GE2024 Election Tech Handbook

✏️ Edit this document to make it better ✏️

A crowdsourced resource for technologists building things for the upcoming UK general election

Maintained by The London College of Political Technology at Newspeak House

This is a non-partisan resource that contains both partisan and non-partisan projects

Projects

Data

Community

Library

Offers & Needs

WhatsApp Group

Signal Group

How to use this handbook

1. If you’re building something for the upcoming election, add it below

Partisan or non-partisan, free or paid, almost finished or just an idea. Stick it down anyway!

2. Come to our next event: https://lu.ma/electiontechmeetup3

3. Subscribe to the weekly email roundup: election tech newsletter

4. Join the community: WhatsApp or Signal or Slack

5. Subscribe to the event calendar: lu.ma calendar

6. Share this far and wide ❤️ https://electiontechhandbook2024.uk

If you want to work on a project but not sure where to start

1. Use the needs and offers page: electiontechhandbook2024.uk/offersandneeds

2. Join a community, attend an event, or get funding: electiontechhandbook2024.uk/community

3. Look at the datasets for inspiration: electiontechhandbook2024.uk/data

4. Read about election tech: electiontechhandbook2024.uk/library

5. Look through projects from the last general election: electiontechhandbook.uk

6. Chat to Richard, your friendly election tech handbook steward 🙋‍♂️: WhatsApp or arrange a meeting

Election Tech Projects

Table of Contents

📥 Link Drop 📥

💡 Project Ideas 💡

🔢 Election Data Infrastructure 🔢

🗺️ Constituencies & Postcodes 🗺️

✅ Voter Registration ✅

📬 Leaflets 📬

🎯 Targeted Political Advertising 🎯

🫵 Contacting politicians 🫵

🎗️ Data about Politicians 🎗️

💰 Political Donations 💰

🦚 Data about Candidates 🦚

📍 Data about Local Areas 📍

📊 Polling 📊

🔮 Prediction 🔮

🎓 Voter Education 🎓

👀 Voter Engagement 👀

🔬 Tools for Policy Analysis 🔬

♟️ Tactical Voting Tools ♟️

🤥 Disinformation & Misinformation 🤥

📣 Tools for Campaigners 📣

🥸 Demographic Analysis 🥸

🎲 Games and Simulators 🎲

📈 Data Visualisation Tools 📈

💼 Consultancies 💼

🌐 Non UK projects 🌐

🎁 Offers 🎁

🎪 Events 🎪

📥 Link Drop 📥

Put things here if you don’t know where they should go

* https://mcvoteface.org.uk/

* https://turbophonebank.com/

* https://fairervotingparty.org

* https://restofworld.org/2024/elections-ai-tracker/

* https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1505/1505.01818.pdf

* 💡 Project Ideas 💡

Share your ideas for projects, plus your contact details if you’re looking for help. N.B. Non-UK projects in this Handbook is a good source of ideas, as is https://waifinder.iuk.ktn-uk.org/explorer, an overview of AI projects in the UK

* Project Impact Modelling tools – I think this would be immensely useful for someone to build. Please get in contact with me [email protected]

* https://analystinstitute.org/ does some work on this kind of assessment

* Opt-in SMS / whatsapp service to prompt people to register to vote and check they have valid photo ID or apply for a VAC (or postal vote), and reminders on polling day/s to bring ID etc - [email protected]

* An election chatbot using https://chat.openai.com/gpts (discussed on democracy club slack)

🔢 Election Data Infrastructure 🔢

N.B. even more sources of data at electiontechhandbook2024.uk/data

Election IDs

https://elections.democracyclub.org.uk

Database of all elections in the UK, with unique identifiers for each. There are a lot more elections than you probably imagine! nb the upcoming general election doesn’t have an ID yet as it hasn’t formally been called.

Democracy Club

https://democracyclub.org.uk/data_apis/voting_information_api

We’re a nonprofit that aggregates core election data such as:

* candidates

* name

* party

* social media profile

* photo

* email address

* statements to voters

* favourite biscuit

* election leaflets

* year of birth

* polling station locations

* hustings

* manifestos

* and more!

Always looking for volunteers, come and help out! Slack.democracyclub.org.uk

General Election Timetable Generator

https://election-timetable.democracyclub.org.uk

Generates election timetables, e.g. candidate announcement date, postal vote deadline, etc.

For example, 2019’s timetable was this:

2019-11-14

Statement of Persons Nominated published

Help Democracy Club crowdsource candidates

2019-11-26

Register to vote deadline

gov.uk/register-to-vote

2019-11-27

Postal vote registration deadline

Contact your council to register for a postal vote before 5.00pm

2019-12-04

Proxy vote deadline

Contact your council to register a proxy before 5.00pm

2019-12-06

Replacement postal voting pack

Contact your council to get a replacement postal voting pack

2019-12-12

Polling day

https://wheredoivote.co.uk

Here’s the hyper detailed, official timetable:

https://www.aea-elections.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/UKPGE-12-Dec-2019-Timetable.pdf

Parliamentary Data

https://explore.data.parliament.uk

Explorer for official parliamentary data

🗺️ Constituencies & Postcodes 🗺️

MapIt

Mapit.mysociety.org

An API service which matches geographic points to constituencies - ideal for showing your users who their MP is. Includes both old and new constituencies. Also includes a spreadsheet data mapper function - https://mapit.mysociety.org/bulk/

https://www.mysociety.org/2023/09/12/navigating-the-new-constituencies/

Many other resources are also available here, including

* A single Excel download and geopackage listing all 650 new constituencies.

* A series of population and overlap files between old constituencies, old LSOA (2011) and current local authorities (2023) and the new constituency.

https://pages.mysociety.org/2025-constituencies/datasets/uk_parliament_2025_postcode_lookup/latest is the new data. However, there are known issues…[a][b][c]

Common Knowledge Mapped

https://mapped.commonknowledge.coop

A tool to add extra columns to spreadsheets that have postcodes in them and quickly see it all on a map. Postcode-lookup data includes GE2024 constituencies, ward and other political/social/economic data like the incumbent MP, GE2019 results, and Autonomy Institute’s multiple deprivation index.

Sky Postcode Search Tool

https://news.sky.com/story/postcode-search-find-out-the-new-constituency-youre-in-and-how-its-changed-13049018

Finds the new constituency for your postcode and provides information on how its demographics differ from the old constituency

The Guardian New Constituency Finder

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jan/16/find-your-constituency-uk-general-election-2024-boundary-changes-votes-map-postcode

Shows new constituencies, compares them to the previous constituencies, and then shows how the constituency differs in demographic terms

Postcode Lookup Generator

https://github.com/asibs/postcode-lookup-generator

dataset for all new constituencies that solves the issue of a single postcode being in multiple constituencies

What’s My Constituency checker

https://whatsmyconstituency.co.uk

Dataset: https://github.com/12v/boundary-mapper [d]

✅ Voter Registration ✅

Voter Registration Performance Statistics

https://www.gov.uk/performance/register-to-vote

How many people have registered to vote today? Official stats from gov.uk

Can I vote?

https://canivote.org.uk/?utm_source=electiontechhandbook

Use this tool from Citizens UK, Just Register and Migrant Democracy Project to find out your voting rights, no matter your nationality. Want graphics and videos to share this? Download our toolkit now.

Just Register

https://check.justregister.org.uk/

Will show you how under or over-represented the power of your constituency is using your postcode, in an effort to boost voter registration.

📬 Leaflets 📬

Election Leaflet Archive

https://www.openelections.co.uk

An archive of 9,000 election leaflets

Election Leaflets

https://democracyclub.org.uk/projects/election-leaflets

ElectionLeaflets.org is a service for users to upload photos of election leaflets or fliers that come through their letterbox.

Leaflet design classification

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tsw9coSoNPvUwAY3lrWFUGp0PMeIP4oz/view

https://github.com/thicknavyrain/uk_elections_leaflets/

Data: https://github.com/thicknavyrain/uk_elections_leaflets/tree/main/Leaflets_data_24_02_27

Research project involving the machine reading of ~8000 leaflets from the election leaflets library.

🎯 Targeted Political Advertising 🎯

Who Targets Me?

whotargets.me

We’re working out which demographics political campaigns online are targeting with ads, and what messages they’re using in their communication. Our browser extension detects campaign ads.

* Install the browser extension: https://whotargets.me/en/install/installing-the-browser-extension/

* Take a quiz to find out how you’ll be targeted on FB: https://whotargets.me/quiz

* Updates: https://fulldisclosure.whotargets.me/

* Maps trends in political advertising across 57 countries: https://trends.whotargets.me

* Displays the most utilised targeting criteria by political parties on Meta, based on the amounts spent: https://favstats.github.io/wtm_gb/detailed.html

* Contact: https://whotargets.me/en/get-in-touch/

* Status: Very active!

🫵 Contacting politicians 🫵

Postbug

https://postbug.com/

A tool for sending postcards from campaigns to MPs. Given the large number of calls, texts and emails politicians receive, it is important to stand out with something novel. Made by https://fairsay.com/

https://www.writetothem.com/

Tool from mySociety for writing to national or local politicians for free.

🎗️ Data about Politicians 🎗️

TheyWorkForYou

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/api

Easy access to parliament and MP related data:

*