This September, Fair Vote UK has the privilege of taking on new duties as the secretariat to the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Fair Elections. The cross-party group’s mission is to enhance the integrity and fairness of UK democracy by:
(1) Replacing First-Past-The-Post with a proportional system that matches seats to votes
(2) Eliminating dark money and undemocratic influence from our politics
(3) Countering disinformation in the public discourse
The APPG encompasses Fair Vote UK’s three central goals as an organisation, and will represent the Parliamentary arm of our campaign efforts. Those three goals are democratic reform (PR), campaign transparency (dark money and influence), and digital regulation (countering disinformation).
This summer’s riots laid bare the danger that deliberate disinformation can pose - and elections in Britain, the US and beyond have faced a growing risk of being undermined by malicious actors. Meanwhile, dark money continues to pour into politics, giving unaccountable influence to anonymous individuals. The APPG for Fair Elections will work across Parliament to address these challenges, to deliver clean and fair elections where all votes count. That’s what Fair Vote UK has always – and will always – stand for.
“The point of elections is that everyone gets a real say in who represents them and what direction the country should go in. But thanks to First Past the Post, only four in ten voters got the local MP they voted for in this year’s election - and only one in three got the party they voted for in government,” said co-chair and Green MP Ellie Chowns.
“Trust in politics is at an all time low. The public can see that our political system isn’t working and our elections aren’t on an even playing field. The Prime Minister says ‘the fight for trust is the battle that defines our age”. We’re on a mission to restore that trust.
“To do so, we need to clamp down on the growing influence of untraceable money in politics. We have to counter malicious disinformation that undermines the basis of democratic debate. And we must replace Britain’s clearly unfair voting system with a modern, proportional one that means everybody has a vote that counts,” said Chair and Labour MP Alex Sobel.
In many ways, this is a continuation of our old secretariat role in service of the (now defunct) APPG on Electoral Campaigning Transparency. This new group has an even broader remit, and will build off of the consultation-driven research conducted by its predecessor. That primarily includes, but is not limited to, the 2020 “Defending Our Democracy in the Digital Age” report, which was informed by contributions from stakeholders across civil society, industry, and government, and produced twenty recommendations to build up a modern democratic system that’s safe and functional.
We look forward to a public launch event – coming soon!
