Normative democratic theory requires voters to be informed when choosing between candidates, but this expectation runs counter to the empirical research showing that voters tend to be ill informed about candidate and party positions on issues. Nevertheless, a large body of research demonstrates that voters can compensate for a lack of information by using cognitive shortcuts in making voting

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The European Parliament elections in June 2004 coincided with local elections in many parts of England. In four regions of the country these elections were conducted entirely by postal ballots; in four other regions traditional methods of polling were used. Overall turnout was higher where all-postal voting was in place, but having local in addition to European elections made an independent and significant contribution to the level of electoral participation in all postal and nonpostal regions alike. The pattern of party choice at the two types of contest also varied considerably. The three major political parties together took a much larger share of the overall vote at the local than at the European elections, and each independently 'lost' a sizeable number of its local votes to smaller parties. Aggregate level analysis suggests that voters assess the importance of electoral contests along a continuum and, in Britain in 2004 at least, treated local elections as less 'secondorder' than pan-European ones.Recent years have seen an increase in the number of occasions at which British electors have been able to cast more than one vote on the same visit to the ballot box. Partly this has been a consequence of the adoption of Additional Member (AMS) electoral systems for the newly devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and London; partly it reflects decisions taken to hold elections for different tiers of government simultaneously. In each case political scientists have been provided with a kind of natural experiment to enable them to assess the impact of such synchronous contests on patterns of turnout and party choice. Studies of AMS elections have demonstrated that, whilst turnout remains virtually constant, a good deal of ticket-splitting occurs between the constituency and party list votes (Denver and MacAllister 1999; Johnston and Pattie 2002; Dunleavy, Margetts and van Heerde 2004). Analyses of concurrent but distinct elections similarly show very modest differences in turnout levels (Denver and Hands 2004;Rallings and Thrasher 1998), but frequent instances of electors choosing to vote for different parties (Waller 1980;Rallings and Thrasher 2001).In 2004 the government decided once again to combine elections. Primarily motivated by the desire to avoid turnout being adversely affected by voter fatigue at the 10 June European Parliament elections, it postponed by five weeks the local and London government contests originally scheduled for May. However, whereas all electors in the United Kingdom had the opportunity to choose members of the European Parliament, only those in London, Wales and parts of England could additionally vote for regional or local authority representatives. Within England a

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