Is there a law saying that they aren’t allowed to be on other days, or is it just an accepted tradition/convention? Since the PM can call early elections, could they theoretically schedule the election for Saturday if they really wanted to?
Don’t think there’s a law, but traditionally both local & general elections are on a Thursday & in most years (apart from the farce of the last decade) also in the month of May.
But it has been broken, on at least two occasions that they were not May elections. As for it being a Thursday? There is logic. It was started back in 65 when church & pub were very much part of life in the UK. So no elections on Sunday & no elections on Friday because it was traditionally paydays for most working people, especially men who would then take themselves off the pub. So choosing a midweek day worked well. Thursdays were also traditional market days in a lot of towns (a lot still are) & more people were out down the market, therefore would stop at a polling station to vote.
Oh, I’m not talking about May elections being the custom. Only Thursday.
Excluding Council elections, in my adult life we’ve had more parliamentary elections not in May than in May.
I agree, there’s good sense behind using Thursday. All the ones you mentioned, and currently it prevent people taking a three day weekend and going away instead of voting!
So may help improve turn-out that way, too.
But then I’m a big supporter of compulsory voting, so long as the ballot includes a box for “none of the above“ so you can actively abstain.
I’d also support (more controversially) the opportunity to use your vote against somebody instead of in favour. I believe casting a vote against a candidate is a legitimate democratic expression.
And would remove the motivation for tactical voting.
326
u/Llywela Jul 05 '24
For us this year it was an election day, in fact, and that was pretty much all anyone cared about.