Why I'm in favour of Proportional Representation

[andrewducker]

According to the BBC, the current polls show Lib Dems on 33%, Conservatives on 32%, Labour on 26%.
Which would give a seat allocation of Conservatives: 246, Labour 241, Lib Dems: 134.
Or, in a more easily digestible table format:

Party	Percentage	Seats
Lib Dems	33%	134
Conservatives	32%	246
Labour	26%	241

It should be pretty fucking obvious that this is an electoral system that is fucked in the head.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

A follow on question ...

... across the UK, let's say 5% of people vote for BNP. But that they don't get a majority in any constituency.

Do you:
a) introduce additional non-geographical BNP MPs to make up the numbers
b) force an area to have a BNP MP even though they voted for someone else
c) get rid of local representation in Parliament
d) something else?

It's a serious question that follows on from PR.

[andrewducker]

Darn good question.

Depends on which version of PR we go with. If it's the Scottish model (Additional Member Voting) then you top up from party lists (your option a). If it's the Single Transferrable Vote then you still have regions, and these have multiple MPs. But you'd still need a fair chunk of the vote in each region to be elected.

In the Additional Member system the Greens got 2 MSPs elected based on 5% of the vote - but obviously these have very little power.

Under STV they'd quite possibly have nobody.

I'm actually ok with very fringe parties having nobody - I view it as a drawback, but there's no perfect voting system, and there are advantages to having a tie to a local(ish) MP. If I had the choice of having my local MP being a Tory MP who lived next door, or a Lib-Dem MP who covered a larger area (along with two Labour MPs and a Conversative) then I'd choose the latter state of affairs.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Thanks, excellent answer.

With that final option of having multiple MPs covering the same area (which I think I approve of, as it means that I'm likely to have an MP of *my* party (whatever that is!) as one of my "localish" representatives. And I guess you could have different areas covered by different MPs, so that, say, for London, you'd have one BNP covering all of London, two Green MPs, one covering London East and one London West, 10 Conservative MPs covering groups of boroughs, and 25 Labour MPs covering smaller groups of boroughs ... based roughly on the percentage of votes for each ... ouch, that's getting complex, because you probably don't know which Labour MP you're voting for because the coverage area may change depending on how many votes they get ... and if you just spread them across all of London, then you a small bit of BNP, more Green, far more conservative and most labour coverage, and then who do you write to if you have a problem? Who is *your* MP? Who comes to open the schools and hand out prizes at sports day?

Aieee, my head go splodey! :-)

[andrewducker]

Well, if you wanted to do things that way you could just get everyone to vote for a party, and then, once they'd been elected, they could assign themselves to different areas in whatever way they saw fit.

Whereas with the STV method you just have bigger areas, with multiple MSPs to return. This has the advantage that you can choose the order in which you support your MPs. You can choose to support a Labour one who is anti war, then two Lib-Dems, then a Green MP and then the Labour one who is pro-war, and then two Conservatives, before the UKIP get anywhere near your vote :->

This means that voters get to shape the party they vote for - if everyone votes for the anti-war Labour MPs then we still have a Labour party, but now they aren't in favour of war! (Not that I see that as likely, but you see my point).