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Hammersmith and Fulham Liberal DemocratsCampaigning for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham |
Electoral Reform, Voting Systems and Proportional Representation
Liberal Democrats have campaigned for many years for the reform of our electoral system.
In 1983, the Liberal SDP alliance won 25% of the votes cast in the parliamentary elections, and 3% of the seats. By targeting our efforts on seats we have a chance of winning, we improved on this, with 23 % of votes getting us 9% of the seats in the 2010 parliament.
The vast majority of Liberal Democrat voters, and, in a three party system, possibly the majority of voters overall, cast vote for parties or people that they know have no chance of winning.
Voting reform is not an arcane subject which is too difficult for anyone to understand, and we've found some useful guides:
The BBC's more or less complete guide (with examples)
A guide to the systems currently in use in the UK, authoritative and reliable.
The Geek's guide. Everything you never knew you wanted to know
But if you can't be bothered, a little summary:
This voting system should be called "Winner-takes-all". There are no silver or bronze medals in this race.
Each voter chooses one candidate. The candidate who gets the most votes wins that seat.
There are two sorts of Members. Some are elected by First Past the Post and the rest are chosen from a list in proportion to how many votes their parties got.
If a party gets 23% of the vote but only comes top in 9% of the seats, it gets top-up seats using a List system. An "open list" (see below) is preferred because it ensures that both sorts of MPs are directly chosen by the electorate and have a direct connection with their voters.
The voter ranks the candidates; first choice, second choice, third choice, etc. The candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated, and those votes are shared according to the voter's next choice. This goes on until one candidate has at least half of all the votes cast.
The system means no vote is a wasted vote, and every winner has the support (however luke-warm) of at least half the voters. It does not produce proportional representation, because it eliminates the candidates with no "cross-over" support.
Supplementary Vote System - a sort-of version of AV
Voters get a first and second preference only. If one candidate gets more than half the first preferences s/he wins. If no one gets more than half, all candidates except the top two are eliminated. The votes of the eliminated candidates are distributed according to the voter's second choice (if those second choices are still in the race).
List systems
Constituencies would be big and have several members. Voters have one vote.
The CLOSED PARTY LIST: each party proposes a set list of candidates and each voter votes for a party. Depending of the number of votes the party has won, the first so many names on the list get elected, in proportion to the party's vote share.
The OPEN PARTY LIST: the seats are shared out between the parties in proportion to their share of the vote, but the voter puts a cross next to the actual candidate's name, so the voters, not the party, choose which of the candidates are entitled to that party's votes.
AV+
This is a combination between AV for the constituency MP, and Additional Member selected from a regional or county party list. If an Open List is used, the Additional Members are chosen by the voters not by the party.
Single Transferable Vote STV
Constituencies become much bigger and have several MPs. Voters rank candidates in order of preference: first choice, second choice, third choice etc.
If the voter's preferred candidate has no chance of being elected OR has enough votes already, that vote is transferred to another candidate in accordance with the voter's instructions
The "winning post" is a quota which depends on the number of MPs - 25% (one quarter) of voters for a 3-member constituency or 20% (one fifth) for a 4-member constituency, etc.
The quota method means the "spare" votes of favourites who do very well are passed on to the voter's second choice candidates and the "wasted" votes of the candidates who have no chance are also passed to the voter's second choice.
The arithmetic sounds complicated, but the system was used for some constituencies in England from 1917 to 1950. It is currently used for local elections in Scotland.
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