Enid Lakeman (1903–1995)

Enid Lakeman was born and raised in Kent, England. She studied chemistry at Bedford College, University of London, and graduated with a first-class degree in 1926. She then went to work in the chemical industry. In 1941, at the start of World War II, she became a radar operator with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).

Politics and electoral reform were in her blood, as her great-grandfather had campaigned for the Reform Bill in the 1830s and her maternal grandmother was a candidate for the London School Board election in 1879 and a member of the Proportional Representation Society. Enid checked electoral registration entries prior to 1918 and was one of only two women service personnel to stand as candidates for Parliament in 1945. Enid joined the Proportional Representation Society herself, which changed its name to the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) in 1958. She was appointed Director of the Society in 1960. In this capacity, she addressed meetings, edited pamphlets, lobbied politicians, government departments and journalists, visited schools, and wrote hundreds of letters to newspaper editors.

In 1955, with James Lambert, she wrote Voting in Democracies, a detailed comparative study of electoral systems in different countries. It went through several revisions and was re-published in 1974 under the new title How Democracies Vote. The book remains a standard reference work on electoral systems.

She retired as Director of the ERS in 1980 but continued as the Society's honorary editorial consultant. Enid Lakeman was a lifelong activist in the Liberal Party (now Liberal Democrats). She stood for Parliament unsuccessfully again in 1950, 1955, and 1959. In the 1960s, she was an elected member of her local borough council in Kent. She was awarded the OBE in 1980, and received the George Hallett Award from the American Association of Political Science in 1993.