Euro Election 2010

Lunacy!

My postal ballot paper for the European election lists 16 parties and one independent. I am asked to put an “X” against only one of these. I gather that there are 6 seats available, and that these will be distributed to the parties in proportion to the votes they receive. So presumably at least 11 on the list will get no seats, and votes for them will be wasted. How do I guess which, and should I have to? Why am I not given the option to state my preferences in sequence?

For example, three or four of the parties are anti-EU. Why should people who wish to vote that way not be allowed to have losing votes transferred to a more successful party?

And what if I greatly dislike the number one candidate of my chosen party, but wish to vote for all the others? Why is that choice taken away from me? Why are the parties given so much control over my vote? Why do I have to vote for a party rather than for people?

Indeed, why do we have parties built into the electoral system? There is one independent candidate. What will happen if she gets 95% of the vote? Would she be entitled to occupy all 6 seats? Or would the other 5 seats be shared between parties who between them got only 5% of the vote?

All this nonsense is done in the name of “proportional representation”. But all it offers is a highly defective representation in proportion to the votes cast for some of the parties. Why do parties have to be paramount? Clearly we need a voting system which is fairer than the old “first past the post”, and one which comes as close as can be to representing the wishes of the electorate. But why do we have to devise an absurd system like this? There is already a well-established system which does the job, and is used by just about every major democratic organisation in the country for the election of its managing council. It is called STV. It works, and it produces fair results. Why on earth are we not using it?

Insanity.

WJW/(before 30Sep18)