Guildford Petitioner Wants Elections Held At Weekend to Boost Turnout

Published on: 25 Aug, 2019
Updated on: 28 Aug, 2019

John Hawthorne has started a petition to get elections moved to a Sunday.

By Rebecca Curley

local democracy reporter

A Guildford father is petitioning the government to allow elections on Sundays to make it easier for people to vote.

John Hawthorne, who has three adult children, stood as a Merrow Labour candidate in the May local elections and says he realised how low turnout is, as well as how difficult it was for some to vote on a Thursday.

He said research on turnout figures showed countries that hold weekend elections have a higher turnout rate.

“There is a connection between the day and the turnout,” he added. “I would like to see a couple of councils experiment to see if there is a difference.”

Overall turnout for the May 2, 2019 Guildford Borough Council election was 38.88%. Figures for Merrow ward show 45.9%. The ward with the most voting was Clandon and Horsley with 55% and the lowest was Ash Vale with 25.6%.

A voter leaves a Shalford polling station during the May borough council elections

Turnout in the UK during the general election in 2017 was 68% but in the Sweden 2018 general election turnout was 87% of the electorate.

Mr Hawthorne, 61, who works in the mobile phone trade, said: “Sweden has Sunday as an election day and they allow the whole week for people to vote, even using supermarkets as polling stations.”

He added his petition was not about helping the Labour party to win votes in Guildford or across the country.

Referring to himself as “politically naive” before the local elections, he added: “I joined politics because of Brexit in 2016 and joined Labour because it was the biggest party that wasn’t the Tories.”

Thursday has been the traditional day to hold general elections since the 1930s. Until 1918, elections were held over many weeks. Some theories say Thursday was chosen because that was market day for rural areas and many people had their pay packet on a Friday so may go to the pub.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 sets the next date for a general election at five-year intervals to always be on the first Thursday in May. If an earlier general election is triggered outside of the five-year period the election does not have to be held on a Thursday.

Mr Hawthorne says moving the election day to a weekend would help all parties because students who register with their home town and not their study town could return home to vote as well as help working parents.

The petition has just more than 900 signatures so far. Ten thousand would generate a response from Parliament and 100,000 could lead to a debate in the House of Commons.

His petition reads: “Real democracy is when all adults have an equal opportunity to vote. If you are a worker or a student you have far less time to vote during the week than a pensioner.

“To make society more equal and democratic we need to level the playing field.”

During the May local elections, Mr Hawthorne received 5% of the vote share for Merrow, 345 votes. The ward was won by Deborah Seabrook from Residents for Guildford and Villages, Steven Lee and Cenzig Jan Harwood for the Liberal Democrats.

View the petition here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/263133

Responses to Guildford Petitioner Wants Elections Held At Weekend to Boost Turnout

John Perkins Reply

August 25, 2019 at 2:37 pm

I completely agree – there is no sense in holding elections on Thursdays. The idea of allowing people a whole week to vote is even better. After all, postal voters get more time.

With regard to students, though, I don’t believe that they should have a right to vote in their term-time constituency because they have a freely available postal vote in their home town.

As Mr Hawthorne’s stance appears to be anti-Tory rather than pro-Labour he would have been better standing for R4GV. He would almost certainly have been elected. That would have made the numbers interesting.
Brian Holt Reply

August 26, 2019 at 10:47 am

If it’s hard for people to get to the polling station on the day, there is always the postal vote you can use instead. This is the easier way, and church halls, used as polling stations, would not be available on Sundays, anyway.

The cost alone to get the staff to man the polling stations on a Sunday would be a lot higher. How many people would volunteer to spend all-day Sunday working at the polling stations when its probably their only full day with their families?

The low turnout at the elections is due to the public being unhappy with the way Parliament is being run by the three main parties, and nothing to do with the day of the week elections are held.
John Armstrong Reply

August 28, 2019 at 1:06 pm

I disagree with the premise that a higher turnout would follow if elections were held on Sundays. People are already up and about on Thursdays or any weekday. People vote on their way to work or home and so on.

The trouble with Sunday is that voting has to compete with a leisurely breakfast, taking your ease, reading the papers, watching the politics. It is the one day you can let it all go, your time’s your own. To have to get showered, shaved etc and drag off to the Polling Station would be a pain too far for a lot of people. Anyway, we have the postal vote.

Leave Sunday alone. It’s ours.