Electoral Reform Society

Civica Election Services

The Electoral Reform Society is a political pressure group based in the United Kingdom which promotes electoral reform. It seeks to replace the first-past-the-post voting system with one of proportional representation, advocating the single transferable vote. It is the world's oldest operating organisation concerned with political and electoral reform.

Until 2018 the Electoral Reform Society remained a minority shareholder and was in large part financed by its dividend from Electoral Reform Services.

Electoral Reform Services

Electoral Reform Services (ERS, formerly Electoral Reform Ballot Services): A company established by the Electoral Reform Society in 1988 to provide an independent balloting and polling service to organisations conducting elections and polls. The service is widely used by trade unions, political parties, building societies and companies when balloting their members or shareholders in ways defined by the law and their internal management. In many cases these organisations are forbidden from conducting their ballots internally in an attempt to ensure that the ballots are conducted impartially.

Civica Election Services

On 4 December 2018 Electoral Reform Services was bought by Civica, becoming Civica Election Services (CES).

The Electoral Reform Society is now financed by a Capital Fund set up with the proceeds from the sale of ERS to Civica Election Services.

2019 General Election

On 11 December 2019, the BBC reported:

An IT error has resulted in some people who are not registered to vote being "wrongly informed" they can take part in tomorrow's General Election.

The Electoral Commission said a glitch in software used by some councils had led to a "small number" of ineligible people being told they could vote.

The watchdog said it was working with those councils to ensure those affected did not turn up to vote in error.

The mix-up was caused by incorrect "settings" on software supplied to councils by Electoral Reform Services, which helps run elections on behalf of local authorities and other organisations.

A spokesman for the firm - which was bought by IT services company Civica Group last year - said this meant some people who applied to get on the electoral register after the deadline had wrongly been included on the electoral list.

While its software is used by 245 local authorities in England and Wales, it said not all had been affected.

Civica Election Services said it had responded quickly and had been in touch with individual electoral registration officers - who are responsible for managing the local registers - to identify those affected:

"The company's electoral management software system has a very strong track record and we take all related matters very seriously. Where we have identified issues, we are working very closely with the electoral registration officers to ensure the accuracy of the electoral register for the parliamentary election."

Labour leadership election

Balloting in the 2020 Labour Party leadership contest is being conducted by Civica Election Services. On 24 February 2020, each Labour Party member was emailed as follows:

Dear Member,

The ballot for the Leadership and Deputy Leadership elections as well as the NEC elections and Scottish Deputy election opens today. Here are some things you need to know:

Don't panic if you don't receive your ballot today. This is a huge election and it will take most of this week for everyone to receive their ballot.

If you have an individual email address on the system you will receive your ballot electronically. Only those who don't have an individual email address on the system will receive a ballot pack in the post.

Electronic ballots will come from labourelections@cesvotes.com, with the subject line "The Labour Party – Election of Labour Leader and Deputy Leader 2020".

If you think you have not received your ballot please make sure you add the email address above to your 'trusted sender' list and check your junk mail before getting in touch with us.

Ballot reissue requests open on Monday 2 March. Please do not contact us to request a reissue before this date as we will not be able to help. Once you have received your ballot you will only be able to vote once. You will not be able to change your mind subsequently.

You can find further information on our FAQs page. We expect our phone lines and inboxes to be exceptionally busy over the next few days so please bear with us if we are unable to answer your query immediately.

Thanks,

Team Labour

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 18 February 2020.
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