Archive for the ‘democratic process’ tag
New voting system coming?
The Government is reportedly looking at an overhaul to the democratic process by which MPs are put into office. Our current “First Past The Post” system has been criticised as being undemocratic and favouring few parties over more parties.
The current system works like this:
Suppose we have an election tomorrow with five candidates. Tom, Dick, Harry, Sarah and Jessica are on the polling card and we have 1000 voters. The results come in with Tom 130, Dick 200, Harry 210, Sarah 320 and Jessica 140. Sarah wins the election even though 68% of the electorate did not want her and voted against her!
This is patently unfair and not terribly democratic. It ensures that incumbents have a huge advantage over any new party. It’s a testament to the strength of the Liberal Democrats that they’ve even managed to become a credible parlimentary party under such a system which inherently favours two-party politics.
The alternative, already used in Scotland, Northern Ireland and many places around the world is Single Transferrable Vote.
In STV, we vote for two candidates, marking one “1” and the other “2”, our order of preference. It can go to more than just two preferences, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll use two and run the election again.
First choice: Tom 130, Dick 200, Harry 210, Sarah 320 and Jessica 140
For a “one round win”, someone needs to have over 50% of the vote. Nobody has a majority, Sarah has just 32% so the second choices come in.
Second choice: Tom 190, Dick 330, Harry 180, Sarah 200 and Jessica 100
Adding up, Dick has 530 votes and Sarah 520, the winner of the election is Dick with 53% of the electorate considering him their first or second choice. Under First Past The Post, Sarah would have won the election even though fewer of the electorate considered her to be acceptable.
STV is a much more democratic and fair system, I’ll be following the debates over the summer with interest. The Conservatives already oppose it (as they stand to gain from the current system) while the Lib Dems acknowledge the system is unfair and in long need of reform.