UKC

Current system:

BNP 0
Greens 1

Proportional system:
BNP approx twice level of Greens. Which if you keep 1 Green MP, means 2 BNP.

Single-transferable vote:
Total left-wing parties > total right-wing, even in previous Conservative landslides, therefore Labour always wins.


So how do you reform the voting system without loosing one hippy for two racists, or creating a 1 party system. Reform that meant Lib, Lab or Tory gain at the expense of letting the BNP have a platform would not really be a victory for democracy, as no area wants to be represented by a party with less than 20% of the votes in every single area.

In reply to Philip:

Why is the issue of the BNP potentially getting seats a reform stopper? People seem to forget this country is chock full of racists and 2 seats out of 650 seems entirely proportionate.

In reply to Philip:
You probably can't, and probably shouldn't. A fraction of the population really does support the racists; under PR you allow them to have their voice and representation, and all the decent parties make sure that they deal with it out in the open rather than trying to hush it up.

The BNP are disgusting, but I don't think it's particularly constructive to just pretend they aren't there - about 1 in 50 British voters has just voted for them.
Two seats in your hypothetical parliament wouldn't give them power to do anything more than foam at the mouth a bit, as everyone else would be against them.

Eh? Where has PR resulted in a 1 party system?
It certainly hasn't in the Scottish Parliament.

In reply to Philip:

I don't think there's permanent party of govt in any of the European countries that do have PR, can anybody think of an example?
More realistically it forces parties to the centre ground because a king maker centrist party wouldn't do a coalition with extreme right/left.
The politics would be more "european" mainstream - Lib Dem vote squeezed out between moderate conservative & social democrat parties with some smaller left/right/green representation (possibly including BNP).

FTP got rid of Jacqui Smith & Peter Robinson - they might have survived on a party list system in PR.

I wasn't talking about PR, that bit your replying to is about single-transferable vote (another alternative) would mean that you select an order of preference. Since 1841, there has not been a majority of votes for a right-wing party - which would mean the majority would always be with the most popular left-wing - meaning a Labour victory. A bit rough arsed, but the point is, it's not perfect either.

In reply to Philip:
OK, sorry, I should really learn to read!
I'm not a huge fan of the STV. We've used it for our Local Council Elections, and it seemed to confuse a lot of people.
I think it's important for a voting system to be simple and straightforward.

In reply to Removed User:

With PR and the current system it wouldn't be 2 out of 650. With 500,000 votes, from ~65% of 44million = 11 MPs.

Personally, I think simple plurality (first past the post) is probably the best, but with some formal rules for alliances. Perhaps the party that wins by PR gets to form the government, and a suspension on party-enforced voting for the first 18 months - ie all votes open.

In reply to Philip:

See what I really don't understand is how you'd allocate the MP's constituencies.

Currently Lib Dems, although have a large proportion of the vote, aren't winning consitituencies.

So if a constituency votes a labour majority how can you then represent it with a Lib Dem MP?

In reply to Jay_Kay: The Scottish system works quite well.

In reply to Philip:


I don't. My vote has counted for nothing for years as I have lived in safe seats. I can't see how it is democratic to have a very significant proportion of the country voting for a party that ends up with less than 10% of the seats. FPTP has some (fairly undemocratic) advantages (i.e. keeping the BNP out), but means there are a large portion of people who feel that they are not represented in parliament.

As for MPs requiring constituencies - I think this is a relic of the past. How many MPs actually do anything for their constituents? Does any cabinet minister? The whip puts a stop to most independence anyway. Local issues are better dealt with in the local areas.

In reply to Jay_Kay:

One way would be MPs without constituency. So you would have 650 MPs voted in. Then you would add MPs to get propotional. So very simply, with 5 consituencies:

1: Lab 50, Cons 30, Lib 20
1: Lab 50, Cons 30, Lib 20
1: Lab 30, Cons 50, Lib 20
1: Lab 35, Cons 45, Lib 20
1: Lab 35, Cons 45, Lib 20

First Past Post:
Lab 200(40%), Cons 200(40%), Lib 100 (20%)
Lab 2, Cons 3, Lib 0

PR adjustment:
You add 2 labour MP, 1 cons MP, 2 lib MP picking high polling but unsuccessful candidates.

Total 10 MPs, the party representation is proportional to national vote, but each constituency has their own MP.

Unfortunately you end up with loads of MPs. So you need to make boundaries bigger.

In reply to Philip:
I think in most of the various PR systems the Greens would get more votes than the BNP and would outnumber the BNP in Parliament. A 5% threshold would keep out the BNP but not the Greens, if that's what you want (I think that's effectively what happens in Germany).

In reply to Philip:
Lots of differant concepts - Single Transferable Vote, Alternative Vote, Party List etc, and various differant combinations. Any politics student will have written half a dozen essays weighing up the pros and cons of each one.

Some aspects would make the party system stronger - party lists for example, but at the same time more PR could also produce a splintering of the parties - the tories are hardly united over Europe.

Personally I'd like to see something akin to the Additional Member System (AMS) used in Germany. Half the seats elected by FPTP (possibly with AV/STV) - much bigger constituencies but you still have your own MP - and the other half elected by region, with a party list system and simple PR

One thing that should not be forgotten in all this is the effect of voting system on the way people vote - tactical voting and apathy for example. The system needs to be changed so that every vote counts

Best description I've found for the various alternate systems is at

http://www.elections.org.nz/elections/votingsystems/


Looks like there are quite a few that would be better than what we've got, and yet don't mire us in extremist-politics.

In reply to Philip: if my vote was under PR, i would be voting for the person I wanted, rather than 'anyone but...' . I think the proportions along party lines would change a lot.

In reply to skog:

Any system would need to balance local accountability with equal representation, none of the systems are perfect, but most are better than the current one.


What he means is, how do I get around the fact that my right of centre views make me a minority, abait a large minority.

In reply to Philip:

STV is a form of PR, as is the list system, there are others, although I do not pretend to be an expert on all the variations.

In reply to Philip:

If you count the Tories as right-wing, which they certainly are in this context, I understand they got over 50% of the vote in 1931 and 1935.

In reply to Philip:

You have to remember that the projections of the parliament you would have under PR is always wrong because between 15% and 45% of votes cast to date are cast tactically to manipulate the current system. You don't know what the UK electorate think or want because nobody has ever asked them properly. The only way to ask them properly is to give them Proportional Representation.

STV is the established system of PR in the UK and was introduced in 1920. Successive British governments have always thought that, although it was fine for the Irish, the British people were too thick to be allowed to use it.

In reply to Jay_Kay:

Mixed Member Proportional Representation....You have two votes - one for your local MP in each constituency, and one that's a party vote.

The constituency vote is counted the same as the current system.

The party vote is based on proportionality. So if there were 100 seats total, and a party got 20% of the party vote, but they only got 5 seats in the constituency vote, they would then get an additional 15 seats. They choose who those MPs are from their party list. The party list is public before the election, and the MPs are selected from the top downwards (so a party would put its leader at the top of the list, and so on).

If someone wins a constuency seat and is on the party list, they then get crossed off the party list (so the same person can't be twice).

In Germany and New Zealand, a party has to win 5% of the overall vote to be eligible for party list seats. (so the BNP, for example, would only get a party list seat if they had 5% or more of the total vote.)

In reply to Chris the Tall: ok, so AMS is the same as MMP, and the same as Party List then?

In reply to Bella:
Its over 20 years since I studied it, so it highly likely that the names have changed or my memory is foggy ! AMS, as I remember it, combined an element of FPTP with Party List

In reply to Philip:


There is already a 1 system system. It is designed to give you the sense of having a say without actually giving you a say.