Summer General Election Creates "Huge Challenge" For Organisers

Rishi Sunak's decision to hold a general election in early July has created a "huge challenge" for organisers, who face a race against time to recruit staff and find space to hold polls.

The timing of the election caught Westminster off-guard last week, as the settled consensus was that the Prime Minister was more likely to wait until the autumn before going to the country.

Peter Stanyon, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said the significantly tighter timeline means there is “massive pressure” on teams who are facing the first major national vote since the introduction of voter ID, as well as changes to rules around proxy and postal voting.

Stanyon, head of the organisation that offers help and advice to electoral administration professionals across the country, told PoliticsHome that after the “technical rehearsal” of the May local elections three weeks ago, staff are now faced with the “huge challenge” of getting the election organised within the next six weeks with the changes to the system. 

Stanyon said local teams could be “struggling to get the bodies behind the desks” to run election processes, and that portacabins could be in short supply for polling purposes because the election will take place in the middle of festival season.

“There’s a lot of challenges that will not be consistent across every single constituency, but there will be a different challenge in every single constituency,” he said.

This year, hundreds of thousands more British citizens living abroad will be able to register for a vote thanks to the abolition of the rule that meant people who left the UK more than 15 years ago lost the right to vote. 

Stanyon now expects “higher numbers coming through” of applications from