Democracy is not an abstraction; it is a set of small, human moments. It is the quiet act of going to a polling station before work, the earnest conversation on a doorstep, the candidate who stays up late answering questions, and the volunteer who spends a Saturday delivering leaflets. The Electoral Commission’s new report into the local elections held in England in May captures all of this, and it does so with a mixture of reassurance and urgent warning. On the positive side, public confidence in the mechanics of elections remains remarkably strong. Ninety-four per cent of voters in England said they were satisfied with the process of voting, and eighty-seven per cent said they were confident that the elections were well run. That is no small achievement at a time when democratic institutions across the world are being questioned. It shows that, whatever else is happening, people still trust the fundamental act of marking a ballot paper. Turnout was also notably higher than in comparable local elections in recent years, which suggests that voters are not simply going through the motions. They are engaging, participating, and using their votes to shape the communities they live in. This is worth pausing on. For all the worries about apathy and disengagement, there is still a reservoir of civic trust in the basic fairness of elections. That trust is a precious asset, and the report makes clear it must be protected.
But the same report reveals a darker side to the story: the people who put themselves forward as candidates are increasingly being subjected to abuse and intimidation. According to the Commission’s survey, fifty-five per cent of candidates said they had experienced harassment or intimidation during the election period, a concerning increase from forty-seven per cent in the previous survey. This is not just a question of rude comments or robust debate. It is about candidates being threatened, targeted, and subjected to behaviour that would be unacceptable in almost any other area of life. The abuse can happen in person, on the doorstep, or online, where it can be relentless and anonymous. The human cost is real. Candidates are not professional celebrities who expect public scrutiny; they are people who have chosen to contribute to public life, often at considerable personal cost. When they are abused, they are being punished for trying to serve their communities. The report also shows that the burden is not shared equally. Women, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, and disabled candidates are all more likely to be targeted. That raises a troubling possibility: that the abuse is not just a personal problem but a structural one, which systematically deters certain groups from standing. If the people who stand for election are not representative of the communities they hope to represent, then democracy is poorer as a result. The Commission’s message is clear: this is not an inevitable part of political life. It is a threat to the future of elections, and it must be addressed before good people are put off from putting themselves forward.
Vijay Rangarajan, the Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission, put the problem in stark terms. Without improvements to candidate safety, he warned, there is a significant risk that people will be put off standing in future elections. That is not an abstract threat. It is a slow erosion of the democratic pool from which representatives are drawn. If standing for office becomes something that only the thick-skinned, the fortunate, or the wealthy can tolerate, then the quality and diversity of democratic representation will suffer. Rangarajan’s proposed solution involves the whole electoral community. Political parties, which often set the tone of campaigning, have a responsibility to make clear to their members that they should respect all candidates, regardless of which party they represent. That sounds simple, but it matters enormously. Party culture shapes behaviour, and party leaders who tolerate or excuse hostile language may be inadvertently encouraging the worst instincts of their supporters. Social media companies also have a role to play. They should act faster to remove abusive content aimed at candidates, and they should work to identify those responsible. This is not simply about protecting individual people, although that is reason enough. It is about protecting the democratic process as a whole. Rangarajan described protecting those who participate in elections, whether in the polling booth or on the campaign trail, as a vital part of a healthy democracy. That is a useful reminder that elections are not solely about ballots and counts. They are about people: the people who vote, the people who run, and the people who make the system work.
The same report also raises serious concerns about the information environment in which those people make their decisions. More than half of voters said they saw misinformation in the period leading up to the elections, and one in ten said they had seen deepfake material. Misinformation is not just a matter of getting the facts wrong. It is a way of confusing, manipulating, and eventually alienating voters. When false stories circulate online, they can become indistinguishable from honest reporting, especially when they are shared by trusted contacts or amplified by algorithms. Deepfakes are even more dangerous because they use realistic images, audio, and video to make it appear that candidates said or did things they never actually said or did. A single convincing deepfake can go viral in a matter of hours, dominate the news cycle, and influence voters, and by the time it is properly debunked, the damage has already been done. The fact that so many voters encountered this kind of material suggests that the information ecosystem has become polluted. The Electoral Commission is not calling for censorship or for the suppression of legitimate political debate. It is calling for responsibility, transparency, and accountability. It wants social media platforms to be required to carry out risk assessments on how their services might be used to create or share harmful mis- or disinformation. It wants them to make it easier for trusted partners, such as electoral officials and civil society organisations, to highlight potentially harmful content. And it wants election laws updated to keep pace with advances in digital campaigning, particularly the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
Rangarajan was blunt about the gap between how voters feel about the administration of elections and how they feel about the information they receive. Voters are happy with how elections are run, he said, and turnout increased this year, but many voters are telling us that they are worried about mis- and disinformation. That should be a wake-up call. It is not enough for elections to be well-run if the public cannot be confident that the information they are being asked to weigh is true. The Commission is therefore calling on the UK Government and social media platforms to take urgent action. Social media platforms should be required to improve how they protect the integrity of information about elections, perhaps by introducing specific protocols for election periods, including risk assessments and clearer pathways for flagging harmful content. It also argues that electoral law should reflect the new threats posed by generative AI, so that the rules keep pace with technology. This is not an obscure regulatory demand; it is a plea to preserve the basic conditions of informed consent. If people cannot trust what they see and hear, then their votes are no longer free choices but reactions to manipulated data. The report should be read alongside the Commission’s reports on the Scottish Parliament and Senedd elections, which were also published today. Taken together, they show that these are not isolated problems in one part of the country. They are common features of democratic elections across the United Kingdom, and they require a collective response.
Behind all of this is the Electoral Commission itself, an independent body established in 2000 to oversee elections and regulate political finance. Its work is often technical, but its purpose is profoundly human: to enable the delivery of free and fair elections, to increase transparency and compliance in political finance, and to advocate for changes that improve fairness, transparency, and efficiency in democracy. It reports not to one parliament but to the UK, Welsh, and Scottish Parliaments, reflecting the importance of independence in maintaining public trust. The public opinion figures in the report come from YouGov, based on a total sample of 3,808 adults in areas in England that held elections, with fieldwork conducted online between 8 May and 2 June 2026. The figures were weighted to be representative of all adults in the electorate aged eighteen and over. These are not meaningless numbers; they are the voices of real voters, and the report gives them weight. Ultimately, the report tells two stories at once. One is hopeful: most voters still trust the ballot box, and many are turning out to use it. The other is demanding: candidates are being driven away by abuse, and voters are being flooded with misinformation. The two stories are connected. Democracy cannot survive for long on trust alone while the people who feed it are being hurt and the information it depends on is being corrupted. It is up to all of us, parties, platforms, governments, and voters, to make sure that elections remain safe, honest, and open to everyone.