March 26 2010

Hole In My Pocket has launched a competition to harness the creative thinking of the design community and redesign the democratic voting system. The competition follows last year's project, which urged designers, architects and artists to design creative solutions to the MP's two home expense problem, won by Collective Architecture.

What Government policies and procedures could best benefit from a creative redesign? If we were to start again, what, and how would designers change the way that politicians run this country? With an election coming up in May 2010 there seemed like only one sensible place to start – the vote.

Voting reform is a bit of a hot topic, not just because of the forthcoming election but also as “reform” has become a bit of a political toy in the wake of the MPs’ expenses fiasco with each of the main parties trying to outdo each other in the drastic measures they advise are required to fix the “broken” system. One of these measures being electoral reform, but how enthusiastic are the main parties to change a system which has served them so well for so long?

BRIEF
This is where we need you, the creative minds of the UK. The challenge is to suggest how you would redesign the voting system. This could be through:
• Redesigning the voting forms for the current system.
• Designing a new voting form for one of the alternative voting systems or your own.
• Designing how the vote is actually taken – punch card, electronic machine, ticking a box.
• Another aspect of the vote ie. a poster encouraging people to vote.
 
Exactly how this works is up to you. It could be a dating agency questionnaire to matchmake you to a party with similar views or it could be a large jar of coloured marbles which get dropped into a slot.

For more information and to download the brief, click through to the www.commonofhouses.co.uk website. Click through to the Electoral Reform page and then "Brief".

The submitted designs will be judged by a high profile panel, including Vote For A Change and prizes will be decided by the designers. (Each entrant is asked to submit a prize nomination. These nominations will then be put to the vote. The organisers will try to provide the winning designer with whatever is the voted prize.)

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