Democracy Club Sign Up Information

Hello, 

The general election is 13 days away!

We want to make sure every voter has the information they need to take part.

So, if you're up for it, three tasks for your weekend...

???? Print out Democracy Club posters

Stick them up somewhere useful! This PDF can be scaled to whatever size you can print. Or you can use a JPEG version (front cover, back cover)

???? Tell friends and family about WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk

Share it on your family WhatsApp group! Post it in your local Facebook group!

???? Make a note of next Thursday (5th December) as #DemocracyDay in your calendars

It’s an election, but nobody’s talking about democracy. A group of campaigns are trying to change that for next Thursday, such as this event in Manchester and some coordinated press and social media work. More to come!

And one final bonus task! 

Our friends at mySociety are crowdfunding for TheyWorkForYou so that it can carry on running through the next parliament. It means you can see how your next MP votes and what they say in the next parliament. Please chip in!

Have a good weekend,

Joe and the team

????

Hello, 

Happy #DemocracyDay! 

This is the day in the election campaign when we try to get the media and campaigns to pay attention to the issue of a better democracy.

There’s a lot going on over on twitter via the #DemocracyDay hashtag.

We would love your help in pushing democracy onto the election agenda! 

• Message your candidates (contact details here) to ask them to pledge to support better information on democratic processes. It’s time that open data on the basics of elections, candidates, polling locations and results was produced by the state.
• Go along to a hustings in your area (they'll be listed here) to ask your candidates what they will do to support a healthy democracy.

Democracy Club is pretty cool, but relying on a tiny non-profit to provide vital digital infrastructure for democracy is not ideal. It’s time the UK invested in bringing democracy up to speed for the digital age. Once the basic open data is done, then Democracy Club can move on to the next project to make democracy better!

Let us know how you get on — we'll be following this up with the next parliament! 

With thanks,

Joe and the team

Hello, 

Happy election day! Obviously, go vote if you haven’t already. Then read this email...

???? So far today:

We crashed through one million uses of WhereDoIVote.co.uk fairly early on in the day. The team has been working hard since 6am to deal with the on-the-day changes and to make corrections as swiftly as possible. 

The candidate data you helped crowdsource is everywhere, powering tweets, email campaigns, candidate lookup widgets and we’ve passed 500,000 uses on WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk over the last few weeks too. 

? Looking back over the last six weeks: 

You crowdsourced the name and party affiliation of over 3,000 candidates in about 19 hours, before adding photos, emails, social media details for the vast majority of them.

You’ve helped list hundreds of hustings events and photographed hundreds of election leaflets.

???? Thank you!

Everyone who entered data on #SoPNDay and every day since then, everyone who shared stuff on social media, distributed flyers and got in touch with candidates to get more information from them… Thanks for helping our democracy work better! 

???? More of this kind of thing:

If you’d like to support Democracy Club with a monthly donation, please use this handy link. 

???? Enjoy the results..

From 11.30pm-ish, we’ll be capturing results data here. Look out for official tweets or website updates from local authorities for the full counts.

Until next time (...)

Joe, Sym, Chris, Peter, Ella, Terry, Michelle, Will, Alex and all

Hello,

We hope you’re keeping well.

Following the cancellation of the May local elections (which were due to happen this coming Thursday), Democracy Club is heading for a pause of some months before we start preparing for the elections in 2021. 

Our team is also changing, with Joe and Chris moving on to pastures new. You can read more about these developments in our blog of 2 April.

In the meantime, we’ve been working on some research into how our services have been used over the last year. Last week we published a piece on international users of our services, and in a couple of weeks we hope to produce some analysis on our postcode search data.

General Election Report 

Most importantly, we’re pleased to announce that we have just published our report into the 2019 general election.

The December election completed our busiest ever year; in terms of data collected, user numbers, and partnerships, it was by far and away our most successful election. During the election campaign, Democracy Club:
 

• Processed four million postcode searches.
• Employed six extra (temporary) members of staff.
• Achieved 73% polling station finder coverage for population of England/Wales/Scotland.
• Crowdsourced all parliamentary candidates within 24 hours of close of nominations.
• Achieved some major new data partnerships, notably The Guardian, The Times and Sky News.
• Saw links to our websites shared online by major organisations of state, including the Electoral Commission and UK Parliament.
• Successfully developed and deployed a combined polling stations and candidates widget in time for the general election. Added Welsh language capability to both widgets.
• Gained over 1,300 new contributors to our candidates database.

Get the full details in our (illustrated!) report. Many, many thanks to everyone who lent a hand to help us during the election, and throughout 2019. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Looking Forward

Although things will be quieter at Democracy Club for a bit, we’re not going anywhere. The 2021 elections will be some of the largest ever held in the UK, and we are already starting to think about how we’re going to cover them. Look out for our call to action later in the year.

In the meantime, please feel free to drop into our friendly Slack group and say hello anytime!

Best wishes, stay safe,

Democracy Club