The End of Britain’s Weeks-Long General Elections
General elections in Britain were once weeks-long affairs of corruption and chaos. The shift to one-day polling was slow.
Peter Keeling
Voting Before the Secret Ballot
Before the secret ballot, voting in Britain was a theatrical, violent and public affair. The Act that made democracy private turned 150 this year.
Polling in a Pandemic
The general election of 1918 was a ‘cynical muddle’ held as influenza killed thousands across a country emerging from the First World War.
Child Voters
In the politically chaotic decades before true universal suffrage, some infants found a way to vote in British elections.