Should voting be compulsory? In this podcast, Joshua Paisley is joined by Shane Singh, Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, to ask whether compulsory voting could be the answer to declining democratic participation.   

Compulsory voting is not a new idea, with its roots in antiquity. The policy was introduced in Belgium in 1893 and in Australia in 1924. So why haven't more democracies followed suit, and what would it actually take to make it work?   

To find out how to get involved as an observer: https://democracyvolunteers.org/

How to Increase Turnout: Compulsory Voting

In this episode, Joshua Paisley is joined by Professor of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, Kate Dommett, to explain how social media has affected UK Elections.   

To find out how to get involved as an observer: https://democracyvolunteers.org/

The Effects of Social Media on our Elections

This episode marks the start of a Democracy Volunteers Series where we discuss the radical ideas that countries across the world have implemented to increase turnout and voter participation in elections.   

In this episode, with the help of Deputy Head for Development and Associate Professor of Technology Research at the University of Tartu Professor Mihkel Solvak, Joshua Paisley breaks down internet voting. A system pioneered by Estonia in 2005, now this form of voting accounts for nearly half of all votes cast during Estonian elections.   

Tune in to hear Mihkel’s explanation of what internet voting is, and why its secure. As well as how the UK could implement a style of internet voting into its elections?  To find out how to get involved as an observer: https://democracyvolunteers.org/

How to Increase Turnout: Internet Voting

In this episode, Joshua Paisley breaks down the elections that shaped our world in July 2026.   

With the help of Professor Martin Evans and Dr Dalia Ghanem, Joshua discusses the recent Algerian Election and its turnout crisis.   

To find out how to get involved as an observer: https://democracyvolunteers.org/

Elections Across the World: July

In this episode, Democracy Volunteers goes back further than any election we've ever observed - 2,500 years, to 5th-century BC Athens, credited as the birthplace of democracy.   

Today, Joshua Paisley is joined by Josiah Ober, Professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University, to answer how true that claim really is and whether anything of Athenian democracy survives in our systems today.   

To find out how to get involved as an observer: https://democracyvolunteers.org/

The Story of Democracy in Ancient Greece

What does Democracy Volunteers actually do, and why does it matter? In this episode, host Joshua Paisley sits down with Director John Ault and Deputy Director Harry Busz to uncover the who, what and why of the UK's leading election observation organisations.  

Our discussion ranges from why independent observers are still needed in regulated democracies to the countries that won't let observers in at all. 

This is the essential introduction to Democracy Volunteers. To find out how to get involved as an observer: democracyvolunteers.org

Inside Democracy Volunteers 

In this episode, Joshua Paisley breaks down the elections that shaped our world in June 2026. From chaos at the ballot box in South Korea, to the arrival of a new Colombian President. Plus, Joshua is joined by Meri Minasyan, the Monitoring and Elections Projects Coordinator at Transparency International, for a deep dive into Nikol Pashinyan's victory in the Armenian Election.

Elections Across the World: June

Joshua Paisley is joined by Simon Osborne, the actor who played William Pitt the Younger in Blackadder III's opening episode Dish and Dishonesty, for a behind-the-scenes look at one of British sitcom's most beloved political satires. The conversation traces Simon's path from a Cornish village watching Poldark being filmed to landing a Blackadder audition at sixteen - having specifically asked his agent for something like Blackadder - and recalls the moment producer John Lloyd approved his casting on the strength of a falling-apart bow tie and a scruffy carrier bag. From Ben Elton leaning over to dictate entirely rewritten dialogue on the studio floor, to the BBC wardrobe department sourcing costumes directly from Georgian-era political cartoons, and from the real Pitt's six-foot stature and his blocking of the Prince's Regency to the tantalising possibility that Simon may actually be distantly related to the man he played, this episode gets closer than any other to what it actually felt like to be inside the rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold.

After Dark: Blackadder's Youngest Prime Minister - Behind the Scenes of Dish and Dishonesty

Joshua Paisley speaks with Jem Roberts, author of The True History of Blackadder, about Dish and Dishonesty — the opening episode of Blackadder III and the most political half-hour the show ever produced. The conversation traces how a Robbie Coltrane one-man show about Samuel Johnson accidentally set the whole Georgian series in motion, why an episode recorded one week after Thatcher's 1987 landslide couldn't help but be soaked in electoral cynicism, and how the twin influences of Ben Elton's stand-up and John Lloyd's work on Spitting Image combined to make the hustings scene feel less like a sitcom and more like a puppet show with better dialogue. From the genuinely rotten borough of Dunny-on-the-Wold — with its electorate of one — to the Reform Act of 1832 that eventually swept such absurdities away, and from Prince George's aristocratic indifference to whether any of it matters at all, this episode asks what Blackadder gets right about democracy, what it gets away with, and whether Ben Elton, forty years younger, might finally have gone for the Reform Party joke. to the Polls — Dish and Dishonesty

After Dark: Blackadder Goes Forth to the Polls — Dish and Dishonesty

Ethan Reuter speaks with Sir John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, and one of Britain's foremost election analysts, about the 1997 general election that ended eighteen years of Conservative rule and delivered Tony Blair's Labour Party a majority of 179 seats. The conversation ranges across the sweeping constitutional programme of Labour's first term — Scottish and Welsh devolution, the creation of the London Assembly and mayoralty, the Human Rights Act, and the ill-fated push for English regional government — before examining the political conditions that made such a transformation possible. From the shadow of Black Wednesday and the sleaze that hollowed out John Major's government, to the demographic realignment that saw Labour capture vast swathes of Middle England, and from Blair's mastery of political symbolism and Cool Britannia to the question of whether New Labour was Thatcherism by another name, this episode asks what 1997 truly changed — and what the landslide of 2024 can and cannot learn from it.

Historic Elections: The 1997 General Election and Blair's New Labour Revolution

Democracy Volunteers (@reubenhellier) · Zencastr

Democracy Volunteers (@reubenhellier)

The Democracy Volunteers Podcast brings you insightful coverage of elections—past, present, local, national, and international. Our team of experts dives into the stories behind the ballots, speaking with candidates, campaigners, organisers and winners to uncover the narratives you won’t hear anywhere else.

Tune in for a deeper look at the elections that shape our world. Our podcast seeks to inform our listeners about the world of elections and election observation.

We are nonpartisan, and so is it. We interview behind elections and democracy. Subscribe today or just listen in.