Can design create a better voting system?

The entries were reviewed by a high profile panel, including Willie Sullivan of Vote for a Change, Patrick Burgoyne editor of Creative Review, The Drum’s deputy editor Gordon Laing, Michael Johnson of Johnson Banks, Michael Wolff, and Mehdi Hasan, political editor of New Statesman.

Once the judges had “cast their votes”, it was “The Scoop System” (pictured below) that won the majority.

The Scoop System was submitted by a team of architect students from Birmingham University, who suggested that politics is too boring and only makes sense to politicians and not enough sense to the ordinary folk.

The team decided that there would be NO celebrity, NO personality to cloud the serious game of politics. Simply ice cream. Pure and innocent, it reveals a childish excitement and could be just the incentive to vote that the remaining 40% of the population may need to get interested...

“The ‘Scoop System’ is a new way to collect the votes of the nation,” they said. “Hundreds of Ice Cream Vans will replace polling stations and travel to all the corners of Britain searching for un-cast votes.

"They will play music and remind people to vote as they travel across the country. The voter must choose from a menu of ice creams that represent the party with the policies and manifesto that they wish to see in Government. The ice cream incentive is intended to increase political participation.

"The voter then receives their ice cream by presenting their polling card with a barcode matrix unique to them. This contains information and a photograph to prevent fraud or gluttony.”

There was a 'hung result', if you like, for the runners-up spot, as the judges couldn’t separate the three second place entries.

“Vote Book” by Ivan Paic (all the way from Croatia); “Vote in the Wall” by David Milligan-Croft (Stockport); and “Donate your Vote” by Richard Elliot (Banknock) all tied for second place.

Donate Your Vote reminds us that there are millions of people all over the world who live under a dictatorship and are deprived of the freedom to choose who governs them.

The system urges us to donate our democratic vote to someone less fortunate than yourself. “All you have to do to sponsor a democratee is send your ballot paper, along with the manifestoes of all your candidates, to a recipient living under military rule or a dictatorship and allow them to decide on your behalf. In return we will send you your completed paper plus a photograph of your sponsored voter at the happy event of marking the X.”

Vote in the Wall provides a solution to apathy and inconvenience by making voting easy... as easy as going to the cash machine.

Meanwhile, the final joint-runner-up Votebook is a web portal for voting. You can share your opinion with others, influence the opinion of your party or make your own suggestions. You can stay anonymous but your don’t have to. Younger generations who are disappointed and have lost faith in politics can now easily see the results of their decisions and maybe get more active in politics. Voting devices are simple to use (“for the older generation”).

Speaking of the competition the team behind the winning Scoop System said: “The electoral reform competition was a unique opportunity for the creative arts to get involved in politics in their own way. Our team began to discuss the issues surrounding political apathy and the structure of parliament.

“Our entry is a commentary on the fickle aspects of political personality vs policy, mixed with the difficulty of communicating with ordinary people who are increasingly incentivised to act.

"We also felt it necessary to redesign the structure in parliament to be 50% male and 50% female because politics is infused with testosterone and the alpha male. We may get to vote to reform the electoral system, but until then competitions like CoH:Electoral Reform connect with a wider audience that are not traditionally interested in politics.

“It is important to have a visual commentary and criticism of events and issues of our time, and to enable people to present those views in an engaging manner.”

You can see more of the entires on the Common of Houses website and in our gallery.

www.commonofhouses.co.uk