Hundreds of thousands of potential voters will be denied a choice in England’s local elections next month as 300 council seats go uncontested.
According to an analysis by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) some 300 councillors are guaranteed success in the poll on May 2.
Darren Hughes, the campaign group’s chief executive, said it had estimated that 850,000 voters would not be granted a say over who is elected in what he called “democracy deserts”.
It was “frankly a disgrace in the 21st century for parties to have landed 300 seats without a single ballot being cast”, he said.
“Elections are a cornerstone of our democracy. Yet hundreds of thousands of people are being denied the chance to exercise their most basic democratic right and have their say on who represents them.
“For these potential voters, democracy has been cancelled, and they are going totally unheard.”
The analysis shows the Conservatives have 267 guaranteed seats, while Labour are set to be handed 17 and the Lib Dems 11. Independent candidates have the security of just five guaranteed seats.
There are two different reasons. Almost 150 seats have just one candidate standing, with 270,000 electors denied a chance to choose.
Another 152 seats are guaranteed in multi-member wards, where a lack of competition means at least one seat is guaranteed for a particular party, with 580,000 voters unable to have a complete choice.
The ERS said the number of councillors guaranteed success had decreased since 2015, but that it was hard to make like-for-like comparisons because of boundary and ward changes.
Scotland is unaffected because in 2007 the Scottish government moved to a proportional voting system in local elections and the Welsh government is currently consulting on whether to follow suit.
Mr Hughes blamed England’s first-past-the-post system, in which the candidate polling the most votes in an area wins while the others are knocked out, an called for it to be scrapped. It created “one-party states, safe seats and electoral wastelands”.
“This is a disaster for faith in politics and — as we’ve seen — for competition too,” he said. “Nowhere should be a ‘no-go zone’ for parties.
“A more proportional system would end the crisis of local ‘one-party states’ and open up our politics at last.”
A total of 248 local councils are involved in elections in England next month. All the seats on 119 district councils and 30 unitary authorities are up for grabs. A third of the seats on 49 district councils and 33 metropolitan authorities will also be contested.
A total of 8,374 council seats will be up for election in England, the majority of which are currently held by Conservatives.
