Will schools shut for General Election?
BRITAIN is heading for its first July election since 1945 after Rishi Sunak announced the summer vote yesterday.
The vote will take place on July 4 – a term-time Thursday when youngsters would normally be at school.
But local returning officers can take over any state school building to use it as a polling station.
That means your child’s school could be closed on the historic election day.
The school should be in touch if it will close for polling day, so keep an eye on your inbox.
Ring up the school reception if you don’t hear anything one way or another.
If your kids do get the day off, you are allowed to take them into the voting booth with you.
But make sure your kids behave and do not try to vote themselves – as this would be electoral fraud and would undermine democracy.
Every British citizen aged 18 and over is eligible to vote at the General Election.
People must register to vote in the constituency where they live if they are not already, with a deadline expected around June 18.
For the first time in a general election a form of ID is now needed to cast a ballot at a polling station on July 4.
If unable to make it to the polling station on Polling Day, you can apply for a postal vote or task someone with voting for you by proxy.
On the ballot paper will be all the candidates vying to become the seat’s MP in alphabetical order.
You have one vote, and must put an X in the box of the candidate you want to win.
The UK uses the first past the post voting system – which essentially means the candidate with the most votes wins.
Key dates
THE main date for your diaries is obviously July 4, when millions of voters will go to the polls for the General Election.
But the process of formally triggering the election will take place on Friday May 24 when Parliament is prorogued, signalling the end of the parliamentary year.
The following Thursday May 30 will see Parliament officially dissolved which means all current MPs cease to hold office and vacate their seats.
Between then and Polling Day there will be several key events but their dates are yet to be decided.
A crucial moment will be the release of the parties’ election manifestos where they set out their list of pledges for government.
Manifesto launches usually take place between 30 and 20 days out from Polling Day – so likely around the second week of June.
TV debates between the leaders are also expected in the weeks leading up to the election, with the dates to be decided by the parties and broadcasters.
Candidates do not need to win a majority of voters in a constituency to become the MP, just one more vote than the runner-up.
Whichever party leader wins a majority of the 650 Commons seats up for grabs will be asked by the King to form the next government.
If nobody wins an outright majority, the leader of the largest party is usually given the first crack at trying to form an administration.
They could do this either as a shaky minority government or creating a coalition with smaller parties.
But that is not a clear-cut rule – in 2010 second-place Gordon Brown briefly tried to cling on by sealing a coalition deal with the Lib Dems.
Many European countries use proportional representation systems – where seats are divvied up based on parties’ national vote share.
Boundary changes
A MAJOR shake-up of the electoral map means the constituency you voted in at the last election might not actually exist or may have moved.
The boundaries of lots of seats have been tweaked, either to take in areas of other seats, lose ground or be abolished altogether.
The carve-up was done to more fairly distribute voters so there are not wild differences in constituency populations.
For example the Isle of Wight – which had the largest electorate – is being split down the middle into two new constituencies.