Electoral Reform

[Gavin Chipper]

The Liberal Democrats have been going on about this a lot recently, so I'm interested in what people here think. How would you have elections run? The Wikipedia is quite informative on diferent voting systems, and I've had a look at a few of them. I'll come back another time with my own thoughts though.

[George F. Jenkins]

The Liberal Democrats have been going on about this a lot recently, so I'm interested in what people here think. How would you have elections run? The Wikipedia is quite informative on diferent voting systems, and I've had a look at a few of them. I'll come back another time with my own thoughts though.

The people in each area vote for which political party and Candidate they wish to represent them in Parliament. The Candidate with the most votes reflect the will of the people for that area. I can't see anything fairer than than. The people who want to change the voting system know that they have no hope of gaining power, considering for example, their desire to cuddle up to Europe, and give amnesty and permission to stay to thousands of illegal immigrants. That will surely give a green light to thousands more, who know that they have only got to hide for a little while, and they will soon be claiming benifits. Thats one good thing about dear old England, nobody is allowed to starve in the gutter, unlike as in India etc.

[Ian Volante]

The Liberal Democrats have been going on about this a lot recently, so I'm interested in what people here think. How would you have elections run? The Wikipedia is quite informative on diferent voting systems, and I've had a look at a few of them. I'll come back another time with my own thoughts though.

The people in each area vote for which political party and Candidate they wish to represent them in Parliament. The Candidate with the most votes reflect the will of the people for that area. I can't see anything fairer than than. The people who want to change the voting system know that they have no hope of gaining power, considering for example, their desire to cuddle up to Europe, and give amnesty and permission to stay to thousands of illegal immigrants. That will surely give a green light to thousands more, who know that they have only got to hide for a little while, and they will soon be claiming benifits. Thats one good thing about dear old England, nobody is allowed to starve in the gutter, unlike as in India etc.

That's how it works for the Scottish Parliament - having seen three elections under that system now, I think it works pretty well.

EDIT: Oops, didn't mean to include all the right-wing bile in my quote! Oh well.

[Charlie Reams]

The Liberal Democrats have been going on about this a lot recently, so I'm interested in what people here think. How would you have elections run? The Wikipedia is quite informative on diferent voting systems, and I've had a look at a few of them. I'll come back another time with my own thoughts though.

The people in each area vote for which political party and Candidate they wish to represent them in Parliament. The Candidate with the most votes reflect the will of the people for that area. I can't see anything fairer than than.

If the three major parties received a third of the votes each, the Conservatives would win vastly more seats than Labour, who would win vastly more seats than the Lib Dems.

Where you put the boundaries of different constituencies makes a vast difference to who wins the seats, and yet the boundaries are drawn up arbitrarily.

It's perfectly possible for a party to receive more of the popular vote and yet have less political power at the end of it.

Votes in safe seats are worth much less than votes in marginal seats. Therefore the principle of "one person one vote" does not hold up at all.

Does this seem fair to you?

The people who want to change the voting system know that they have no hope of gaining power,

It's not just Lib Dem voters who want electoral change. Anyway, see Bulverism.

considering for example, their desire to cuddle up to Europe,

Which is bad because...?

give amnesty and permission to stay to thousands of illegal immigrants. That will surely give a green light to thousands more, who know that they have only got to hide for a little while, and they will soon be claiming benifits.

That's not what amnesty means.

Thats one good thing about dear old England, nobody is allowed to starve in the gutter, unlike as in India etc.

How is that relevant to anything?

[Martin Bishop]

Votes in safe seats are worth much less than votes in marginal seats. Therefore the principle of "one person one vote" does not hold up at all.

Does this seem fair to you?

Exactly. I live in the constituency of Reigate, which has elected a Conservative MP at every election since 1910. My vote counts for precisely nothing. I still vote, but it's nothing more than a ceremonial act of duty.

[Liam Tiernan]

The people in each area vote for which political party and Candidate they wish to represent them in Parliament. The Candidate with the most votes reflect the will of the people for that area. I can't see anything fairer than that.

Consider a constituency with a vote of : Party A 34%, Party B 33% Party C 33%. Does that seem fair to you? Under Proportional Representation the candidates returned give a more balanced overall picture of the state of the parties, and also means that a constituent is more likely to have a representative from a party of their choice. Much fairer than the system you're stuck with. The only downside of P.R. is that it tends to lead to more coalition governments, as one party rarely secures an overall majority. (Last time we had an overall majority in this country was 1977-81)

[Steve Durney]

The Tories have got 10.7 m votes, 2.1m more than Labour, but only 307 seats and aren't able to form a majority government.

In 2005, Labour got 9.5 million votes, 0.8m more than the Tories, but were able to form a majority government with 356 seats.

In 2005, Lib Dems got 22% of the vote, but less than 10% representation in the house.

This year, nearly 850,000 MORE people voted for Lib Dems than in '05, yet they have 5 seats FEWER.

The system needs to be changed.

[Michael Wallace]

The Tories have got 10.7 m votes, 2.1m more than Labour, but only 307 seats and aren't able to form a majority government.

In 2005, Labour got 9.5 million votes, 0.8m more than the Tories, but were able to form a majority government with 356 seats.

In 2005, Lib Dems got 22% of the vote, but less than 10% representation in the house.

This year, nearly 850,000 MORE people voted for Lib Dems than in '05, yet they have 5 seats FEWER.

The system needs to be changed.

Another good stat (though slightly more out-of-date) is the 1983 election, where Labour got 27.6% of the vote and 209 seats (33.2%), whilst the Liberal/SDP alliance got 25.4% of the vote and 23 seats (3.7%).

[David Williams]

One good thing about the current system is that you get to vote for an individual. There seem to have been quite a few instances of "good" incumbents surviving against the national trend, and "bad" ones being kicked out. I have ten MEPs. Eight of them are in practice selected by the main parties, and only two by the electorate. That's not democracy.

Unfortunately, all systems seem to have far more bad points than good ones. I remember reading a sci-fi story once where, in a highly computerised society, they selected the most typical member of the population and he was the only voter. But he'd probably go for a hung parliament.

[Peter Mabey]

It has been shown that a perfect electoral system is impossible - see http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... nfair.html
Nevertheless, FPTP is about the worst one which can be described as democratic, as it gives power to the parties who have a vested interest in its unfairness - the deal Cameron is offering to Clegg appears to require that any hope of reform be given up until the country's economic problems are settled. (So not in my lifetime )
It looks as if the only system with no complaints is that in Ankh-Morpork: One Man, One Vote - the Patrician is the One Man, and he has the One Vote

[Charlie Reams]

It has been shown that a perfect electoral system is impossible - see http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... nfair.html

That article (while light on details) appears to be referring to Arrow's Theorem, which is about the impossibility of capturing voter preferences, not about what you do once you've captured them (or rather, failed to).

[David O'Donnell]

For an electoral system to promote democracy in a country it needs to take note of the cleavages that exist within the country. Of course this argument needs to be tempered by the possibility that it may be the parties that produce the cleavages rather than the electorate. 'First Past The Post' may seem like an antiquated, undemocratic system but it does have numerous advantages:

Firstly, in a society where there is a right-left cleavage (or a solitary cleavage - two tits, essentially, are needed for this) leading to a two-party system, I think there is a case for arguing that the 'First Past The Post' system works. If it's clear that it's a two horse race then this system is appropriate because it tends to produce binaristic results.
Secondly, it tends to produce stable governments with an overall majority without resorting to the unstable brinkmanship that characterises coalition governments.
Thirdly, it excludes the extremists. When you need a high percentage of the vote, in a particular constituency, then extremist elements tend not to win any seats at all. Now, some may say that this is not an advantage at all so I shall leave it as double-edged.

Obviously, I don't think it can be argued that the UK is a two party system. The Lib Dems polled 23% of the popular vote and are therefore rightly regarded as a major third party. The very existence of a '[well] hung parliament' is cause to suggest that change is necessary.

In Northern Ireland we have the PR/STV system which is perfect for the cleavages that exist in our society. The Single Transferable Vote element is very important where the electorate contains very few floating voters. It allows voters to vote tactically to choose, for want of a better term, the lesser of two evils. For instance a Catholic Nationalist voters may transfer their vote to a moderate Unionist as opposed to a hardline Unionist; likewise Protestant voters will vote SDLP to keep the Sinn Fein candidate from office.

I don't think the UK needs this STV element since you do have floating voters here; one is not necessarily a Tory from birth or religion (some exceptions exist, obviously). So PR then? Well, there will be consequences to the switch:

Firstly, welcome to the wonderful world of government by coalition! Not necessarily a bad thing but you'll find that the party you voted for will have to do business with a party you didn't.
Secondly, international confidence in the stability of your markets will be lowered. This might actually be a good thing though! When the old Italian Lira used to take a nosedive nobody batted an eyelid whereas fluctuations in the pound are viewed with hawk (read vulture) like precision.
Thirdly, the extremists shall have a platform. The BNP polled 1.9% of the popular vote which could translate to 12 MPs under PR (generally though the naked percentages aren't translated into seats in this manner since electoral reformers are aware of potential outcomes [side-note: is this democratic since they are already editing electoral outcomes?])

There are other systems but I am boring myself now (so anyone who read this far - well done!)

Actually, I say just line 'em up, strip 'em and elect the one with the biggest balls, avoids having a premier with a 'Napoleon complex': that's how Thatcher got it.

[Charlie Reams]

For an electoral system to promote democracy in a country it needs to take note of the cleavages that exist within the country.

This doesn't seem right. The point of voting is to work out the "cleavage". If you need to know the cleavage to choose the voting system, it gets a bit circular and self-confirming.

[David O'Donnell]

For an electoral system to promote democracy in a country it needs to take note of the cleavages that exist within the country.

This doesn't seem right. The point of voting is to work out the "cleavage". If you need to know the cleavage to choose the voting system, it gets a bit circular and self-confirming.

The point I was making is that any electoral reform must be done on how people are voting at present. Also, how they are not voting too. I think I use cleavages in a looser sense than you do, for instance, your definition already excludes all those who do not vote of whom I am one.

[Gavin Chipper]

Proportional representation has obvious advantages in that the representation will be more proportional. But this leads to coalitions, which is allegedly a bad thing (is it though?) If the population was more uniformally distributed in terms of voting behaviour, then in a first past the post system, one party would effectively get all the seats. The seat distribution is largely determined by how much the voting behaviour differs across the country, rather than number of people with certain views so I don't think it's a good system. Yes, it keeps extremists out, but it also keeps reasonable smaller parties out as well, and it's not as if a few seats are going to enable the BNP to dictate how things are run. But I don't agree with party lists, since MPs should be elected by us and accountable.

There's different ways of having a more proportional system. You can have more than one seat per constituency (presumably fewer constituencies as well). But this wouldn't necessarily be proportional because you could still get a party gaining a seat in each constituency by scraping the last available place each time, whereas another party might dominate the voting in most of the constituencies but fail completely in others. This could have the opposite effect from before by rewarding uniformly spread votes for a party.

But while I'm on parties, I don't really agree with the concept of parties anyway. I think individuals should stand on their own merits. Of course, you can't stop people teaming up once they're in parliament, but if you give this no official basis then it won't be on the ballot forms and the onus would then be on the voters to find out about the candidates rather than just voting for the same party they always do (which is a good thing).

But anyway, my idea would be to have a few (three or four or whatever) elected MPs in each constituency but the voting power they have in parliament would depend on the votes they get in the election - i.e. they're not all equal. They would still all get an MP's wage, and have the same standing in debates, but just their actual votes would be different. Let's say it's four that get elected. The votes (or points depending on how it's done) of fifth place down are discarded and then the voting power of the remaining four is proportional tho their score divided by the total score of the top four.

As for the actual voting system (whether you vote for one, rank them, score them etc. and then how you collate these) - I'm still thinking about this and I've changed my mind a couple of time, so I'll get back to you.

[Gavin Chipper]

I've decided I don't like the systems where you rank the candidates in order. I looked at the systems on the Wikipedia and wasn't really happy with them for various reasons. I prefer a system where you give the candidates a score (out of 10, for example). Apparently this is range voting. I see this as cleaner than the other methods where you compare each pair of candidates and do complicated things like Kemeny-Young and Ranked Pairs, for example. And I think it translates nicely however many seats you have in a constituency and also works well for my proportional system from my last post:

But anyway, my idea would be to have a few (three or four or whatever) elected MPs in each constituency but the voting power they have in parliament would depend on the votes they get in the election - i.e. they're not all equal. They would still all get an MP's wage, and have the same standing in debates, but just their actual votes would be different. Let's say it's four that get elected. The votes (or points depending on how it's done) of fifth place down are discarded and then the voting power of the remaining four is proportional tho their score divided by the total score of the top four.

This is quite a simple system and for a brief time I decided it was my winner, but then I started having doubts. Let's say it's four seats in a constituency. Views might be quite polarised and a "right wing" candidate might win with a "left wing" candidate just behind. That wouldn't be a problem except that you might have four effectively identical right-wingers, who all get the same scores. That way you end up with a similar situation to first past the post and you're not representing the whole of the electorate very well. It might be an extreme example, but something similar could happen.

So I have a different solution. I'm not sure it solves the problem, but to me it does intuitively. I want a system that can account for "clones" obviously without looking at policies and making arbitrary decisions about which parties are "similar". So you score all the candidates out of 10. Your vote is translated into a a point on a multi-dimensional graph, where each axis corresponds to a candidate and the position along each axis is the score you give. This is then scaled so that each point (vote) is the same distance from the origin and has the same magnitude. By the way, if you give two candidates 10 and the rest 0, each would still be worth over 70% of if you'd just voted for one candidiate, rather than 50%, which someone might naively assume, so you could see it as having more power by voting honestly for more than just your favourite candidate.

Then you take the point on the graph which only involves four of the axes (as we have four winners) and minimises the average squared distance to the vote points (so we are minimising the standard deviation). So those four candidates are the winners and their voting power in parliament is proportional to their component on the graph for that point.

I think this might work because intuitively I don't think giving power to the four "right-wingers" would give the lowest standard deviation.

[Charlie Reams]

I prefer a system where you give the candidates a score (out of 10, for example).

Me too.

[Ryan Taylor]

I prefer a system where you give the candidates a score (out of 10, for example).

Me too.

Finally something in this thread I understand. None of this politcal hoo ha.

[Gavin Chipper]

I prefer a system where you give the candidates a score (out of 10, for example).

Me too.

Nice plug. What do you make of the rest of it?

[Gavin Chipper]

This is quite a simple system and for a brief time I decided it was my winner, but then I started having doubts. Let's say it's four seats in a constituency. Views might be quite polarised and a "right wing" candidate might win with a "left wing" candidate just behind. That wouldn't be a problem except that you might have four effectively identical right-wingers, who all get the same scores. That way you end up with a similar situation to first past the post and you're not representing the whole of the electorate very well. It might be an extreme example, but something similar could happen.

Another way round this would be to scale the votes at this point, so by giving four similar candidates 10/10, this would effectively be reduced. I'd have to think about this though and what gives the "best" results.

Also, I wonder if my complicated system would normally give a unique point.

Edit - The thing I like most about the vector system though is that it finds the point that best fits the whole electorate rather than just the majority.

[George F. Jenkins]

I agree that the present voting system may not be perfect, but until it is changed, we are stuck with it. It is natural that people will vote for the party that will benefit them, which is why we have conservative or labour areas, which are known as safe seats. As to the meaning of the word amnesty, one of the meanings is a pardon for people guilty of a crime. I assume that illegal immigration is a crime.This amnesty was advocated by Mr Clegg, who I'm certain said that these people can then settle here, being no longer Illegal immigrants. I can imagine the excitement generated by Eastern europeans and Asians when they hear that piece of good news. I wonder where these politicians live. Do they live in immigrant ghettos.

[Ian Volante]

I assume that illegal immigration is a crime.This amnesty was advocated by Mr Clegg, who I'm certain said that these people can then settle here, being no longer Illegal immigrants. I can imagine the excitement generated by Eastern europeans and Asians when they hear that piece of good news. I wonder where these politicians live. Do they live in immigrant ghettos.

If you'd heard later proclamations from Clegg, he wasn't using the word amnesty at all, and was backpedalling frantically from any earlier references to it. The opposition scaremongering appeared to win out though, judging by the uniform overestimation of LD support in the polls.

[Charlie Reams]

As to the meaning of the word amnesty, one of the meanings is a pardon for people guilty of a crime. I assume that illegal immigration is a crime.This amnesty was advocated by Mr Clegg, who I'm certain said that these people can then settle here, being no longer Illegal immigrants.

Yes, an amnesty is when you do not pursue people for past crimes. It would not "give a green light to thousands more, who know that they have only got to hide for a little while" because future illegal immigration will still be... illegal. We had a knife amnesty in 2006, that doesn't mean that anyone is now free to carry a knife; in fact the opposite, and sentences for concealed weapons are tougher now than they were before the amnesty.

The objective of the amnesty is to 1) bring present illegal immigrants into the tax system 2) refocus limited resources on preventing further illegal immigration.

I can imagine the excitement generated by Eastern europeans and Asians when they hear that piece of good news.

I'm not sure what your point is. For the record, much of eastern Europe is now inside the EU, so they are as free to move to Britain as someone from Newcastle is free to move to London. The amnesty wouldn't affect them.

I don't know why I bother replying in any detail to your posts, because I know you'll ignore any facts I impart and just repeat your original point in different words. Must be my masochistic streak.

[Gavin Chipper]

Another system I've thought of involves giving scores again, and the winner goes through automatically, but the scores are rescaled before the second, third and fourth (if there are four seats) seats are decided. When the winner goes through, everyone who gave that candidate a positive score has their other vote scores scaled down accordingly. So If someone gave candidate A 10/10, B 9/10, C 6/10 and everyone else 0 and candidate A goes through as the winner, then that's 2/5 of his vote through into the next round. So his other votes are multipled by 3/5 before we work out who gets through in second place. And so on.

I'm not sure how I would fit this in with my idea of MPs getting a proportional amount of power. If I just went by their original scores, then the third placed candidate might beat the second placed one. If I went by their scaled down scores, then the lower down candidates might end up being disproportionately penalised (Edit - I think this is probably the best way though). If I scaled everyone's votes back up each round so that the total score remained constant, I think even the winning candidate might not end up with the most power.

Also I've been thinking about what the score should be out of. It's essentially arbitrary but I wonder if 10 might be too high and with too many numbers to pick from people might give fairly random figures out. I was thinking 5 but a 0-5 scale gives six choices so lacks a middle option. 4 is too low I think because if you want to give someone a non-middle option but not top or bottom, it has to be 1 or 4 and they seem too extreme to me. 6 could work, but if we don't insist on a middle we could have 5. 5 encourages people not to sit on the fence and give the middle option. In conclusion: 5 or 6.

And while I'm here, I suggested in an earlier post that party names should not be mentioned on the ballot papers. Obviously there would be the worry of voters turning up unprepared so I think each candidate should submit an A4 summary of their main policies which are put up on display in the voting hall.

[Chris Corby]

First past the post has produced strong government in this country for nearly a hundred years. It is amazing in all this time that there have only been around three elections where the result was a hung parliament. At most elections therefore, if there is a change of government the whole of the rejected party are kicked out of office. This is very difficult to do under any proportional system, if you replace 300 Labour MPs + 100 Lib-Dem MPs with 100 Labour MPs + 300 LibDem MPs is that really a change of government? Our current sytem, on one hand, is fair. A group of people stand for an election in a constituency and the one who gets the most votes is elected. This goes on in all walks of life - it happens at job interviews, even leadership elections! Politics is unique in the way that the person who came second, and even third, gripes that the syetem isn't fair, because when you add all the votes that the party received their representation is not reflected in the total percentage of the vote. If we apply this 'unfair' logic to say, the Olympics, then it would be like a country saying, 'We got 25 silver medals and no gold ones. That is not fair, we should have at least 7 gold........' When you vote you should be voting for the individual you want to represent you in parliament - that is why the ballot papers do not just have the names of the parties on them, they have the names of individuals in much larger print. Most people of course do not vote like this, but should do. And those that say, if the LibDems have 25% of the vote, they should have 25% of the seats, these people never also follow on that argument with 'because the BNP got1% of the vote therefore they should have 1% of the seats (i.e. 6-7).'
I think change is inevitable but I repeat my first sentence.

[Charlie Reams]

First past the post has produced strong government in this country for nearly a hundred years

Sure. That doesn't imply that PR or any other system wouldn't have had a similar consequence. Almost every country in Western Europe now uses PR and they don't seem to be flounderingly ineffectual.

Our current sytem, on one hand, is fair.

So you genuinely have no problem with any of the things I pointed out above?

because the BNP got1% of the vote therefore they should have 1% of the seats (i.e. 6-7).'

I actually do think this. Fair is fair. Apart from anything else, seeing their laughable ineptitude exposed at national level would do a lot to dissuade people from voting for them in the future, and the threat of BNP seats might well invigorate more moderate voters to exercise their vote. Also, one of the few European countries without PR is France, and they nearly elected Le Pen! So it's not true that FPTP is immune to extremists, or that PR encourages them. And anyway it's not like the BNP could use their 1% power to deport 1% of Muslims.

[David O'Donnell]

First past the post has produced strong government in this country for nearly a hundred years

Sure. That doesn't imply that PR or any other system wouldn't have had a similar consequence. Almost every country in Western Europe now uses PR and they don't seem to be flounderingly ineffectual.

If it were a two party system in the UK, with its guaranteed floating voters, then first past the post would indeed produce stronger governments. Italy has traditionally used a PR system which has produced successive coalition governments who get very little done. One case in point is that the Italians are pro-European but can never properly enact EC/EU directives whereas the UK is anti-European, by contrast, and has an excellent record of implementing directives.

Our current sytem, on one hand, is fair.

So you genuinely have no problem with any of the things I pointed out above?

I think Chris starts his post with the word "traditionally" which is what someone says when they are thinking of updating their viewpoint about something but I can't speak for Chris.

because the BNP got1% of the vote therefore they should have 1% of the seats (i.e. 6-7).'

I actually do think this. Fair is fair. Apart from anything else, seeing their laughable ineptitude exposed at national level would do a lot to dissuade people from voting for them in the future, and the threat of BNP seats might well invigorate more moderate voters to exercise their vote. Also, one of the few European countries without PR is France, and they nearly elected Le Pen! So it's not true that FPTP is immune to extremists, or that PR encourages them. And anyway it's not like the BNP could use their 1% power to deport 1% of Muslims.

People used to say the same thing about Sinn Féin, here, when their vote began to pick up a little. It was reckoned, though, that given Sinn Féin's links to the IRA they'd never be a serious party in terms of electoral success. This year Sinn Féin wasn't just the highest polling party among Catholic voters in Northern Ireland but the highest polling party in Northern Ireland.

I am not sure if your example of France is fair as there are fundamental differences which you seem to be glossing over:
Firstly, it's a dual system with separate elections for the President and the Prime Minister (French Parliament).
Secondly, it's a multi-party system with around 40 parties regularly competing elections.
Thirdly, France uses a run-off FPTP system where you need to gain 50% of the vote to get through in the first round or else the top two go through for a second vote in presidential elections, or anyone with 12.5% goes through to the second vote in parliamentary elections.

Essentially, Le Pen was running for President and got through to the second round of the voting. Now it could be argued that this occurred due to the French multi-party system which exacerbated the splintered left vote and Chirac's tainted public image. However, when faced with the prospect of a National Front candidate for the presidency, and in the second vote where there was only one other candidate (not 39), over 80% of the French people voted for Chirac. So it could be argued that it was France's majoritarian electoral system which insured Le Pen was easy to marginalise in the second vote.

Edit: the Le Pen example is a good one. France's brief sojourn into PR circa 1986 produced 35 National Front seats in the Assembly. Returning to the majoritarian form in 1988 has meant that the National Front has never won more than one seat since.

I am not advocating the FPTP system, just trying to tease out the consequences of what transforming the UK system could entail.

[Gavin Chipper]

First past the post has produced strong government in this country for nearly a hundred years. It is amazing in all this time that there have only been around three elections where the result was a hung parliament. At most elections therefore, if there is a change of government the whole of the rejected party are kicked out of office. This is very difficult to do under any proportional system, if you replace 300 Labour MPs + 100 Lib-Dem MPs with 100 Labour MPs + 300 LibDem MPs is that really a change of government? Our current sytem, on one hand, is fair. A group of people stand for an election in a constituency and the one who gets the most votes is elected. This goes on in all walks of life - it happens at job interviews, even leadership elections! Politics is unique in the way that the person who came second, and even third, gripes that the syetem isn't fair, because when you add all the votes that the party received their representation is not reflected in the total percentage of the vote. If we apply this 'unfair' logic to say, the Olympics, then it would be like a country saying, 'We got 25 silver medals and no gold ones. That is not fair, we should have at least 7 gold........' When you vote you should be voting for the individual you want to represent you in parliament - that is why the ballot papers do not just have the names of the parties on them, they have the names of individuals in much larger print. Most people of course do not vote like this, but should do. And those that say, if the LibDems have 25% of the vote, they should have 25% of the seats, these people never also follow on that argument with 'because the BNP got1% of the vote therefore they should have 1% of the seats (i.e. 6-7).'
I think change is inevitable but I repeat my first sentence.

If a strong government means one that can force through what it wants, and such a thing is considered good, then why bother with the pretence of seats and individual MPs at all? Everyone just votes for a party, the party with the most votes wins. No seats, just a government that we've "fairly" elected that does what it wants for five years.

As for voting for individuals, I agree it should be done like that, but then why have a party name as well on the ballot paper? It seems a weird mix and match. If a candidate is standing for a particular party, then they are basically not standing as an individual anyway and their policies are just the party's policies. So for this to make sense, you have to remove party names from the ballot paper (and really not have parties at all). To say that people "should" vote for the individuals as you are is doing things backwards - people will votes for individuals when they are standing as individuals.

As I mentioned before, it's really only an accident of geography that stops one party getting all the seats - it would happen if people's voting preferences didn't go in geographical clusters.

The Olympic analogy doesn't hold - politics isn't supposed to be about winning but about having a parliament that represents the people of the country. First past the post doesn't do this very well. It's as simple as that.

[David O'Donnell]

If a strong government means one that can force through what it wants, and such a thing is considered good, then why bother with the pretence of seats and individual MPs at all? Everyone just votes for a party, the party with the most votes wins. No seats, just a government that we've "fairly" elected that does what it wants for five years.

Strong government doesn't mean that they can do what they want. Take Atlee's landslide in 1945 on the basis of a major reform of Britain's health service, education system and economy. The people gave Atlee the mandate to make these changes but it was the system that insured he would be able to effect them. At the same time you always have an opposition who must be accorded attention too and have their input registered. What you are talking about is 'tyranny of the majority' which I agree is a bad thing (duh!) but it is not inconceivable that the presence of floating voters, numerous checks and balances, the existence of other platforms of political expression can offer safeguards against this tyranny.

All I am really trying to do here is to suggest what the consequences of a change in the electoral system may be as well as recognising that FPTP system does have some strengths. In Northern Ireland the FPTP was tyranny of the majority. A Catholic will hardly ever vote Unionist and a Protestant will hardly ever vote Nationalist so for decades a Unionist majority ruled without any hope for Nationalists to even be considered part of the governmental process. This had inevitable consequences in terms of governmental jobs, allocation of housing, religious outlook of security forces etc... The switch to PR/STV has been beneficial and I think one of the reasons that the parties here have recognised the need to deal.

[Charlie Reams]

I am not sure if your example of France is fair as there are fundamental differences which you seem to be glossing over:
Firstly, it's a dual system with separate elections for the President and the Prime Minister (French Parliament).
Secondly, it's a multi-party system with around 40 parties regularly competing elections.
Thirdly, France uses a run-off FPTP system where you need to gain 50% of the vote to get through in the first round or else the top two go through for a second vote in presidential elections, or anyone with 12.5% goes through to the second vote in parliamentary elections.

Sure. I actually don't think the French system is that bad, I was only using it to illustrate that FPTP is not automatically resistant to extremism. I'm not zealously pro-PR, I'm just anti-FPTP in its British incarnation because it is so clearly unfair. PR is one candidate which has been tried with some success in many countries and appears to be much fairer. Like you say, it hasn't been great for Italy, but Italian politics is so riddled with corruption that it's hard to compare it to ours. One could probably poke similar holes in any comparison between Britain and other countries.

[David O'Donnell]

I am not sure if your example of France is fair as there are fundamental differences which you seem to be glossing over:
Firstly, it's a dual system with separate elections for the President and the Prime Minister (French Parliament).
Secondly, it's a multi-party system with around 40 parties regularly competing elections.
Thirdly, France uses a run-off FPTP system where you need to gain 50% of the vote to get through in the first round or else the top two go through for a second vote in presidential elections, or anyone with 12.5% goes through to the second vote in parliamentary elections.

Sure. I actually don't think the French system is that bad, I was only using it to illustrate that FPTP is not automatically resistant to extremism. I'm not zealously pro-PR, I'm just anti-FPTP in its British incarnation because it is so clearly unfair. PR is one candidate which has been tried with some success in many countries and appears to be much fairer. Like you say, it hasn't been great for Italy, but Italian politics is so riddled with corruption that it's hard to compare it to ours. One could probably poke similar holes in any comparison between Britain and other countries.

Yeah, I can't really disagree with anything you've typed here. I was just playing Devil's advocate (but then only slightly) because politics happens to be such a pet interest of mine.

[Gavin Chipper]

So I have a different solution. I'm not sure it solves the problem, but to me it does intuitively. I want a system that can account for "clones" obviously without looking at policies and making arbitrary decisions about which parties are "similar". So you score all the candidates out of 10. Your vote is translated into a a point on a multi-dimensional graph, where each axis corresponds to a candidate and the position along each axis is the score you give. This is then scaled so that each point (vote) is the same distance from the origin and has the same magnitude. By the way, if you give two candidates 10 and the rest 0, each would still be worth over 70% of if you'd just voted for one candidiate, rather than 50%, which someone might naively assume, so you could see it as having more power by voting honestly for more than just your favourite candidate.

Then you take the point on the graph which only involves four of the axes (as we have four winners) and minimises the average squared distance to the vote points (so we are minimising the standard deviation). So those four candidates are the winners and their voting power in parliament is proportional to their component on the graph for that point.

I think this might work because intuitively I don't think giving power to the four "right-wingers" would give the lowest standard deviation.

I'm not sure this would work actually. I think the mean position in the vector space would just be the mean score for each party so wouldn't take into account voting patterns (voting for similar candidates). Obviously the result isn't just the mean as it takes just four candidates, but I think it might just end up being the top four scoring candidates anyway (under the scaled system). But I do still quite like this scaling system.

And I still think my other idea has promise as well. Scores are not initially scaled but when one of the candidates you've voted for goes through, your other scores are scaled down accordingly.

[Chris Corby]

OK.

It's 9.45pm on 10th May 2010.

To most of you, welcome to your first taste of coalition government.

Great, eh?

[Ian Volante]

OK.

It's 9.45pm on 10th May 2010.

To most of you, welcome to your first taste of coalition government.

Great, eh?

I'm pretty happy with the situation. This is proper politics! Interesting knife-edge decisions to be made, will it be one-issue decision-making, utilitarianism or two-fingered bravado?

[Chris Corby]

I'm pretty happy with the situation. This is proper politics! Interesting knife-edge decisions to be made, will it be one-issue decision-making, utilitarianism or two-fingered bravado?

Cannot understand your viewpoint Ian. The whole spectacle is vulgar. On Friday, all three party leaders sounded statesmenlike. In line with what he said throughout the campaign, Clegg was obliged to enter talks with the Conservatives. If that were to fail, he could approach Labour for something similar (albeit the figures don't add up) but instead of that he told Labour that he would negotiate with them (without telling Cameron, so where is the trust there?) but only if Brown states his intention to quit. Brown quits then talks begin. Clegg is now going from Conservatives to Labour saying "The other side has offered me 'x' so match it" and then back again. He only got 50 odd piddling seats and has already caused the PM to resign and for both parties to tear up their manifestos. In the meantime, with all the uncertainty, the country is suffering and the markets may well tumble tomorrow.

This sort of thing would happen after every election if the voting system changed.

[George F. Jenkins]

Charley, I brought up the subject of illegal immigration, because it seemed that the Lib. dems. would encourage it by allowing those people to remain here. I also thought that my statements were facts and not liable to be misinterpreted. I have seen the effects of immigration over sixty years, and the first to arrive en masse came from Jamaica, brought over by British Rail, on short term contracts. They filled vacances on British Rail, because the British wouldn't work for the low wages and shift work. There were gangs working on tracks, porters on stations and Guards on trains. when their contracts ended they left the railway to earn more money in factories etc. In those times, the factories were working at full blast, the car industry was thriving, and if you wanted to buy a new car, you ordered it and then waited till you turn came up. So! it was back to the west Indies for a few thousand more workers. This was repeated several times. This of course was done to keep the wages down in the nationalised and service industries. (I notice that the same doctrine applies in the present day when it was announced that the wages in the service industries will be kept down. That will teach those greedy nurses etc for wasting billions of pounds and nearly bankrupting the Country,and causing such heartbreak for the hard working Bankers.) Then when the British Empire folded, the Government announced that all members of the former Empire were still British citizens and were still entitled to come here. ALL HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF THEM. Which proves to me that education doesn't mean intelligence. I personally brought thousands of them from Dover to London, every train packed and hardly any speaking English. The only racist remark I heard was from my Guard, who came from India. He said, "Georgie, these people live like pigs, they will make it bad for the rest of us". Continued

[Ian Volante]

I'm pretty happy with the situation. This is proper politics! Interesting knife-edge decisions to be made, will it be one-issue decision-making, utilitarianism or two-fingered bravado?

Cannot understand your viewpoint Ian. The whole spectacle is vulgar. On Friday, all three party leaders sounded statesmenlike. In line with what he said throughout the campaign, Clegg was obliged to enter talks with the Conservatives. If that were to fail, he could approach Labour for something similar (albeit the figures don't add up) but instead of that he told Labour that he would negotiate with them (without telling Cameron, so where is the trust there?) but only if Brown states his intention to quit. Brown quits then talks begin. Clegg is now going from Conservatives to Labour saying "The other side has offered me 'x' so match it" and then back again. He only got 50 odd piddling seats and has already caused the PM to resign and for both parties to tear up their manifestos. In the meantime, with all the uncertainty, the country is suffering and the markets may well tumble tomorrow.

This sort of thing would happen after every election if the voting system changed.

I don't see why he shouldn't talk to both sides, and they're under no obligation to give him anything. As for the manifestos, they were pretty damn vacuous anyway, and I really don't see why there's all this claptrap about armageddon in the markets. Typical bloody scaremongering from the powerful who know which side their bread's butter and don't want somebody pissing in the marmalade.

[Chris Corby]

I don't see why he shouldn't talk to both sides, and they're under no obligation to give him anything. As for the manifestos, they were pretty damn vacuous anyway, and I really don't see why there's all this claptrap about armageddon in the markets. Typical bloody scaremongering from the powerful who know which side their bread's butter and don't want somebody pissing in the marmalade.

OK, forget what I said earlier. You have convinced me.

[Charlie Reams]

Charley, I brought up the subject of illegal immigration, because it seemed that the Lib. dems. would encourage it by allowing those people to remain here. I also thought that my statements were facts and not liable to be misinterpreted. I have seen the effects of immigration over sixty years, and the first to arrive en masse came from Jamaica, brought over by British Rail, on short term contracts. They filled vacances on British Rail, because the British wouldn't work for the low wages and shift work. There were gangs working on tracks, porters on stations and Guards on trains. when their contracts ended they left the railway to earn more money in factories etc. In those times, the factories were working at full blast, the car industry was thriving, and if you wanted to buy a new car, you ordered it and then waited till you turn came up. So! it was back to the west Indies for a few thousand more workers. This was repeated several times. This of course was done to keep the wages down in the nationalised and service industries. (I notice that the same doctrine applies in the present day when it was announced that the wages in the service industries will be kept down. That will teach those greedy nurses etc for wasting billions of pounds and nearly bankrupting the Country,and causing such heartbreak for the hard working Bankers.) Then when the British Empire folded, the Government announced that all members of the former Empire were still British citizens and were still entitled to come here. ALL HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF THEM. Which proves to me that education doesn't mean intelligence. I personally brought thousands of them from Dover to London, every train packed and hardly any speaking English. The only racist remark I heard was from my Guard, who came from India. He said, "Georgie, these people live like pigs, they will make it bad for the rest of us". Continued

You lost me at Charley.

[Ian Volante]

I don't see why he shouldn't talk to both sides, and they're under no obligation to give him anything. As for the manifestos, they were pretty damn vacuous anyway, and I really don't see why there's all this claptrap about armageddon in the markets. Typical bloody scaremongering from the powerful who know which side their bread's butter and don't want somebody pissing in the marmalade.

OK, forget what I said earlier. You have convinced me.

Wow really? That's not supposed to happen!

[Marc Meakin]

We seem to have gone from FPTP to DOND.

[Michael Wallace]

If/when we get a yes/no referendum on the AV, I hope we get to rank our preferences.

[Gavin Chipper]

This sort of thing would happen after every election if the voting system changed.

It depends how it was changed. It's the obsession with the need for a majority "government" that seems to be causing the problems. When a party fails to achieve a majority, they then try and join up with others to get a majority. It's the whole voting-with-your-party-rather-than-your-principles thing that's causing the problem.

How about you don't have a government - you just have parliament and individual MPs vote with their principles on each issue. It's surely rubbish that nothing will get done. Unless on every issue less than 50% of MPs want change. And I don't see why that would be the case.

Another point about majority governments - if the Tories had got a majority of the seats, it seems that the view is that they can legitimately run the country even if they only got 30 something percent of the votes. But imagine if we had more than just two main parties and an almost main party. One of the parties might still get the majority of the seats on less than 20% of the votes. Would that also be fine? They'd have less support than the Lib Dems now. Where would one draw the line?

[Chris Corby]

I don't see why he shouldn't talk to both sides, and they're under no obligation to give him anything. As for the manifestos, they were pretty damn vacuous anyway, and I really don't see why there's all this claptrap about armageddon in the markets. Typical bloody scaremongering from the powerful who know which side their bread's butter and don't want somebody pissing in the marmalade.

OK, forget what I said earlier. You have convinced me.

Wow really? That's not supposed to happen!

No. Just kidding.


We now have a government which has been elected by over 50% of the voters so I suppose it is the most democratic for a generation.

[Peter Mabey]

Presumably what will happen next is that a bill will be introduced to have a referendum (probably not this year, as there are more urgent things such as the economic situation to be dealt with). This will be subject to a free vote, so opposed by many members who would lose their seats under a fairer system, and may not pass.
If it doesn't, the Lib Dems will withdraw their cooperation, and we'll have another General Election, and they'll lose ground, being blamed for the fall of the Government, and we'll be worse off than before.
If it does pass, the referendum probably will only offer the Alternative Vote as an option. (Under this, it is estimated that it will need about twice as many votes to elect a Lib Dem as for the larger parties - an improvement on the present 5 or 6 - but still unfair).
If and when the referendum does take place, we can expect to see fierce campaigning against , not only by the big parties but also by the popular press, who all will only perceive the benefits they get from the existing unfair system.
So don't hold your breath for any improvement in the foreseeable future.

[Charlie Reams]

If it doesn't, the Lib Dems will withdraw their cooperation, and we'll have another General Election, and they'll lose ground, being blamed for the fall of the Government, and we'll be worse off than before.

Not if they pass the fixed-term parliament first...

[Ian Volante]

Presumably what will happen next is that a bill will be introduced to have a referendum (probably not this year, as there are more urgent things such as the economic situation to be dealt with). This will be subject to a free vote, so opposed by many members who would lose their seats under a fairer system, and may not pass.
If it doesn't, the Lib Dems will withdraw their cooperation, and we'll have another General Election, and they'll lose ground, being blamed for the fall of the Government, and we'll be worse off than before.
If it does pass, the referendum probably will only offer the Alternative Vote as an option. (Under this, it is estimated that it will need about twice as many votes to elect a Lib Dem as for the larger parties - an improvement on the present 5 or 6 - but still unfair).
If and when the referendum does take place, we can expect to see fierce campaigning against , not only by the big parties but also by the popular press, who all will only perceive the benefits they get from the existing unfair system.
So don't hold your breath for any improvement in the foreseeable future.

The referendum bill will pass, as it's in the coalition agreement that the parties will be whipped into accepting it, notwithstanding whether they campaign for it or not.

Given that ~75% constituencies are pretty safe (I admit that I pulled that out of the air, but I don't think anywhere near this many seats change hands in the average election), that's a large amount of people to potentially vote to give their own votes more power.

[David Williams]

Given that ~75% constituencies are pretty safe (I admit that I pulled that out of the air, but I don't think anywhere near this many seats change hands in the average election), that's a large amount of people to potentially vote to give their own votes more power.

In a seat where 80% of the electorate vote for, say, Labour, roughly what percentage do you think will vote for giving the Lib Dems more say?

[Ian Volante]

Given that ~75% constituencies are pretty safe (I admit that I pulled that out of the air, but I don't think anywhere near this many seats change hands in the average election), that's a large amount of people to potentially vote to give their own votes more power.

In a seat where 80% of the electorate vote for, say, Labour, roughly what percentage do you think will vote for giving the Lib Dems more say?

Debatable - that sort of seat would of course not change under an AV system anyway, so would the residents even care? Not sure.

[David Roe]

Gavin - one of the essential points of an election is that it can be seen to be fair. Which means people must understand the rules. Look at the fallout from Bush Jnr's first victory, because of rules which were not clear. So I'm afraid that absolutely rules out (for me) both your suggestions.

The reason they started putting party names on ballot papers, or at least one of the reasons, was that in Preston in 1979, both Conservative and Labour candidates had the same name - Robert Atkins, or something like that. The one first on the ballot paper won by less than 200 votes. And even then, people had started changing their name to Margaret Thatcher or Michael Foot with the sole purpose of trying to cause confusion.

As far as fairness goes, obviously there are fairness issues with FPTP, but there are also fairness issues with any other. As things stand at present, the strongest party wins almost always - on this occasion, the Liberals have the balance of power, although they're only third most popular. Under proportional representation, the Liberals would have the balance of power all the time (in the medium term, at least) in spite of being only third most popular. Also not fair.

I really don't see the current one constituency, one member system being abolished - the link with your MP is too jealously guarded. So that only leaves, practically, alternative vote as the option. Has anyone seen any estimates of the likely composition of the House if that had been used this time? Based on estimates of who the second preferences may have been, obviously.

[Ray Folwell]

Has anyone seen any estimates of the likely composition of the House if that had been used this time? Based on estimates of who the second preferences may have been, obviously.

The Electoral Reform Society has done some research which show Labour up 4 seats, Torys down 25 and LibDems up 22. But that assumes (and I think it's a major weakness) that people don't change their first choice under AV.

[David Roe]

Unless I'm missing something on that site, it doesn't say anything useful about what assumptions they've used. By which I mean for example, what exactly were the BNP second preferences assumed to be? What percentage didn't give a second preference? Did they make any effort to allow for local conditions? Hopefully the individual constituency results will be out soon. I'm surprised the AV system didn't produce more different results, but I suppose the main difference would be if the electorate knew in advance it was an AV system, not an after-the-event calculation.

[Ray Folwell]

I've seen somewhere what assumption the ERS used, I think they assumed peoples first choice would be as they voted in FPTP and second choice was based on some vague opinion poll. ERS campaign for STV, so they are not unbiased, describing 38% more LibDem MPs as "a negligible difference" is hardly accurate.

[Gavin Chipper]

Gavin - one of the essential points of an election is that it can be seen to be fair. Which means people must understand the rules. Look at the fallout from Bush Jnr's first victory, because of rules which were not clear. So I'm afraid that absolutely rules out (for me) both your suggestions.

The reason they started putting party names on ballot papers, or at least one of the reasons, was that in Preston in 1979, both Conservative and Labour candidates had the same name - Robert Atkins, or something like that. The one first on the ballot paper won by less than 200 votes. And even then, people had started changing their name to Margaret Thatcher or Michael Foot with the sole purpose of trying to cause confusion.

As far as fairness goes, obviously there are fairness issues with FPTP, but there are also fairness issues with any other. As things stand at present, the strongest party wins almost always - on this occasion, the Liberals have the balance of power, although they're only third most popular. Under proportional representation, the Liberals would have the balance of power all the time (in the medium term, at least) in spite of being only third most popular. Also not fair.

I really don't see the current one constituency, one member system being abolished - the link with your MP is too jealously guarded. So that only leaves, practically, alternative vote as the option. Has anyone seen any estimates of the likely composition of the House if that had been used this time? Based on estimates of who the second preferences may have been, obviously.

This thing about the "balance of power" implies that Labour and Conservatives will always be at polar opposites and the Lib Dems therefore get to decide, which is not really the case.

Putting party names on still doesn't help for two independents. The solution to the problem has far greater effect than the problem, which could easily be solved in a simpler way. Sledgehammer to crack a nut.

MPs are likely to be too busy to be able to have much impact on their own constituency and while I wouldn't do away with local MPs, I think the idea of it is much bigger than the reality.

[Peter Mabey]

MPs are likely to be too busy to be able to have much impact on their own constituency and while I wouldn't do away with local MPs, I think the idea of it is much bigger than the reality.

This is especially if an MP is a member of the Government - whenever ours was asked to do something in the interests of the local people, but against official policy, he would usually write back to the effect that although he was in sympathy with the request, Government policy was of overriding importance.

[David Williams]

MPs are likely to be too busy to be able to have much impact on their own constituency and while I wouldn't do away with local MPs, I think the idea of it is much bigger than the reality.

Busy doing what, exactly? Given the rows of empty seats most of the time, not actually in the debating chamber. A committee or two, perhaps. Or doing their other full-time job. But I do think most of them do a proper stint in terms of holding surgeries and representing their constituencies.

Years ago I asked my MP to sign the early day motion demanding that Countdown reverted to its 4:30 time slot. She said she would, with enthusiasm. She didn't.

Incidentally, going back to the main issue, is there anywhere a more barmy system than the US Electoral College, where effectively whoever wins in a state gets all the loser's votes as well as his own? If Texas and California vote the same way that's pretty much it.

[Gavin Chipper]

MPs are likely to be too busy to be able to have much impact on their own constituency and while I wouldn't do away with local MPs, I think the idea of it is much bigger than the reality.

Busy doing what, exactly? Given the rows of empty seats most of the time, not actually in the debating chamber. A committee or two, perhaps. Or doing their other full-time job. But I do think most of them do a proper stint in terms of holding surgeries and representing their constituencies.

Years ago I asked my MP to sign the early day motion demanding that Countdown reverted to its 4:30 time slot. She said she would, with enthusiasm. She didn't.

Incidentally, going back to the main issue, is there anywhere a more barmy system than the US Electoral College, where effectively whoever wins in a state gets all the loser's votes as well as his own? If Texas and California vote the same way that's pretty much it.

Maybe they're not all too busy, but it's not really their main role. It seems a funny mix and match. They're supposedly there to set legislation in Westminster and listen to our local views as well. But I don't think they have any local power so it's mainly just to make us think they care.

[Ian Volante]

Maybe they're not all too busy, but it's not really their main role. It seems a funny mix and match. They're supposedly there to set legislation in Westminster and listen to our local views as well. But I don't think they have any local power so it's mainly just to make us think they care.

MPs will tell you that they'll look into the issues of individuals in their constituencies, and will often respond appropriately, either by using their influence (publicity to expose a problem often makes a problem go away), offering useful help and advice, or getting legal processes underway as necessary. If someone has an issue abroad, often the first port of call is the local MP, especially for people at home trying to help.

[Gavin Chipper]

Maybe they're not all too busy, but it's not really their main role. It seems a funny mix and match. They're supposedly there to set legislation in Westminster and listen to our local views as well. But I don't think they have any local power so it's mainly just to make us think they care.

MPs will tell you that they'll look into the issues of individuals in their constituencies, and will often respond appropriately, either by using their influence (publicity to expose a problem often makes a problem go away), offering useful help and advice, or getting legal processes underway as necessary. If someone has an issue abroad, often the first port of call is the local MP, especially for people at home trying to help.

To use a tabloid term (it probably came from them anyway), it must be a bit of a postcode lottery, as presumably some MPs would go out of their way to help put whereas others wouldn't give a toss, or genuinely would be too busy, especially if they hold some cabinet post or something.