ABOUT DEMOCRACY VOLUNTEERS
Our mission is to improve the quality of democratic elections, by advising those who legislate for, administer and oversee elections, to enhance them for the benefit of voters.
We aim to do this by attending elections and empirically reporting our findings in an accessible way through statistical analysis and interlocutor meetings to support this objective. We do this through a strong methodology, based on the international standards for election observation as set out by OSCE/ODIHR and others.
We maintain strict impartiality and require our observers to abide by UK and international standards, as well as the relevant local legal framework, when acting as our observers.
We aim to report on our observations in a constructive and encouraging way to benefit the delivery of democracy and to benefit the electorate as a whole.
We are Crowdfunding to maximise our team of volunteer observers, international experts and parliamentarians who will be deploying across all the four nations of the United Kingdom on July 4th.
Our small core team is led by John Ault and Harry Busz. We have a dedicated team of over 400 accredited election observers, accredited by the UK Electoral Commission, who give their own time on election day to observe the voting process in polling stations. We intend to deploy over 200 observers on July 4th.
We then report on our findings to Government, the Electoral Commission and others to improve our elections.
You can see more about our work at our website HERE.
WHAT WE WILL DO WITH THE MONEY
Our objective for July 4th is to deploy our largest ever deployment of volunteer election observers across the country. We aim to attend polling stations in every nation and every region.
We will assess the quality of the voting process and the impacts of the new Ballot Secrecy Act 2023 which attempted to improve the quality of the secret ballot and we will also be assessing the impact and challenges around the introduction of the requirement to show ID at an election for the first time at a general election.
These are some of the items you can get as rewards. Once you have pledged we will be in touch about the size you want and the method/address of delivery.
If we see you before election day we will make sure you have your branded items in time for election day on July 4th, if you order early!
ABOUT THE TEAM
Dr John Ault FRSA FRGS is the Executive Director of Democracy Volunteers. John has worked in elections throughout the UK, Europe, and the United States since the 1980s. He has observed on behalf of the OSCE/ODIHR and the UK Parliament’s Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in parliamentary elections as wide-ranging as Kazakhstan and the Isle of Man. He is a former chair of the UK’s Electoral Reform Society and has previously been elected to local government and the UK’s South-West Regional Assembly.
John has observed numerous elections for Democracy Volunteers, including Swedish and Norwegian parliamentary elections, the UK general elections in 2017 and 2019, the Finnish presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, 2019 and 2023, as well as Dutch elections in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023. He has been an academic consultant on electoral and parliamentary reform in Moldova.
He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and has previously lectured at several UK universities. He has also been a Research Fellow for the Constitution Society, writing the recent article ‘An accident waiting to happen? Voter ID in the 2023 English local elections.’ He specialises in elections and campaigns and has published several books, including his doctoral thesis on electoral campaigning.
Harry Busz FRSA was previously our Head of Operations but has recently been promoted to become to be Deputy Director of the organisation. Harry Busz is a graduate in Human Geography at Cardiff University and holds an MA in International Relations from Exeter University and is currently researching for his PhD in Politics at Newcastle University. His research focuses on electoral integrity and the role of international, regional, and domestic observer groups in improving electoral practices across the OSCE region.
He has participated in multiple domestic and international observations such as the 2019 local elections in Northern Ireland, the provincial and Water Board elections in The Netherlands, national elections in Austria, as well as being the election coordinator for the 2020 USA midterm elections and 2019 UK general election, Ireland’s 2020 general election, Denmark’s 2021 kommune & regional elections, The Netherlands 2022 and 2023 elections, the Swedish 2022 parliamentary elections, and Finland’s in 2023.
Max Wheeler is a founding member of Democracy Volunteers and has been observing elections since 2013, since then he has observed over 20 elections in 8 countries, mostly in the UK. As our Head of Training, Max is responsible for making sure all our volunteers know what to look for, how to record their observations, and how to conduct themselves while observing. He is particularly proud of the video and webinar training we created for the oversees volunteers that joined us for the 2019 General Election and has worked to create a new suite of election observation online training modules.