In
parliamentary
elections we have to worry about our votes being "wasted",
because our chosen candidate comes third or worse. So there is
much "tactical voting", in which people vote not for the
candidate they want but for the one most likely to defeat the
one they don't want. This is a disgraceful distortion of
democracy. The solution is very simple: introduce preferential
voting, i.e. ranking candidates in order of
preference. This eliminates "wasted" votes and the need for
tactical voting. It also ensures that the winning candidate at
least has the acceptance of 50% of those voting, whereas at
present 30% can be enough.
There
is
a strong case for having bigger constituencies. Firstly, there
are too many MPs: the number should be reduced to no more than
400-500. Secondly, we should combine some current
constituencies to create multi-member constituencies.
This can be expected to give us a better (more equitably
representative) range of MPs, and to offer a fairer reflection
of party support.
Political
parties
often prefer a different solution, whereby representatives are
chosen in proportion to the votes cast for different political
parties. This requires the production by each party of a list
of candidates in their order of preference. So that choice is
taken away from the voters, and the parties are made even more
powerful. Moreover, independent candidates are severely
handicapped under such a system. An acceptable voting system
must have no party lists.
Attached is a paper "Electoral reform: PR v. STV"
which addresses some of these points in more detail.
Revised
26
June
2009