One reason to be suspicious of referenda is that the result can depend largely on how the question is phrased.
I doubt whether there is any huge groundswell of support for proportional representation (quite which type is the least-bad is another topic*) in this country (and I can't say that the topic excites me greatly), but if you turn the logic on its head and ask "If we had Proportional Representation, would you vote for... a) Either Conservative or Labour, or b) One of the other parties" it seems that only fifteen per cent would still vote for one of the two parties who have taken turns in running the country for the best (worst?) part of a century (and whose policies largely overlap).
Surely, if there were little or no support for PR (but it were introduced anyway) then those who oppose it in principle would be morally obliged to cast their votes for either Labour or The Tories to preserve the status quo? Or have I missed something?
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So the next question is, "If we had Proportional Representation, which system would you prefer?"
Vote here, or use the widget in the sidebar.
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* I'm all in favour of merging all existing constituencies into dual-constituencies. Everybody then gets one vote and can vote for one candidate (who may belong to a party or be independent). One seat per constituency is allocated on a first-past-the-post basis. The other seats are allocated as 'top-up-seats' to parties (or lists or alliances etc), so that each party's share of the total seat allocation ends up being proportional to their share of the national vote, with the top-up seats being allocated to unsuccessful candidates on the basis of how many votes they achieved personally. Everybody then has two constituency MPs whom they can badger, which gives us a bit of competition between them as to who better serves his or her constituents.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
It's the way I ask 'em ...
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10 comments:
Preferential voting
Negative Voting.
Everyone votes the people they wouldn't like to represent them.
JH, but there are variants of that - can you outline how you would like it to work at UK or English national elections?
mark, that first question is brilliant. It costs about 500 quid to get ICM to ask a question, a result like that would make national news. We should badger PR supporting papers Indie+Grundie to commission it or maybe Make Votes Count.
I favour multi-member constituencies, although I can see the appeal of the top up system if they can remove the element of party lists.
The party list system is the worst possible in my view and it is one of the reasons why I don't really like the term 'Proportional Representation' used to describe systems that have very little in common apart from the fact that they aren't First Past The Post.
Neil, thanks. Set up a fighting fund or something and I'll chip in.
Ross, that's the point of allocating the top-up seats to those candidates with the highest number of PERSONAL votes (sure, party big wigs will make sure they get the safest seats, but that's no worse than now).
Mark, thanks, i will set up a pledgebank thingy. By the way, your system will still deliver 1 MP in some constituencies and 3 possibly 4 in some marginals. Voters could vote for whichever party they like knowing they will be electing someone from that party, strangely though, not necessarily in their constituency. This is the system the hansard society suggested in1976 and as you know is used in baden wurttemberg in germany. Better than what we have by a mile but will still mean career politicians in safe seats I'm afraid! Still. It would be a massive improvement.
The Borda preferential voting system looks best: the least subject to arbitary messing about.
But you can see problems with it straightaway.
Neil, it would deliver exactly two MPs per double-constituency.
The top-up seats are given to the parties firstly in order of how many they are due; and then in order of which individual candidate got most personal votes. As there's only one top-up seat per constituency, tie-breaks are easy, you either do it by which party has more votes (minus the ones of the candidates who've already been given a top-up seat) or which candidate had more votes.
Looking over the past 40 years, it seems to me that Conservatives generally run the economy well and labour runs it disastrously but is good at Opposition, given their visceral hatred of "Tory toffs" and the unstinting support given to them by the beeb.
I therefore would like to propose a system that generally results in a Conservative government but doesn't guarantee it. I'll call it "First Past The Post".
Sorted.
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