Elections

Under current legislation, a person must be 18 or over to vote in elections to the UK Parliament. The voting age for devolved and local election in Scotland and Wales has been lowered to 16. This Note gives details of calls for a change in the law to reduce the voting age to 16 in recent years.

A general election was held on mainland Tanzania and the semi-autonomous Zanzibar on Wednesday 28 October 2020. As well as electing a president and vice-president, the electorate also voted for members of the National Assembly.

In this Insight, we explain how and when constituency names are chosen, and the role of the public in the process.

This is the full briefing on our series on House of Commons trends. It looks at statistics on the working and procedures of the House of Commons. It looks at the composition of the Commons, the Parliamentary mechanisms, time spent on different types of business and staffing among other things.

Out of 63,621 candidates since 1918 - 8,780 have been women.

Bolivia held elections on Sunday 18 October 2020. As well as electing a president and vice-president, the electorate also voted for members of both houses of Congress.

New Zealand held a General Election on Saturday 17 October 2020, with advance voting beginning two weeks earlier, on 3 October. Originally planned for 19 September, the election was postponed due to Covid-19.

Recall is used to describe a process where the electorate in an area can trigger a special election to remove an elected representative before the end of their term. A recall procedure was introduced in the UK in 2015. It only applies to Members of Parliament.

This note sets out the background to the debate about televised debates between party leaders during a general election campaign.

MPs will debate three petitions on Monday 5 October 2020 in Westminster Hall at 6pm. The first two call for a public inquiry to take place into the 2016 referendum on EU membership. One of these calls for Brexit to be deferred in the meantime. The third petition calls for the post-Brexit transition period to be deferred to allow more time for the UK-EU future relationship negotiations.

The august presidential election in Belarus led to the biggest demonstrations since the country's independence. The outcome is still not clear.

Belarus held a presidential election on Sunday 9 August 2020. In the weeks leading up to the election there were large rallies against the incumbent president. In the weeks since the election took place, protests have continued amid allegations of widespread vote-rigging as President Lukashenko secured a sixth term in office.

The Armed Forces can register to vote as ordinary electors, as overseas voters, or as service voters. There has been concern about the under-registration of the Armed Forces, especially those serving overseas, and the difficulties they face in participating in the electoral process more generally.The Note also gives a brief history of how the system of voting by members of the Armed Forces has changed, particularly during the periods directly after each World War.

This table lists the number of seats in the House of Commons from 1707 to present day.

Search the results of the 2019 General Election for each constituency using the interactive dashboard