The public today is being offered an electoral box of tricks. Martin Wainwright, northern editor, celebrates a spirit of change that could breathe life into our jaded polling system. Novel ways to refresh and invigorate democracy are breaking out all over the country. Londoners reading this may well have voted up to three days ago.
Action is what they are getting.
Similar extra voting days are being tested in Sunderland, Coventry and a dozen other districts. Parallel trials including electronic voting, all-postal ballots and mobile polling stations are designed to bring the suffrage mountain to the reluctantly voting Mohammed. These technical innovations go hand in hand with other common sense changes in the Representation of the People Act 2000, which became law in March. Registration has been made easier for homeless people, remand prisoners and many in mental institutions. Older generations still associate polling day with trudging to an inconvenient, draughty hall, usually in the rain.