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Local Elections England: 2026Electoral administration
Electoral administration is another essential service provided by local government – without the work of electoral administrators, our democracy would not function. But it is a service that is facing severe pressure, under-resourced and dealing with new responsibilities.
Following the first outing for voter ID in the UK in 2023, the Local Democracy Research Centre surveyed administrators to ascertain the impact on this already stretched service. We then expanded that investigation in 2024 after a snap UK General Election came hard on the heels of local elections across England.
Electoral administration 2024 survey
Following our successful review of the implementation of voter ID last year, we then surveyed electoral administrators following a snap UK General Election in 2024 to investigate the state of electoral integrity more generally. The resulting report explores their views on recent changes to electoral processes, the greatest challenges they are facing in their work, how well they felt the last set of elections went, and what needs to change to ensure the electoral processes and procedures that UK democracy relies on are as safe and accessible as possible. Read the full report.
Image: Adam Webb via istock
The impact of voter ID on electoral services
Image from istock
This is a significant report on democracy in the UK from the LGIU’s Local Democracy Research Centre and funded by the JRSST-CT. Based on in-depth research with the people who run elections it raises serious issues with the UK’s electoral infrastructure, finding that voter ID has introduced a series of new pressures to a sector already under severe strain. Find out more about this research.
About the Local Democracy Research Centre
The Local Democracy Research Centre (LDRC) is where LGIU gathers the evidence and develops ideas for change and innovation in local government. We bring together experts, practitioners and academics to investigate the key challenges for local democracy around the world.
We are always solution-focused and we work closely with our extensive member base and the wider sector, meaning that our research programme always reflects local government’s priorities. More.
