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DEMREF 2010 - debating the electoral system |
If the present "first past the post"
electoral system is replaced, what is the best way forward? Four candidates argue it out...
Further information on different ways of voting is available from the Electoral Reform Society
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SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE
Alex Hilton believes that STV would end the scandal of safe seats
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I
have
never been so angry with politics as I have been this year. I have felt incandescent at the betrayal of the expenses scandal,
yet MPs of all parties seem to be getting away with their greed.
They are trying to convince you that tightening up expenses rules
and having an election will clean up politics - but it’s simply not true. It doesn’t address why MPs thought they
could get away with fiddling their expenses in the first place.This is the truth they don’t want you to see.
There are about 650 MPs in the Commons and around 400
of them are in “safe” seats. That’s 400 MPs who never have to fight for votes. Since 1950 40 per cent of
all parliamentary seats have never changed from one party to another.
This has bred a culture of unaccountability where MPs believe the system exists to serve them rather
than the other way around. The only accountability they have is to the party leaders, factions and whips who can promote or
discipline them.
I once saw a whip haranguing a Labour MP who didn’t
want to vote for university top up fees. The whip said, “You’re not here because of your name on the ballot paper
– you’re here because it said Labour after your name on the ballot paper”.
The sad thing is
that the whip was right. Expenses is the smallest part of this scandal. They filled in their claim forms once a month without regard
for their voters - but they legislated every day with no more care. They are tightening up the expenses rules, but they are
doing nothing to make themselves more accountable to you.
It’s clear that
the only voting system that will clean up this corrupted parliament is one that abolishes safe seats. In the past, the electoral
reform agenda was about fairness and so party top up lists made sense to ensure people’s votes really counted.
But now there’s a new agenda. Safe parliamentary seats are the enemy of the people and competition is now needed,
not just fairness. And no-one trusts parties with lists as they have a way of ensuring that the upper reaches of such lists
are packed with "yesmen".
So imagine you had three
MPs instead of one – achieved by merging existing seats into three-seat clusters – and imagine that the voter
numbered the candidates by preference. That would be proportional in each cluster, yet MPs would still have a manageable sized
constituency. Furthermore at elections, voters would be able to compare directly the performance of their MPs.
But there’s one overwhelming
advantage. In a three-seat cluster, each party would have to have three candidates, not all of whom would be elected.
So when a whip prods his finger in an MPs’ chest and says “you’re here because you’re Labour”,
the MP can respond with “No, I beat two other Labour people to get here”.
Essentially, there would be no more safe seats left in the country
and governments would have to govern for everyone, not just for the daily mail reading swing voters in marginal constituencies.
Alex Hilton is the Labour candidate for Chelsea
and Fulham. He blogs here
ALTERNATIVE VOTE
Robert
Hull wants to keep the constituency link with AV
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Today, more than ever in the past, people on the doorsteps are telling me that they want a better system
for choosing our elected representatives. However, they want to keep the link between where they live and who represents them so that
their elected representatives can know something about their circumstances.
Why Alternative Vote? As a Labour candidate in a strongly Conservative-held seat, I find
some voters wondering whether it is actually worth casting their vote. They feel that their chosen candidate will never get
in and they will be left for another five years with an MP who may have as much as 40 per cent support.
Alternative Vote (AV) changes that by ensuring that an MP has at least the tacit support of more than half of all people
who cast a vote in that election.
How does AV work? Each voter ranks the candidates in order of preference then after polls close the first count takes place. If any candidate
has more than 50 per cent of all votes cast, he or she is elected. If not, the bottom placed candidate drops out and
his or her votes are distributed according to the next preference. This continues until one candidate has enough votes to
be elected.
As you only choose one MP, he/she
still has a loyalty to the constituency that they represent.
Does Alternative Vote guarantee proportionality? No! The strength of the parties in parliament will still depend
on how many MPs they can obtain rather than what percentage of the UK population would support their party.
If the ballot paper also includes a “None
of the above” option, then people who are dissatisfied with all of the candidates can still express their opinion and
have an influence on the final outcome.
What about AV Plus? Some parties seem to support “AV Plus” but not AV and I have been asked what is the difference
and why don't I support it?
In both
cases each constituency's MP has to have received the support of over half of all people voting. However, AV Plus is a
more complicated system because citizens must now vote twice – once for their constituency MP and once for a political
party. Roughly three quarters of MPs in the new parliament would still be constituency MPs albeit that their constituency
would be one third bigger.
The remaining
MPs are chosen by the political parties from a list according to the party’s share of these second votes. These MPs
have no constituency link or loyalty, they are there simply because they were high enough up the list created by their party's
hierarchy. In my opinion, MPs should be there to represent constituents not just a political party.
Robert
Hull is the Labour candidate for Reigate. Robert's website
ALTERNATIVE VOTE PLUS
Jamie
Saddler argues that AV+ gives us greater proportionality
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In its 1997 General Election
manifesto, Labour committed itself to hold a referendum on the electoral system should it gain power. Thirteen years on we’re
still waiting, despite a wide-ranging debate, and the work of the Jenkins Commission.
Now,
we have Gordon Brown pledging to hold a referendum on a change in electoral system after the next general election. Of course,
we’ve heard this all before, and there is a significant chance that this will not come to pass, but the move has generated
considerable debate about which electoral system to choose.
I want to use this piece to outline why I think we
should move to the AV+ electoral system.
AV+ - where constituency MPs are elected under the Alternative
Vote System, with regional lists of MPs allocated to provide proportionality - was the system proposed by the aforementioned
Jenkins Commission, which was at the time supported by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. It is also – minus the alternative
vote part – the electoral system we use to elect MSPs and AMs in Scotland and Wales. The
Additional Member System (AMS), on which it is based, is also used around the world, most notably in Germany.
The system retains the constituency link which has been repeatedly argued, both by proponents and opponents of
electoral reform, as essential to retain. However, by having the top-up list, it ensures that there is a broad proportionality.
AV+ would encourage parties to campaign across the country, rather than just targeting the small number of marginal
seats likely to change hands. The end result will also be fairer, with the increasingly broad range of political views held
by the general public represented in parliament.
This would see Conservative MPs elected in Scotland and
the North of England, Labour MPs elected in the South, Liberal Democrats elected throughout the country, and fairer levels
of representation for the Green Party, UKIP, SNP and Plaid Cymru.
Another advantage is that it more accurately
reflects support of extremist parties, who will be unlikely to garner many second-preference votes in the constituencies.
There would obviously be a greater chance of coalition government, but this would force the parties to work together
for the wider good, rather than allowing one party to impose its will on the nation, despite taking a little over a third
of the vote. That said, it is also a system that can still produce a majority government when the voters do express a clear
desire for one.
By electing constituency members by the alternative vote method, it ensures
that the winning candidate has the support of at least 50 per cent of the voters. People can vote for the candidate of
their choice safe in the knowledge that if their candidate does not win, their second preference will transfer to their second-favoured
option, thus ensuring their vote is not wasted.
Most importantly of all, it would get rid of
tactical voting. Everyone could vote for who they want to vote for, and, unlike the present system, every voter would have
at least one vote that would have an influence on the final election result.
Jamie Saddler is the Liberal Democrat
candidate for Wirral South. Jamie's website
ADDITTIONAL MEMBER SYSTEM
Alan
Francis says that AMS already works in Scotland and other countries
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In the 2005 general election Labour received 35 per cent of the votes but got 55 per cent of
the seats and consequently 100 per cent of the power.
The First Past The Post (FPTP) system used for the
voting clearly gave a very unfair result. And it has been much the same in every election in the last 50 years with the biggest
party receiving less than half of the votes but gaining more than half of the seats. And with turn-out at just 61 per cent only
22 per cent of the electorate actually voted for the winning party.
While no voting system is perfect there
are many other voting systems that produce much fairer and more democratic results. We believe that the Additional Member
System (AMS) yields the best result in terms of being proportional and in terms of retaining the constituency link and the
accountability that goes with it.
With AMS voters have two votes, one for an individual candidate
for the constituency and one for a party. The first vote is used in the same way as the current system to elect an MP for
a constituency. The second vote is used to decide what proportion of MPs each party should have in the Parliament and top-up
seats are allocated to ensure that each party has the appropriate proportion with the top-up MPs being taken from party lists.
This system is already in use in the UK and around the world. It is used for the
Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Assembly elections in this country and for Parliamentary elections in many
countries including Germany and New Zealand. New Zealand formerly used FPTP but after a major
public consultation exercise in the 1990s decided to change to AMS.
FPTP particularly favours
the two large parties and discriminates against the third party and other smaller parties. AMS would ensure that every party
received seats according to its share of the vote and so is both fairer and more democratic. We no longer have a two party
system. In the 1945 election 97 per cent of people voted either Labour or Conservative. In 2005 just 69 per cent did
so. So support for other parties went from three per cent to 31 per cent. FPTP worked with a two party system but
we now have a multi-party system and FPTP is failing.
AMS would ensure that every vote mattered.
With the current system most seats are safe seats for one party or other and so the votes for any candidate other than the
incumbent party are wasted. With AMS the second vote will always count towards the result.
AMS would
end the huge geographical distortion of the distribution of MPs. Surrrey has all Tory MPs yet there is considerable support
for other parties in the county. Many inner city areas have all Labour MPs yet again there is considerable support for other
parties in those areas. AMS would ensure that people who voted other than Tory in Surrey would have MPs to
represent them and people who voted other than Labour in inner city areas would have MPs to represent them.
FPTP often leads to tactical voting, where people don’t vote for the party they most agree with but instead
vote for the party most likely to beat the party they dislike, eg voting Labour to keep Tory out or vice versa. While the
constituency vote under AMS might still suffer from tactical voting its effect would be corrected by the second vote through
the top-up seats.
Giving absolute power to a party that only has minority support can lead to
very unpopular policies being implemented. With AMS it is unlikely that either the poll tax or the Iraq war would
have become government policy.
AMS retains the constituency link, gives a Parliament that more accurately represents
public opinion, allows many different voices to be heard and ensures that every vote counts.
Alan
Francis is the Green candidate for Milton Keynes North. Green Party website
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JOIN THE DEBATE... Send us your comment (maximum 100 words including name and website/blog address if you have one, and also a contact telephone number which will
not be published)
DEMREF 2010 is organised
by POLinfluence - trading name of Tony Samphier Ltd.
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