National recovery and resilience: learning from elections during a pandemic

Urgent policy decisions need to be made about the conduct of elections worldwide during the pandemic, not least in the UK. Elections in at least 72 countries were postponed due to COVID-19, between February and October 2020. Others have continued to hold elections - but with some adjustments such as introducing special voting mechanisms to adapt their elections to the health crisis.

It is essential for national recovery and societal resilience that lessons are learned and disseminated urgently from countries that do hold elections. Most notably, Britain is scheduled to hold elections in May 2021. These will be a 'bumper' set of polls combining scheduled local elections with those postponed from May 2020 because of the Covid pandemic, such as 40 Police and Crime Commissioner elections, the 2020 round of English local elections in 118 councils, local and combined authority directly elected mayors in England, including the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority (GLA). These will be run on the same day as Scottish and Welsh Parliamentary elections, and Police Crime and Commissioner elections, meaning that Great Britain in its entirety will be at the polls, but with no direct previous experience of doing so under pandemic conditions. What can Britain learn from the holding of polls elsewhere?

The continuous suspension of elections will deny citizens their democratic voice, and ability to hold their elected representatives to account. However, holding elections without suitable adaption to the health emergency could threaten to accelerate the spread of the disease, by bringing millions of voters, candidates, administrators and officials together on election day. It could also compromise the integrity of the election if citizens are deterred from voting because of concerns about their own health. Issues with any extension of additional accessibility measures, such as extended polling times, or remote voting, whether postal or by alternative methods, may also throw the tension between participation and electoral integrity into sharp relief.

This project draws live lessons from states and territories that have continued to hold elections. It will involve the publication of country case studies as technical papers shortly after those elections are held. It will also involve the conduct of surveys of electoral officials.

The project will draw out comparative lessons from the case studies about the mitigating steps that can be put in place to protect electoral integrity during the covid-19 pandemic. Findings and analysis about the success, or otherwise, of these COVID-19 mitigations will be used to develop policy recommendations for the stakeholders involved in the organisation of the elections in the UK and in other countries.

During 2021, the comparative case studies will be drawn together as an edited volume and published open access with view to generating broader longer term recommendations about how states can prepare in advance for future natural disasters such as an epidemic. It will therefore have longer lasting effects on preserving democracy and electoral integrity, thereby building national recovery and societal resilience.