Weekend voting pilots will let some people cast a ballot in a shopping centre. At last, democracy can take the escalator and perhaps browse a jumper afterwards.
The government announced that four areas would test more choice over when and where people vote during May’s local elections. Some voters would use new venues or cast ballots before polling day. The constitutional experiment has therefore reached the point where a person can buy batteries, compare trainers and select a councillor without crossing town in a state of civic exhaustion.
Weekend voting pilots leave the usual booth
Milton Keynes would trial a central shopping centre voting hub instead of limiting voters to one designated polling station. Cambridge, Tunbridge Wells and North Hertfordshire would test early or weekend voting in central buildings. The ballot box is being released into the community, where it may encounter escalators, food courts and the possibility of being mistaken for a promotional stand.
The way people vote in person has not changed since 1872, which is an impressive run for any public service and a worrying one for anything involving opening hours. The pilots aim to make voting more convenient and accessible. They will also test whether the public can be offered a choice without the electoral system requesting proof of address, a spare passport photograph and a letter from the future.
Traditional polling stations would continue alongside the new options. Postal and proxy voting would remain available too. Democracy is not abandoning its old methods. It is simply putting some of them near the shops and asking them to be less awkward in public.
A ballot box considers retail opening hours
The pilots would use existing safeguards, with local authorities running the arrangements and government support behind them. The serious business of voting remains serious, even if the surroundings suggest that a ballot could earn points on a loyalty card.
Ministers hope the trials will make it easier for busy people to vote. That is a modest ambition, but it may be revolutionary in a country where finding the polling station has sometimes felt like the first question on the ballot paper.
If the experiment works, future voters may find polling hubs in high streets, town centres, care homes or universities. The final frontier is a polling station beside the thing everyone went out to buy. Democracy will then be fully accessible, conveniently located and somehow still unable to validate parking.
Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
