“It’s about giving people choice, not just the day they want to go and vote, but where they go and vote. We decided to take part for a number of reasons. It’s something that we should be offering people more: more options. I’ve got a really good team, and we were in a place where we thought we can deliver it, and it’s actually something that will benefit voters. Cambridge is very forward thinking.”
Vicky Jenner, Cambridge City Council’s electoral services manager and deputy returning officer, explains how Cambridge took part in the experiment of offering citizens the opportunity to vote in person earlier than polling day in the May 2026 local elections. “We had three voting hubs – one at the Guildhall here, one at Meadows Community Centre, and one at Clay Farm Centre. Any voter could go to any of those hubs and cast their vote, regardless of where they lived in the city.”
Other local authorities taking part were North Hertfordshire, Tunbridge Wells, and Milton Keynes, and Vicky says they’d kept in close touch as the thing progressed.
“We formed a working group between the four councils. chaired by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. We had regular working group meetings; we had individual chats. If I had a question I’d phone Tunbridge Wells and say, what are you doing? We’ve all done something a little bit different. You want to see what works.”
Who joined in?
Finding voters who’d taken part in the experiment was rather harder. Vicky’s comment on numbers who’d used the new hubs, as distinct from voting by post, or waiting till the main polling day, or avoiding the whole business, was: “The evaluation will be released over the summer. But roughly 5% of voters voted at the hubs, and we think that’s a really good number. One in 20 decided to vote in person at the hub.”
Voter Anna Matei didn’t know of many who joined the experiment alongside her. “My husband thought about it, but he works in Cambridge, so he just went on the Thursday. I saw one person leaving as we got to the hub, and two people arrived when we were leaving, so in total there were four of us.”
Nick Picton was not only an early voter, but an independent candidate. He recalls: “I’m fascinated by politics now, so I went to all of the early voting stations to have a look. I was there for 9am and they were just finishing setting up. There was one other person there, but I couldn’t talk to him, because those are the rules. So I voted myself, then I went and had a look around Arbury. Then I went home.”
For Vicky Jenner’s election team, the work was not only on the days of the vote but in the weeks leading up to them. And the early vote experiment involved a trial of new technology.
With the three voting hubs, keeping a track of who voted where could have been a challenge. “With 57 separate polling districts, you can’t have 57 different paper registers,” she explains. “It would take forever to search for electors. It was all electronic, and so much easier. The poll cards had QR codes on them. The poll clerk scanned that with the tablet, it identified the elector, and once we checked their ID, they could be given the correct ballot paper. We scanned the ballot paper to make sure that you were given one for the ward you live in. We had some busy periods here in Guildhall, people were having to wait two or three minutes to be seen. But that’s positive, I think.”
Why vote this way?
I asked Anna and Nick about why they’d chosen to take part in the experiment. Anna’s answer was straightforward: “I was going to be in London on the day that otherwise would have been for official voting, and I wasn’t going to make it before closing time. The leaflet about the experiment of early voting arrived with our poll cards. I decided to take part fairly quickly.”
Nick’s answers ranged more widely: “Someone commented to me that early voting was nice and spacious. Someone else said that it was so convenient because they were right in town. But it depends where you are in the ward as well, for how far a polling station is. On NextDoor.com, you’ll find there are quite a few people who really appreciated the early vote. It would be good to get more people interested in local politics.”
No one can say what effect, if any, the flexible vote had on the outcome of the election as a whole. The authorities taking part all saw different results. In Cambridge, the election saw the Labour majority – in place since 2014 – replaced with a make-up in which no party has overall control.
Is this the future?
All three of the interviewees said they’d be happy to see the flexible vote used again. Vicky, who’d had most to do with organising the experiment, told me: “People were really excited to be taking part in something so different. And we were the first in the country to open. Some people said, ‘I missed the deadline to get a postal vote, and now my work has called me away next week, so I wouldn’t have voted otherwise.’ People said, ‘We’re going on holiday, and I don’t like voting by post –’ that’s their right, and they were pleased to be able to do it before they went on holiday. And people passing who were like ‘Might as well do it now I’m here.'”
Households in affected areas received postal invitations to an online survey about the flexible vote.
“We would like to do it again,” says Vicky. “But we’re expecting that next year’s elections for the city council will probably not go ahead. We’ll be running shadow elections for the new unitary authority, and the law as it stands doesn’t allow pilots to take place on shadow elections.”
What do East Anglia Bylines readers think? Would you like to see flexible voting in your area?
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