Electoral Law

Current project status

• Initiation: Could include discussing scope and terms of reference with lead Government Department
• Pre-consultation: Could include approaching interest groups and specialists, producing scoping and issues papers, finalising terms of project
• Consultation: Likely to include consultation events and paper, making provisional proposals for comment
• Policy development: Will include analysis of consultation responses. Could include further issues papers and consultation on draft Bill
• Reported: Usually recommendations for law reform but can be advice to government, scoping report or other recommendations

We have now published our final report.

Download the Electoral Law report here.

Download the executive summary here.

Download the plain-text summary here.

Download the Welsh translation of the plain text-summary here.

The problem

Electoral law in the UK is spread across 17 statutes and some 30 sets of regulations. It has become increasingly complex and fragmented; it is difficult to access, apply, and update. Much of the law is rooted in 19th Century language and practice, and doesn’t reflect modern electoral administration.

The project

The electoral law reform project is part of the Law Commission for England and Wales’ Eleventh Programme of Law Reform published on 19 July 2011.

The twin aims of the project are to ensure, first, that electoral laws are presented within a rational, modern legislative framework, governing all elections and referendums under statute. Second, that the law governing the conduct of elections and referendums is modern, simple, and fit for purpose.

This project was split into several phases. The first phase, a scoping exercise including a consultation which ended on 17 September 2012, was completed with the publication of our scoping report on 11 December 2012.

The second phase involved formulating law reform proposals.  Owing to the UK wide nature of electoral law, this phase was conducted jointly with the Scottish Law Commission and the Northern Ireland Law Commission. The Law Commissions published a joint interim report on 4 February 2016.

After reviewing our interim report, the UK Government stated in late 2016 that work on leaving the European Union, and the attendant unprecedented demand on parliamentary time, meant that there was no capacity for an electoral bill to take forward our recommendations. We subsequently explored ways of implementing our recommendations which did not require primary legislation. In particular, we explored the possibility of creating a statutory instrument to simplify and bring together the various conduct rules concerning electoral events in England and the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in Wales.

In 2019 we agreed with the Cabinet Office to move on to publishing a final report, which was published on 17 March 2020. The Northern Ireland Law Commission became non-operational in April 2015, and has therefore been unable to participate in the final stage of this project.

The final report, produced jointly with the Scottish Law Commission, recommends:

• that electoral law should be rationalised into a single, consistent legislative framework with consistent electoral laws across all elections, except where differences are necessary (for example, due to different voting systems)
• that the process for challenging elections should be modernised, making it easier for parties to understand and use and that judges be given the power to limit the potential costs for challengers
• existing electoral offences should be updated and made easier for the electorate, officials and prosecutors to understand.

Contact

If you have any questions about the report or recommendations, you can contact the team using the enquiries mailbox