweet=”Only 23% believe that the political system is good at delivering what is supposed to be its key strength – stable government.” username=”electoralreform”]

This is unsurprising given Britain’s political system squeezes out voices and narrows the terms of the political debate. It is also unsurprising given that the mechanics of the electoral system is failing on its own terms – unable to deliver the kind of sizeable single party majority that first past the post is supposed to deliver.

Our analysis of last year’s general election showed that under Westminster’s voting system we saw:

• Wasted votes: 68% of votes had no impact on the result – 22 million votes were wasted this election
• Tiny margins:0016% of voters choosing differently would have given the Conservatives a majority, while the election saw rise in very marginal seats: eleven seats were won by fewer than 100 votes
• A ‘hold your nose’ election: We estimate that 6.5 million people voted tactically, alongside surge in smaller parties standing aside

There were major regional divides too, with the ‘First Past the Post’ voting system exaggerating divisions in the UK – Labour secured 29% of South East vote but got just 10% of seats, while Conservatives won 34% of the North East vote but got just 9% of seats.

Meanwhile, the SNP continue to be over-represented in Scotland (as is Labour in Wales), while Northern Ireland voters are forced into two camps.

It’s no wonder voters feel distant from political institutions.

A new way of doing politics – one which is more diverse and more representative – can also be stronger, encouraging parties to work together and deliver fairer representation.

We need real democratic change in this country to put voters at the centre, and prevent a slide towards alienation.

We are now but two weeks from the 2018 local elections.

If you live in London you will have the chance to elect councillors for the first time since 2014. If you reside in the metropolitan counties of the urban North and Midlands, or in the larger Southern cities and towns, you may also be going to the polls.

Across England, local elections are non-proportionate i.e. the diverse way in which people vote is not accurately reflected in the results.

Many council wards elect multiple councillors – but the opportunity this presents to increase the level of proportionality isn’t being taken. Instead, councillors in such wards are generally elected in one of two ways: all-up or by thirds.

In Newham, East London, for example, the council elects all at the same time. There are 20 wards each electing three councillors. When voters there go to the polls, they can vote for up to three candidates. Parties will typically put forward three candidates each and the three candidates with the most votes win.

Electing councillors in this way can be even less proportionate than in single-member wards using the same ‘First Past the Post’ style system, because a ward may have, for instance, two bits that are supportive of one party and one bit that is supportive of another – and the two bits will always overpower the third.

Newham has seen one party (Labour) hold every single seat on the council since 2010, last time winning 60% of the vote. While this is clearly deserving of a majority, it should not be without opposition.

The other way councillors in multi-member wards are elected are in staggered ballots, which will take place in 107 councils this year. Typically, this sees a portion of members up for election, usually in three years out of every four. So a ward will often have councillors elected in different years.

This not only creates disproportionality, but the constant cycle of elections tends to reduce turnout, from a combination of electoral fatigue and because of the reduced power of the ballot box. If a council is say 85% controlled by one party, and a third of seats go up for election, then even if the opposition take every seat that party will still control 52% of seats.

The situation could not be more different North of Hadrian’s Wall, however. Until 2007 Scotland was very familiar with the problems of majoritarian voting in local government. Councils were distant and unaccountable. And there were one-party states with just a handful of opposition councillors, or none at all.

But a change to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) brought proportional representation to Scottish local government.

Overnight every council and ward in Scotland became competitive, forcing a renewal of local democracy.

Scottish local government is now not only more competitive, it is better functioning. In 2003 (before the reform) 52.3% of voters saw their vote elect their chosen candidate. By 2012 (after the reform) 76.7% saw their first preference elected.

Councils have since been governed by coalitions, minorities and parties with absolute control. And turnout in 2017 was strong by local council standards at 46.9% – which compares favourably to the 38.9% in the last locals in London.

There are now moves towards giving Welsh councils the chance to choose to change to the system.

So while the Electoral Reform Society and other civil society groups are rightly campaigning for people to cast their votes on May 3, it is also recognised that change is desperately needed to spread the use of a proportional system across the United Kingdom.

This democratic reform must be extended to England too so that its local government be revitalised in the same way.  

Sign our petition for local voting reform

The three-time two-thirds majority winning political party Fidesz has been able to reshape Hungary’s political institutions because of the 2010 election, in which it won 53% of the vote, and won its first two-thirds majority.

The process by which you can get two-thirds of the seats on just over half the vote was created from the rather unusual electoral system developed after the end of the cold war. Hungary’s current system is a modification of this original design.

The original system was born of a compromise reached in the negotiations between Hungary’s Communist Party and the opposition during the roundtable talks that heralded the start of the transition to democracy.

The Communists had favoured a Westminster-style voting system, believing that their successor party, the Socialists, would do well with their higher visibility and organisation. The Communists had also used first past the post, in theory (of course, only candidates from one party could run) and so did not want to depart from this experience.

The opposition parties were split but came to favour a mixed-system, but mixed systems can vary widely in their functioning, depending on the details.

Hungary’s original post-communist system was based on a system of three ‘tiers’. In the first tier, 176 seats were elected using a French-style two-round system. In the second, 152 were elected from regional PR lists and finally, 58 were allocated from lists to compensate parties that fell below their proportionate share.

In order to qualify for compensatory seats, a party had to run candidates in a sizeable number of constituencies.

The system was designed to institutionalise the six-parties that sat at the roundtable into a permanent six-party system. But, like all great plans of mice and men, it didn’t work out as they hoped. The high level of candidates you had to stand to qualify for compensatory seats meant that small parties soon fell away and new ones couldn’t enter. By 2002 only 3 parties entered parliament, and two of those – Fidesz and the Socialists held 95% of the seats.

After re-election in 2006, a leaked, speech of the Socialist PM to his party caucus circulated in which, littered with curse words, he was quoted as saying that they had lied about the country’s economic situation.

“We lied morning, night and evening…. There aren’t many choices. That is because we have f****d it up. Not just a bit, but much…. We must change this f*****g country.”

Trust in the Socialist Party hence collapsed overnight, and with few other options, support drove its way to Fidesz, and the then-nascent far-right party Jobbik.

Fidesz’s two-thirds majority gave it enough seats in the Hungarian parliament to have carte blanche on changing Hungary’s constitution, which it did unilaterally, without any discussion with the opposition or mention of this in its election campaign.

Hungary’s voting system was always an attempt by politicians to design an electoral system with a result in mind. As the other five parties at that roundtable learnt, choosing an electoral system because it would help your party at one point in time, is no guarantee that it will in future. Just as we don’t let politicians in the UK design their own constituency boundaries, neither should we let them choose their own voting system.

Citizens’ Assemblies around the world have proven that, given the time and space, normal people can make well-informed decisions on complicated political matters. Rather than a roundtable of party grandees, or a Hobson’s choice of a referendum, it should be citizens that take the lead in reforming Westminster’s broken voting system.

Read what happened in Hungary’s recent election in part one of this two-part blog

Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has dominated Hungarian politics since 2010. On Sunday, its dominance was confirmed, as it won its third two-thirds majority in a row, winning 134 of 199 seats. In most European countries, a hattrick of landslides would be a sign of massive popularity for the ruling party.  But Fidesz has managed to get its impressive result on 49% of the vote.

The election was criticised by the OSCE’s election monitoring mission for its intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing, an unusually strong critique for the international organisation. The election was notable for a blending and overlap of state and party resources, with the government launching ‘public information’ campaigns which used similar rhetoric to Fidesz’s campaign.

This is the latest in a series of criticisms of the Orban government. Since 2010 Hungary has often been cited as a prime example of democratic backsliding in which newly democratised countries fall back into undemocratic behaviour. The democracy monitoring organisation, Freedom House, has seen Hungary fall from their best possible score in terms of political and civil rights, 1 out of 7, to a 2.5 in 2017, putting it below the more troubled new democracies of Romania and Bulgaria for the first time. And scores of domestic and foreign observers have critiqued undemocratic behaviour by the government.

Fidesz is aided by the Hungarian electoral system, which it changed for the 2014 election. The system is a mixture of 106 Westminster-style first past the post seats and 93 seats assigned proportionally from lists. But, the list seats are not handed out to compensate for the disproportionality of the Westminster-style seats, as they are in Scotland, Wales and London, but just added on. This means that a party that has already got more seats than its share of the vote should allow from the Westminster-style seats, would get still more from the party lists.

There are definite signs of gerrymandering in the constituency seats designed after Fidesz’ first landslide in 2010. Additionally, while many countries with similar systems let votes in constituency seats for losing parties be added to their totals for calculating the list seats, to make the system more proportionate, Hungary is unique in doing this for the surplus votes for winning candidates.

The first run of this electoral system in 2014 saw Fidesz win 66.8% of the seats for 45% of the vote (133 of 199). The 2014 election result was more disproportionate than any post-war British election according to the Gallagher Index, a measure of disproportionality.

2018 saw a slightly less disproportionate victory for Fidesz – 67.3% of seats on a higher vote percentage at 49% (134 of 199), but the disproportionate results continue to speak for themselves. Fidesz won 91 of the constituency seats, almost 86%. The relatively easy to gerrymander Westminster-style elections and a natural tendency towards dis-proportionality has been used by Fidesz to create an electoral system biased in its own favour.

Around the world, political leaders look to Westminster’s electoral system when they want to take power away from voters. It is time that we stopped being an inspiration for anti-democratic forces and instead became an example of how democracy should be done.

This is part one of a two-part article. Find out how Hungary got its electoral system in part two!

The Electoral Commission has launched a new campaign against electoral fraud – a laudable effort to limit this type of crime.

But it also brings under the spotlight the upcoming trials of mandatory voter ID in May, happening in a smattering of councils.

This may not be a proportional answer to the problem. In fact, it could even make matters worse.

The trials seek to deal with the specific issue of ‘personation’. This is where someone votes at a polling station pretending to be someone else.

Impersonation fraud is incredibly rare

Indeed, the Electoral Commission’s data shows that only one conviction for it was made in the whole of 2017: out of nearly 45 million votes cast.

Requirements to show ID at polling stations would only stop people pretending to be somebody else in order to cast one fake vote. This is an incredibly rare crime – partly because it is such a slow, clunky way to steal an election – and requires levels of organisation that would be easy to spot and prevent.

Firstly, without knowing the result, no one can work out how many hundreds or thousands of votes you need to steal: if you steal too many it will be obvious, but if you don’t steal enough it makes no difference at all.

Secondly, you need to find enough real people on the electoral register who won’t be casting their ballot. If anyone whose vote has been stolen tries to vote, it instantly reveals potential fraud and investigations begin. We have solid legal election processes in place to deal with this.

Thirdly, you would need a team to go around all the polling stations to cast hundreds or thousands of votes without being spotted going in the same one twice.

Voting is not like picking up a parcel from the post office. Each individual vote only has any value when thousands of others are cast the same way – and it’s simply impractical to steal enough votes to make a tangible difference. That’s just one reason among many why it is so rare.

So mandatory voter ID can only (potentially) limit one, very rare type of fraud.

Who holds ID is uneven in the UK

But there is an additional issue. Unlike many European states, not everyone is issued with an ID card in the UK. This creates inequalities – one likely to be disproportionately higher for those with higher levels of deprivation.

As the Electoral Commission argues, people need to have faith in the voting system, but the problem with voting ID is that it could exclude many legitimate votes.

According to government figures, around one in 10 of us doesn’t have a passport or driving licence. In comparison to an evidently tiny amount of fraud then, there is a far greater potential risk to democracy if so many are kept from the polls.

Alternative solutions – such as allowing the use of utility bills – are also problematic, given they lack photo identification, are much easier to make fraudulent copies off and are not accessible to those who do not pay their own bills, such as the very young and some renters.

Battling electoral fraud is important, but it is vital that we do not use out of proportion responses which risk blocking large number of legitimate votes from being cast.

Sign our petition to protect your right to vote

Political nuts were sent into a frenzy last week by the launch of a new social media platform – Matt Hancock.

To briefly explain – the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Matt Hancock, has launched an app for communicating with his constituents in West Suffolk.

The Matt Hancock app provides news about Matt Hancock, photos and allows people to post comments and chat. It also promises future Matt Hancock live streams.

Whatever one thinks of the app, the idea is laudable. MPs need to communicate with constituents, and should be available in the spaces within which people live their daily lives. Many of us have smart phones now and so the ability to communicate directly with our representatives is there.

Unfortunately for the people of West Suffolk and Matt Hancock (both the man and the app), the app was quickly taken over by lobby journalists.

The “official Matt Hancock app” is a very strange place pic.twitter.com/FfRHGmDrFN

— Ned Donovan (@Ned_Donovan) February 1, 2018

It’s like having an actual Matt Hancock in the palm of your hand! pic.twitter.com/sAxmAbDBcu

— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) February 1, 2018

Yet, it demonstrates the increasing importance of the online space in MPs’ communication. According to the website MPsonTwitter.co.uk – which collates statistics about MP tweets – 581 MPs, 89% of the total, have a twitter account. Many also have Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, and are on Snapchat.

Social media is not without its downsides. Critics of Donald Trump, for instance, would argue that he has used twitter as a bully pulpit, attacking and delegitimising critics.

The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018

It is also true that social media has a problem with online misogyny that the platforms desperately need to crack down upon.

Yet the reality is the numbers speak for themselves. Around half a billion tweets are sent every day and Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users. MPs need to go to where voters are.

Social media has many uses for a politician. It can be used to campaign. It can amplify the voice of rebellious MPs. And it can be used for engagement. But overall the best social media accounts are probably the most human. For example, see the below tweet from long-time ERS ally Jonny Reynolds MP.

With hard work and dedication anyone can achieve their dreams https://t.co/fWv4wQaD9D

— Jonathan Reynolds (@jreynoldsMP) February 26, 2017

Or this tweet from Nicholas Soames MP, whose hashtags are legendary:

#wonderfulcountryUKaidhasdoneabrilliantjob

— Nicholas Soames (@NSoames) February 1, 2018

Or this bipartisan tweet from Johnny Mercer MP:

.@RuthSmeeth and I did C4 news tonight. She was better than me but gets endless sh*t for it on here; I get nothing. A good expose of what she deals with every day. Unvarnished prejudice. Top MP. https://t.co/li5vTFhdii

— Johnny Mercer MP (@JohnnyMercerUK) January 22, 2018

Having a sense of humour on social media and politicians being themselves helps to break down barriers. MPs on social media are more accessible than ever before and it’s a reminder that, ultimately, they’re people. People in privileged positions of power but people nonetheless. At its best social media can reduce the distance between voters and MPs.

Fourteen years on from the launch of Facebook and twelve on from the launch of Twitter, it is a daily presence in our lives that has expanded into the mainstream. It will continue to advance and evolve with time.

There’s still much to learn about social media. Much to combat and change and new realities to deal with. We need to think seriously about these challenges and experiment with new ways of doing things.

But social media is here to stay, and it is good that politics is engaging with it. Whether Matt Hancock takes off or doesn’t, it’s good to see MPs trying new things and trying to grasp the possibilities of modern technology and what it offers in terms of engaging with their constituents.

There will be pitfalls along the way, but there is much to learn from every attempt.

Picture Credit – UK Parliament 

Turnout is a vital measure for understanding our relationship with politics, whether it be low or high. If  people do not vote, it tells us they are being failed by politics.  If people do vote in large numbers, then it can be argued the Government which emerges after an election has a much stronger mandate to run the country as it sees fit.

Given its importance, a new paper from a team of academics at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester which challenge many of our assumptions on turnout, is deserving of significant attention.

The issue lies in that turnout – the number of people that vote in any given election – is not actually that easy to measure. In the UK it is given as a percentage of the electoral register, so if 44m people are registered and 22m ballots are cast, the turnout figure will be given as 50%.

Counting the ballots on election day is relatively easy, but working out how many people are actually on the electoral register is trickier than it sounds.

This is because there are perfectly legal duplicates on the register. For instance, second-home owners and university students may register at multiple addresses though they may only vote in one place per election. If you split your time between two homes you could vote in two sets of local elections, but only once in a general election.

A further reason is redundancies and inaccuracies – voters who move house and register at their new address but aren’t removed from their old one.

These can build up as the UK does not a have a centralised electoral roll. Each local authority holds their local electoral roll and manages their own elections. This makes it very hard to centrally rig an election in the UK, but also leads to people being on multiple electoral rolls.

To work out the size of the roll you have to apply some complicated maths to estimate how many errors there are and remove the duplicates. You then use this number as the official size of the electoral roll and then work out the turnout.

This is where the problems started. 

The paper authors estimate that, on average, UK turnout is underestimated by around 9.4%, on average, which would boost UK turnout north of 70%.

This is both positive and dramatic. It is often said that people are not interested in politics, and this argument is grounded in turnout figures which may have been hugely underestimated.

Such inaccuracy also throws into question the way the register works and voters access to it in general. Whilst you can register online there is no way to check if you are registered already. Voters end up inadvertently registering multiple times and can’t easily correct this themselves. Some of the inaccuracies in the register will also work against voters being able to vote at all – if, for instance, they are registered in the wrong place.

Furthermore, the electoral register is used for the drawing of electoral boundaries. As duplicates are often produced by people regularly moving house, and this regular movement is usually concentrated in urban areas. Constituencies where duplicates and errors are concentrated end up with fewer voters. It would be far simpler to use population and nationality data from the census to design constituencies with equal amounts of eligible voters. To ensure citizens are fairly represented in Parliament, ensuring boundaries are based on sound data is vital.

As has been identified, where there are mistakes in electoral data, it can have very real consequences for democracy. Findings such as these should cause us to pause for thought and wonder how we can have the fullest possible register.