I try to keep this blog vaguely non-partisan, so please forgive the source for a mainly political story, but it is also relevant to constitutional law.
“Let’s start with a simple comparison. Imagine that at the coming election we win 40% of the vote, Labour 30%, the Liberals 18% and others 12% [The results in the overnight ICM poll]. All else being equal, we’d have a Commons majority of eight.
Now reverse those first two figures. Imagine that Labour gain 40%, we take 30%, and the other two figures stay the same. Labour would have a majority of 138 – an 130 seat difference on the same share of the vote, according to UK Polling Report.”
- From http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/01/fairseats.html
Interestingly, this is written by a Conservative supporter. It has to be observed that the Conservatives were far less interested in electoral reform pre-1997, presumably because back then the Conservatives would have struggled to form a coalition Government, whereas Labour and the Liberal Democrats were more obvious bedfellows. Indeed, even this article expressly avoids the voting system and instead addresses seat reduction and boundary changes. Also interesting was:
“Ed Balls’ failed attempt to stop the Boundary Commission’s changes to his seat, which went all the way to judicial review.”
When I studied constitutional law, I was never quite persuaded by The Electoral Reform Society’s case for a single transferable vote system, instead I preferred Alternative Vote Plus, with my own variation that the “plus” should fill the Lords rather than add to the Commons.
Do have a click around the ERS’s website, it is a great resource of non-partisan discussion about voting system. Whichever system you prefer, the quote above surely is the only argument needed to show that there is very little democratic spirit in the current First-Past-The-Post system.
PS – No whining about AV being difficult to count unless you have actually counted one by hand… as I have. Yes, it did take while…
