Friday, 12 June 2009

Electoral Reform: Voting Indecision

Last night I had a discussion on twitter with @MarkReckons, a Lib Dem activist and former student at MMU, about electoral reform and the pros and cons of proportional representation in Westminster elections.

I feel that breaking the link between a MP and their constituents would be a mistake, which with a truly proportional system would be the only option. Fortunately, my tweeting compatriot also agreed that a party list system was not a good idea.

We went on to discuss my own constituency of Manchester Withington. At the last election Liberal Democrat John Leech was elected over the Labour incumbent, however in my humble opinion Mr Leech hasn't been a good MP. He was quoted as saying that people can't tell when a woman is shouting rape because students make so much noise! Very politically naive, at best.

Under our current first past the post system, if I wanted to vote against John Leech then I would probably have to vote for Labour's Lucy Powell as the Tories were way behind in 2005, on just over 10%.

I want our current consistency system with AV voting. The Alternative Vote (AV) enables the voter to rank the candidates until they become indifferent, and then if no candidate has over half of the total first preferences then the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and their second preferences are redistributed. This continues until a candidate has over half the total votes.

Under AV, I could vote for the Conservative candidate as my #1 preference, and then Labour #2 and then not bother raking anyone else. I've voted for who I want to win, and my vote wouldn't be wasted. If I didn't know who came second, third and so on, last time then I could've ranked as many or as few candidates as I wanted; the upshot being I wouldn't be disenfranchised by choosing my preferred candidate.

@MarkReasons' argument was that I could be represented by a Conservative MP if there was muti-member constituencies elected using STV. He has done an explaination on his blog on how this could happen in Manchester Withington and surrounding seats by having a five member area. However in my opinion he has selected seats that would never be together; two from the City of Manchester, and three from the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport.

There are five seats in Manchester that would more likely be put together; Manchester Central, M'cr Gorton, M'cr Blackley, M'cr Withington and Wythenshawe and Sale East.

If you take the votes that the Conservatives got in those seats in 2005 and add them together, the total Tory vote would be 21012. The total turnout from the five areas was 159620, so the Conservatives polled just over 13% of the vote. The quota would be 26604, so therefore there would probably be no Conservative representation in the five seat constituency as they would be around 5600 votes short. Worse still, John Leech would also be elected as an MP because the Lib Dem vote would probably get them two seats.

The argument is that voters could choose not to support a candidate even if they wanted their party to win by choosing a further candidate in the same party, and ranking their undesired candidate further down the list (or not at all). The problem is that parties would only put up as many candidates as they could hope to win. In the above example, a back of a fag packet calculation finds that the Lib Dems would need a swing close 15% from Labour to get a third seat, meaning that they'd only put two candidates up. Indeed the Tories haven't got a chance of winning more than one seat, so they'd only have one candidate.

I've probably lost a lot of you, which doesn't surprise me. Herein lies another problem with STV. Unless you're a bit of an elections geek (like me), it is unlikely that you'll understand the electoral system and how anyone could be elected with 214.57 votes over the quota after they've received transfers from an elected candidate. See!

The public must have trust in the electoral system. They must have the ability to change their MP. They must be able to change the government, and indeed choose the government.

I'm not saying that FPTP is the best system ever, but it surely is simple to understand, simple to use, and simple to decide the winner.

JR
by Andy Hartley @ 10:07 PM - Labels: , , , , ,

1 comments:

  1. JR - Interesting post and thanks for responding to mine.

    My first comment is that with your support for AV you are still settling for your own personal second best. Yes, you would still be able to vote Tory and put Labour second and if enough people did that Mr Leech may be defeated but you would end up with a Labour MP representing you which is not really what you want.

    I was at MMU (I studied in the John Dalton building in case you are interested!) but it is 13 years since I left Manchester so I will bow to your greater knowledge of the constituency situation there! My point was not really to get into an argument about whether I had merged the right seats or not, it was more to show how under STV it would be possible to get a Tory MP even in an area with a fairly low Tory vote. Even if you are correct about how the seats around you would be merged, there would be plenty of other multi-member seats around the country (and probably a few in Greater Manchester) that would end up with one or more Tory MPs where currently there are none. Of course there would be a reduction in Tory MPs in areas like the South where I live but there would then be some extra Lib Dem and Labour (and possibly Green and UKIP) MPs which again is fair given their support down here. That's how the approximate proportionality aggregates up across the country.

    I totally disagree with your comment about STV being too complex. All the voter has to do is list 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. on their ballot paper and stop when they don't want any more preferences. It is a very simple system and is already used very successfully in countries like Ireland for example.

    One final thing I would say is that you should not be apologetic for being interested in all of this to this level. Knowledge of the D'Hondt electoral system and all the others is a virtue in my view and will stand you in very good stead in the future both in your working life and also within the Conservatives should you wish to progress with them. It is good to see people like yourself properly engaging with the debate!
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