Election petition
Process to challenge elections to parliaments
In the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, an election petition is the procedure for challenging the result of a parliamentary election in court.
Outcomes
When a petition is lodged against an election return, there are four possible outcomes:
The election is declared void. The result is quashed and a writ is issued for a new election.
The election is held to have been undue: the original return is quashed, and another candidate is declared to have been elected.
The election is upheld, and the member returned is found to have been duly elected.
The petition is withdrawn. This may occur when the petitioner fails to attend a hearing, or when Parliament is dissolved before the petition process is complete.
History
Controverted elections had been originally tried by select committees, afterwards by the Committee of Privileges and Elections, and ultimately by the whole House of Commons, with scandalous partiality, but under the Parliamentary Elections Act 1770 (10 Geo. 3. c.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Election petition” is process to challenge elections to parliaments. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Election, petition and Process, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Election petition” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.