Politics has moved on, but electoral system is still stuck in the nineteenth century - Lord Rennard

1.00.00pm GMT Mon 23rd May 2005

Politics has moved on, but electoral system is still stuck in the nineteenth century - Lord Rennard

Lord Rennard, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on electoral reform in the House of Lords, will today call for widespread reform of the voting system and for votes to be cast at weekends to boost turnout. Lord Rennard will say "People did not vote for Labour to be given 55% of the seats in the House of Commons. Our political system has moved on from the nineteenth century, but our electoral system has not."

Lord Rennard further said "Democracy should be about enabling voters to vote for what they believe in, and getting a Parliament and a Government that represents them. The debate about how we vote in the United Kingdom will not now go away."

On boosting voter turnout, Lord Rennard will add "Many of our debates about postal voting have focused on the difficulty that some people have in going to a polling station on a Thursday. The experiment that we really need to see is to follow the pattern of many other countries and allow voting over a weekend."