And another thing…

Tom, totally agree. This just seems a piece of nonsense to distract from the expenses debacle – poor judgement, both in choice of topic and championing of an unnecessarily complicated system, by A.J.

Spot-on, Tim. PR all too often results in chaotic stasis, with the result that policy is decided by unelected civil servants because the politicians are too busy fighting elections. Even though Labour won 2005 with an inferior % vote to the Tories, We still had a goivernment which could govern. Pity about the consequences, though.

‘You vote for one candidate and the one with the highest number of votes wins.’

You make it sound so simple. They should put you in charge of taxation.

In reality, it’s a little more complicated. You are *offered* one candidate from each party (and have little say in who the local party picks), one of which you may choose to vote for because you like them, or their party, but hopefully both. If they get the highest number of votes, which could be 30% or less of those who bothered to turn out, they win.

Once they have won, it doesn’t matter what they did to irk the public before the election. Expenses, the Iraq War, the Post office, whatever complaints you might have, you, and everyone who voted or didn’t vote, have given them a mandate to continue.

It’s a fine system.

I note you don’t even offer a straw man version of “the country gets the political balance it votes for” to knock down.

Anyone who tells you PR is a simple fix for overly white male Parliaments or low turnout is a fool. But voters who don’t want to back Labour or the Tories getting politicians who really speak for them instead of some safe-seat rotten borough drone? Priceless!

I’m definitely a floating voter when it comes to PR. I used to be in favour, then wasn’t persuaded by the Jenkins report, so became resigned to FTP. When I was running Alan’s DL campaign he claim close, but ultimately failed to persuade me as to the merits of PR. This time round I think he might have won his argument.

The right time for the referendum on pr was before 2001 like the Labour Party promised.
It may not be simple to explain. It may not guarantee higher turnout, it may not improve ethnic imbalance but it IS fairer.

What’s troubling about this is the possibility that it’s an attempt to get Lib Dems to switch to Labour this one time to get what they have long been mercifully deprived of.

This looks bad. Either he really believes it, in which case I’m dispppointed in him (that’s him in trouble then) or it’s playing short-term politics and to hell with the long-term consequences, in which case see above but add appalled.

That’s it then, there’s nobody left. Cameron it is. MGHMOOS.

In Auf Wiedersehen Pet series 1 when Neville convinced them to paint the inside of the hut, Barry organised a secret ballot. The winning colour was yellow which no-one had voted for as a first choice. Barry explained that everyone had had a different first choice but three people had yellow as a second choice, so yellow ‘won’.

(A very exasperated) Den: Let me get this straight, Barry. The colour we’re going to paint the hut, yellow, is the colour no-one wanted.

Barry: That’s democrasoi, Dennis.

Straw man argument – who is saying it would increase voter participation? In any case the turnout for the Scottish parliament elections is a reflection on the electorate’s view of that body, not the electoral system.

I dare say you, on £65k (plus expenses, natch) in a fairly safe seat could live with another 18 years of Tory government and the possible break up of the Labour Party (I am younger than you but joined the party before you – and remember how close we came last time – I wouldn’t rate our chances of surviving a second time). But millions of people who look to our party for hope and social progress cannot.

I am in favour of whatever smashes the Tory party and this certainly would.

Get out of your cave and join the rest of us in the 21st century. An electoral system that put recationaries in power with 40% of the vote while 60% of the voters back liberal and social democratic parties is the fools’ route to progress.

I’m just going to throw this out there, but is it possible that people voted less in European elections because no one cares about European elections (although they should)?

Complexity wise, if we look at the ERS’s proposed STV system, it simply requires that votes rank candidates in order of preference – That’s it. They can even just mark one if they want to.

I don’t think I’m overestimating the British public by saying they can handle that.

I, too, like Alan Johnson. But I couldn’t agree more with Tom on this.

In my view, proportional representation is about giving every view credence, whereas FPTP is about strong, effective government.

Rather like equality, fairness is not always and necessarily desirable in governance or in society.

Captain Bligh’s lifeboat would never have reached shore if he’d been at all interested in either.

Tom,

I read your post yesterday and wondered if you would react to A Johnsons none to subtle bid to seize the initiative from Gordon.

I couldn’t agree more. First past the post is a rubbish system; every electoral system is flawed. Simply put, first past the post is better than the alternatives. Any PR system involves party lists, and these prevent the electorate doing the one thing that all voters doing what they crave most: voting out a duff politician. Remember Portillo? Under ATV, he would have been top of the regional list, and so untouched by the decision of the voters.

To ‘Fed up Labour MP’s from the Stone Age’. be careful what you wish for. d’Hondt in Scotland is very similar what we have in Scotland, where a LibLab pact was meant to reign forever. The transferable vote idea, which you doubtless pin your tory annihilation hopes on, woudl have worked in ‘97, when the electorate went seek and destroy on all things blue. Given current opinion poll ratings…

In fact, we know people can work STV. They did it in 2007, and the problems even for a new system were minimal (unlike Holyrood voting: note to Douglas Alexander, don’t do that again).

Thank you Tom, you’re completely correct.

Tom, would you care to explain how putting an X in a box (which is what you have to do for the European Elections) is too complicated for potential voters to handle?

Will P / Alex : voting with an X, or even a 1-2-3 is not complicated at all. Explaining how you have ended up with a Trotskyite or BNP candidate representing you, when said Trot or racist only got 6% of the votes, is a bit harder to fathom.

But that really misses the point, anyway. Although we elect individual MPs, we are choosing a Government. A “proportional” parliament that regularly contained roughly 35-40% Labour, 35-40% Tory and 15-20% Lib Dem members – and that’s probably what we’d have at Westminster – would remove all power to choose a Government from the electorate, and hand it to the Liberal Party. Which is why the Liberals support it …

“…He is articulate and principled,…”

Really?

Well what the hell is he doing in the Labour Party then?

For those of you who like the ‘Smack of firm government’ delivered by FPTP – I suppose if the Government decided to . . . Oh I don’t know? . . . conscript your teenage children into an illegal war . . . you would be safe in the knowledge that even if you thought the policy was completely nuts; thanks to good old FPTP and the elected dictatorship it delivers, you would have absolutely NO CHECKS OR BALANCES thanks to a 100+ seat, built-in majority for the Government.

Orwell was right when wrote “Strength through Ignorance”.

Although I don’t think he had in mind the FPTP woefully undemocratic voting system . . .
.
.
.
. . . or did he? ;o)

When you said:

“You vote for one candidate and the one with the highest number of votes wins”

Your forgot to add that this results in a parliament that polices its own expenditure and results in weeks of scandal with cowering MPs saying the system is wrong. Why did no MP, including yourself, ask the question – should I claim for this because I can or should I claim for this because I need to?

And when you said

“On polling day, a voter would have two ballot papers….” etc.

You forgot to say that this is the same as the Scottish Parliament. Where we are expenses scandal free due to the nature of the parliament.

Which system is in need of reform?

Oh and BTW . . . if there ARE people in Scotland who do find the PR voting system “complex beyond their ability to understand”; then I would suggest that they are clearly too thick to merit a vote.

Call it political natural selection. LOL

You vote for one candidate and the one with the highest number of votes wins.

Can you do an equally concise explanation of how a party which gains more votes than another ends up out of power?

Not convinced by the arguments for change or the level of support that it would have in a referendum.

But I think your argument about representation at Holyrood is misleading.Yes the lack of ethnic minorities is noticeable but that is true at every level of politics.

We have, however, seen a much more inclusive parliament with Greens, Socialists, Pensioners etc all having had a voice. And as Denis Canavan and Margo MacDonald have shown the system can be used by the electorate to show that people have a great dislike of control freakery by the major parties and are “sophisticated” enough to use the system to return MSP’s that they think will best serve local needs.

Any consideration of the low turnouts must take into account both the massively bad publicity caused by the parliament building and, if we’re honest, the almost total lack of talent or inspiration provided by the candidates of the main parties.

As difficult as it is to watch you can also argue that the parliament has reached a certain maturity with the SNP government – with the Tories, Greens and Margo all winning concessions on the budget without resorting to bringing the administration down. The ideal of a consensual parliament is probably more popular with the public than with politicians.

So I’m not convinced but I don’t think Scotland can be used to say it’s a definite non starter.

It concerns me that some Labour supporters want PR simply to keep the Tories out. What their justification is (other than the Tories = evil) I can’t begin to imagine.

A system that would have made the last few years of Labour more Blue, and the |Tory years more Red might be a good idea … but I don’t want a system that makes any years Yellow.

PR simply to ensure some undemocratic leftist axis of evil, with Labour (although, where New Labour would end up I don’t know) and the Liberals is missing the point.

PR to make it more likely that Government’s extravagences don’t get voted through Parliament so easily is good, giving us a Government we didn’t want is not.

To the person who suggested 60% voting for “liberal” parties. They didn’t. A far greater proportion voted for right-wing parties, that is New Labour & the Tories. The Liberals & “stone-age” elements of Labour got the least votes, as usual.

Using low turnout at the Scottish and European Parliament elections to dimiss PR is nonsense, to quote the brilliant Vernon Bogdanor:

“One sometimes hears it said that electoral reform cannot be the answer because turnout in the FPTP elections for the House of Commons is higher than it is for proportionally elected bodies like the Scottish Parliament and the European Parliament. This is a highly suspect argument because it does not compare like with like. It is obvious that elections for the most important elected body will tend to have higher turnout than those for subsidiary institutions, simply because more people will be interested in the result. Political scientists have long distinguished between ‘first order’ elections like UK General Elections, and ‘second order’ elections that do not determine control of government, such as European Parliament and local elections, which nearly always have significantly lower turnout. The Scottish Parliament occupies an intermediate position.”

Furthermore, “the research for the Government’s review of electoral systems in 2008, concluded that proportional systems tend to produce higher turnout than FPTP because with PR every vote can count towards the result.”

And while PR might not magically raise turnout, “FPTP is implicated in many of the things that turn people off politics at the moment – the safe seats that the campaign treats as irrelevant, the targeting of swing voters in marginal seats that makes all the parties sound alike even when they are not and the adversarial posturing that goes on at and between elections. Reforming the voting system is a vital part of the process of reconnecting people and politics, but not sufficient of itself to achieve this aim.”

But then again why would a Labour MP want PR? Not exactly in their interest is it?

‘PR Myths’ – Vernon Bogdanor: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/PRMyths.pdf

I notice on this thread a reference to “An illegal war”, meaning I presume,Iraq.

The war was clearly a mistake. It may even have been evil. It was certainly cruel and bloody and shaming.

But it was not illegal.

We had no treaty with Iraq.

Tom – I couldn’t help noticing that you didn’t approve my warning about the dangerous Mr Johnson.

Is this because you will declare yourself to be a Johnsonite when the leadership battle lines are drawn?

Here’s an alternative definition of first past the post, based on my experience in multiple constituencies:

The local incumbent party puts their candidate up. Because it’s a safe seat, they are duly elected and your vote counts for nothing.

Very simple, indeed.

Why is it politicians are so fond of assuming the public is too stupid to be trusted with complexity? Are we really not generally capable of expressing preferences? Are the electoral officers really not to be trusted?

Personally, I’d like to be able to take some pride in my fellow citizens rather than assume they’re too mentally deficient to do any more than put an x in a box.

@ archie at 5:21 pm

‘Will P / Alex : voting with an X, or even a 1-2-3 is not complicated at all. Explaining how you have ended up with a Trotskyite or BNP candidate representing you, when said Trot or racist only got 6% of the votes, is a bit harder to fathom.’

That *would* be hard to fathom. You would think the BNP/Trot candidates would be among the first to be knocked out at 6%. If they got more votes than that, I doubt it would be so unfathomable for the relevant constituency…

Slightly more likely (and desirable) that UKIP or the Green Party would pick up more seats.

Alan Johnson is only considering proportional representation because Labour are going to lose the next election – and will then probably embark on a civil war between ‘old’ and whatever is left of ‘nu’ Labour. His only hope for avoiding this is if the election is close and the LibDems can be pursuaded to support Labour in a coalition which is pledged to introduce some form of PR.

I rather think the electorate – certainly the English majority – are more interested in:

a) getting rid of Labour and punishing the Scottish cabal for wreaking the economy;
b) holding the promised Referendum on the Lisbon ConTreaty and then rapidly repatriating powers from Brussels;
c) and sorting our Labour’s gerry-mandered devolution so that England is not discriminated against in Parliament by having MPs from Scotland, Wales, NI voting on matters which only affect England.

What we do need is a reduction in the numbers of MPs (400 would be plenty) with standard-sized constituencies so that a minority Labour vote can no longer secure a ‘landslide’ election victory. Larger constituencies means there would be more with a mix of economic (and cultural) communities – which would probably mean fewer ’safe’ seats.

We also need a drastic cut in the number of Lords. ‘Lords’ could be divided into two classifications: those with the power to vote and amend law and those who are either hereditary or simply in receipt of an honour for services to the country but who cannot vote.

We also need to change the rules of the Lords so that any Lords caught seeking or accepting bribes in order to change the law lose their peerage and are jailed – preferably for treason – as a warning to the rest.

Moving away from the first past the post system will be a further disaster for Britain, ask the Italians what they think PR has done for them.

I’m not a great supporter of PR but citing the devolved bodies is a bad move.

The turnout at Welsh Assembly elections (which are by a partial form of PR) has risen over the last decade by around ten per cent while local and Westmister turnout has dropped by a similar percentage in Wales over that period.

Since you mention it, in the last century of FPTP elctions to Westminster Wales has elected exactly zero MPs from ethnic minorities. 1 ethnic minority AM in ten years isn’t great but it does make your arguement sound desperate.

I’m very, very sorry Tom.

I’m a supporter of FPTP (or, at least, single-member constituency systems – I’d be partial to a bit of Alternative Vote), and so am (like you) wary of AJ’s proposals. I’ve also seen AV+ in action in Wales, where it’s at least as bad as in Scotland.

But your article is the most pisspoor defence of the status quo that I’ve ever seen.

No worries, though – I’ll post something a little more robust over at the Paintbrush Collective in a short while…

This description of the current voting system is incomplete. It should read as follows:

You vote for one candidate who usually doesn’t get elected. You end up “represented” by somebody you voted against. Most MPs “represent” mostly people who voted against them. Usually one political party gets all the power, even though most people voted against them.

May I ask some questions, what do the top up MPs end up doing if they have no constituncy? Do they just end up as party activsts and called upon to attend local party meetings and give out the raffie prizes? Do they end up being put on more comittees? How do they learn the job if they have no case work or constituency to work in and learn from?

“Can you do an equally concise explanation of how a party which gains more votes than another ends up out of power?”

Nothing simpler Ronnie Boy, you introduce PR and the parties that came second and third form a coalition government leaving the largest bloc out in the cold. As would have happened in 1983, 1987 and 1992. Maybe there are some people who would have regarded a government led by a party that got a princely 27% of the vote against the other side’s 42% as a good thing. I must admit, I wouldn’t have.

If you mean under FPTP – it hasn’t actually happened since 1974, and not happened in a Parliament that lasted more than 6 months since 1951.

Thanks for the defence of the Status Quo Tom – good to hear one voice with doubts that this is the right moment for reform!

‘Usually one political party gets all the power, even though most people voted against them.’

Try looking at it this way. With PR a small party gets power, not all of it but any is too much, even though even more people voted against them than vote against governments under the present system. At the moment a majority usually votes against the colour of government we eventually get. With PR that majority is 100%.

The Scottish & Welsh turnouts are far higher than for council elections. Aince the national media coverage of Westminster elections is obviorlsy much higher than for Scottish elections it is unsurprising that turnout is lower in fact on a media attention/turnout ratio the assemblies do better. I will admit I am a little disappointed the turnout for these democratically elected forums has not been higher than for Westminster.

As regards the “after serious and calm debate” may I point to Labour’s manifesto promise in 1997 of a referendum on PR. I suggest that the time for merely debating this reform may be drawing to a close & that absolutely nobody is going to trust any promise to do something after spending another decade thinking about it.

The basis rule is that any government which has nearly 2 people voting against it for every one supporter has no democratic mandate to rule & desreves the contempt thet Parliament is currently held im.

When Mussolini came to power he altered the Italian constitution to make 60% of the seats automatically go to the largest party, no matter how small, which in effect is what we have now. You either believe in democcracy or you don’t.

Furthermore, the vast majority of European countries use some variant of PR. So to constantly point to Italy is again, nonsense.

Also, top up MPs can still represent a constituency, it would just be a region, far larger than the constituencies we have today. So in effect, rather than having fewer representatives to call on – under PR you could have more – and it would be more likely you’d have voted for one of them. So what’s more democratic?

Pretty much every criticism the comments here have made is rejected here: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/PRMyths.pdf

There is nothing wrong with our system of electing MPs.

What causes all the problems, and urgently does need reform, is that by definition the executive is drawn from the majority party in the House, thereby giving them virtually unchecked power.

What we need is a directly elected Prime Minister, with an appointed Cabinet, membership being mutually exclusive to the House.

This would dramatically reduce the power of the whips, as career progression would no longer be in their gift, and would greatly increase the independence and relevance of MPs.

Separation of powers is not the single answer to all problems, there is no magic bullet, but it could dramatically reduce the impact of several of the other related issues, without severing the link between MP and constituency.

Are you seriously saying that we should keep FPTP because it is simple? The Irish manage a “complex” PR system (STV) very well with no obvious problem of lack of understanding or reduced voting. Voting is about representing the people best and a mnority party of whatever colour does not do that.