Using Me!

Electoral Reform

In the near future the British electoral system may be overhauled. The Liberal Democrats want it as part of the price of their forming a coalition government as I have mentioned before. But what system will be adopted? There seems to be three possibilities.

Single Transferable Vote

- Liberal Democrat preferred system

Alternative Vote

- This was previously mentioned by Gordon Brown as a possible future system

AV+

- Possible compromise

So what are the details of the three systems and how proportional are they? All three of them keep regional representation but they differ significantly in their makeup.

Single Transferable Vote

This system requires a candidate to achieve one more than 1/(N+1) portion of the votes where there are N seats to be won in a constituency. e.g. When one person is to be elected they need one half of the votes plus one. When there are 5 people elected each needs one sixth plus one. Initially all votes are assigned as per the voters first preference. The results are then calculated in a series of rounds. Anyone already past the portion of the vote required is elected. Any surplus votes they had are assigned to the voters’ second preference in proportion to how the second preference was chosen. If no one is elected in a round then the person with the fewest votes is eliminated and all of their votes are assigned to the second preferences.

There is a good example of how this works on this Wikipedia page.

The question is… how many candidates should we choose to elect per constituency?

If we only elect one the system will produce pretty much the same result as first-past-the-post. The largest pool of votes needs a lot less secondary votes to reach the number required, if it’s not over the amount on primary votes alone. On the other hand if we elect three per consituency then in most of England the three main parties will be voted in and they’ll end up with roughly the same number of seats, probably something like 30% each with the rest split to mostly the regional parties, the Irish, Scottish and Welsh interest parties. If we elect more than three then we end up giving minority parties much more influence than their actual primary vote proportion would make fair. The minority parties as they are now would end up between them with at least 25% of the seats even if they only had their current 12% or so of the vote.

The right number, as far as I can see, would be two MP’s per consituency. This would mean there was a meaningful battle between the main three parties, and where a strong candidate stands from the other parties, one of them as well. The regional interest parties would most likely land one of the two available seats in most of their regions, the three main parties ought to land seats in the rest of the UK in proportion to their actual popularity with a few exceptions where strong candidates from the Greens, UKIP or even the likes of the BNP stand.

While I’m mentioning the BNP… on the radio this morning I heard people espousing that a proportional system was wrong because it gave too much power to the extreme parties like them. This is a total failure of logic for two reasons. Firstly you cannot possibly argue that democracy is good, except where it’s too democratic. And secondly because there is no way in the world that one of the major parties would give any power to such a party by forming a coalition with them as one caller was certain they would.

With two MP’s per consituency I believe this system would be a good approximation to proportional representation. The smallest parties would be at a disadvantage but if people learn how to use their two votes effectively over a few elections they could gain a good balance with their actual popularity. The three main parties would gain a number of seats MUCH more in accordance with their votes than they do today.

Alternative Vote

The Alternative Vote system runs exactly the same as the STV system except that it only produces one winner per consituency. It would be a little better than the current system but not by a very long way. Generally speaking I believe it is fair to say that most people’s primary AND secondary votes would be for one of the three main parties – or a main party and a regional interest party. Only where multiple candidates are quite evenly matched and a strong candidate is standing for a minority party and he/she picks up a lot of secondary votes would there be any difference from the current system. There may be some changes in that one might be able to show that one of the three main parties is more or less likely to pick up secondary votes from another of them, e.g. Lib Dem being more likely to pick up Labour secondary votes than the Conservatives are. Indeed one could argue that it seems reasonable that the Lib Dems would pick up more secondary votes from the Conservatives than Labour too. In relatively balanced seats this should tend to introduce more Liberal MP’s which would go some way to redressing their seat numbers relative to their overall votes.

AV+

AV+ or Alternative Vote Plus is being seen as a possible compromise that a Lib/Lab coalition might introduce or a Lib/Con coalition might offer a referendum on as a compromise between the parties’ desires.

Constituencies would vote under the AV system to elect a single member each and then a further 15-20% more MPs are assigned on a purely proportional basis.

Constituencies would have to be made larger so there were the same number of seats overall but if we had the same election voting over again with this system adding a further 20% of seats we would end up with 779 Seats split thusly:

Conservative – 352 Seats – 45% of Seats (-2%) – from 36% of vote
Labour – 296 Seats – 38% of Seats (-2%) – from 29% of vote
Liberal Democrat – 87 Seats – 11% of Seats (+2%) – from 23% of vote
DUP – 9 Seats – 1.1% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
SNP – 8 Seats – 1.1% of Seats (0) – from 1.7% of vote
Sinn Fein – 6 Seats – 0.7% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
Plaid Cymru – 4 Seats – 0.5% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
Green – 2 Seats – 0.3% of Seats (+0.15%) – from 1% of vote
UKIP – 4 Seats – 0.5% of Seats (+0.5%) – from 3.1% of vote
BNP – 2 Seats – 0.3% of Seats (+0.3%) – from 1.9% of vote

As you can see it’s not significantly fairer than the current system. However people would vote a bit differently. A lot of people either vote tactically or do not vote at all because their preferred candidate has no hope of victory. In this system there would still be a good reason to vote for your preference. I believe everyone except Labour and the Conservative Party would benefit at their expense. I would hazard a guess that perhaps 20 more seats would change hands because of this.