'Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated': The continuing role and relevance of election petitions in challenging election results in the UK

Abstract

An election petition is the only mechanism through which a UK election result can be challenged. In its current form, the election petition dates back to the Victorian period, when electoral outcomes were routinely challenged on the grounds of corruption. During the twentieth century, the petition mechanism was widely assumed to have become redundant, and no records were kept of its use to challenge election results. However, there has been a renewed interest in election petitions over the past decade and a half, triggered by cases of large-scale electoral fraud and instances of significant failings in the running of elections. Growing calls have been made for the reform of the petition mechanism, but these have typically been unable to draw on anything more than the details of a few dozen petitions that have been tried. Using a new dataset of 302 election petitions from 1900 to 2016, and detailed study of 167 petition cases from 1977 to 2016, this article seeks to fill this gap. In doing so it lends clear weight to the case for reform, with a particular emphasis on the need for a more effective mechanism to investigate and, where appropriate, correct results affected by administrative problems such as vote counting errors.