With the loss of the AV referendum, electoral reformers across Britain are now looking at what went wrong and what changes they can make for the future to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We need our political parties to do the same, and that means a re-evaluating their electoral reform policies.
As absurd as it is, the perceived complexity of AV was a significant factor in its rejection by the public. The whole concept of preferential voting has now been tainted for a generation as overly complicated. If we are to engage the public interest in the future we need to learn this lesson.
It means ditching STV.
STV is a more complicated version of AV. The same applies to AV+. Trying to push such systems on to the public now will be flogging a dead horse.
A harsh lesson from the referendum is that the anti-reformers are very good at exploiting every weakness, and STV is riddled with them. Firstly, STV is not a properly proportional system; it is at best semi-PR. The level of proportionality under STV is directly linked to the number of MPs for each constituency. The larger the constituencies, the more proportional it is, but the less direct link there is to the public. Conversely, smaller constituencies mean less proportionality.
Either way, do we really want to replicate the situation we have with the EU elections where hardly anyone can name a local MEP? The media would tear it to shreds.
Another exploitable weakness is that Lib Dem support for STV looks like blatant self-interest to anyone outside the party. Even the Electoral Reform Society’s own analysis of STV shows that it will do nothing for the smaller parties (UKIP, Greens), and will benefit only the third placed party… the Lib Dems. In fact the ERS concluded that it would actually over-compensate the Lib Dems, giving them a disproportionately large number of MPs while penalising the more popular Labour and Conservative parties.
Many people like the idea of a local MP and the removal of the single constituency MP will be presented as a major weakness of STV in any future national debate. It also rules out any party list based systems, such as those used for the EU elections.
Of course it’s not just the Lib Dems who need to revisit their policy. UKIP currently favours AV+, while the Greens want a two vote Additional Member System as they have in Scotland, London and Wales.
Is it any wonder that we struggled to win the referendum proposing a system than none of the parties or reform groups actually supported?
The future requires a unified approach. We need the Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, ERS and every other organisation involved to settle on a single electoral system that we will all present to the public.
Once agreement has been reached, we need a long term campaign of public education and preparation. We mustn’t blunder in to the next referendum (if we are lucky enough to have one) still trying to explain what the system is or why we need it.
As for the choice of system to promote, it has to be simple – the simpler the better. It has to retain the single member constituency link. It has to be a form of proportional representation. This leaves us with the Additional Member System or the simpler top-up systems such as Total Representation or Regional Top-Up. It’s time for everyone in the reform movement to take a long look at these systems and see which one they would be happiest with, and which one will be the easiest to sell to the public.
Anthony Butcher is an independent campaigner for electoral reform. His website is www.regionaltopup.co.uk
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52 Comments
Not keen on that at all – the reason we are pro STV is because it gives more power to the voter. List systems give too much power to a few people within political parties.
I agree. The AV referendum was a major blow to electoral reform and quite honestly, after the referendum, the party needs to reestablish itself as not the ‘protest’ party or the ‘STV’ party, but a party of liberalism (in whichever form it takes) and how we approach issues that affect people who don’t particularly care about the electoral system. Education would be a particularly potent thing to choose IMO.
“We need the Lib Dems, UKIP, Greens, ERS and every other organisation involved to settle on a single electoral system that we will all present to the public.”
Well the Lib Dems and the ERS are both agreed that STV is the best system by far. Maybe you should try persuading the Greens or Racist UKIP to change their views, since the two largest of the four groups you mentioned support the same system?
Also, I am a supporter of Electoral Reform because I want a system that is both preferential and proportional, with preferentiality being far more important to me than proportionality. Closed list systems are utterly abhorrent and undemocratic, and are about as close to the kind of electoral reform I want as the reintroduction of capital punishment would be to the kind of legal reform I want.
Oh dear God. I’ve just had a look at his website. He’s advocating FPTP with regional AMS-style top-ups, based on lists created from unsuccessful candidates ranked in order of vote, and then selected using *the bloody d’Hondt system* *AND HE THINKS THAT’S SIMPLER AND MORE DEMOCRATIC THAN STV!!!*
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…
So let’s be clear, you’re advocating a system where MPs who lose there constituencies will rise from the political dead as list MPs? I can see that one going down really well. Plus people will have to vote for a party with no idea who is going to be towards the top of the list and so, who they’re voting for. I support STV because I think people should be able to vote for/against individual candidates, regardless of party.
The author is wrong to say that none of the parties supported AV. The Labour party proposed having a referendum on it at the last general election and it was clear that the reason why was that this was their preferred voting system. Since then of course many changed their minds because they saw an opportunity to humiliate Nick Clegg.
As Caron says STV gives more control to the voter and should be supported for that reason. At the last general election the Labour MP for Salford, Hazel Blears, was caught up in the expenses scandal and became detested by her local electorate. However voters in Salford always vote Labour so they were left with a problem. They wanted to vote Labour but not for Hazel Blears. Under FPTP they had no choice but to vote for Blears to get Labour in. Under STV they could have voted for the other Labour candidates but not for her, thereby satisfying their true intention.
Well said. See my pieces, http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/05/12/could-cleggs-system-of-choice-for-lords-reform-kill-it/ & https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-independent-view-how-to-implement-full-lords-reform-now-that-the-referendum-is-lost-24070.html . The argument here is the logical corollary of these.
It would be BRILLIANT if we could all converge now on AMS as the ideal system.
Yes, Rupert, because a system where there are MPs who it is impossible for voters to get rid of no matter how unpopular, that puts independent candidates at a huge disadvantage, and that strengthens the power of party leaders, is definitely better, oh yes.
Personally I think that what we need is a commitment to have a Citizen’s Assembly on electoral reform with its proposals to be subject to a binding referendum. This piece draws all the wrong lessons from the referendum, makes some stupid errors (such as claiming that STV is a more complex form of AV – it’s not) and is playing into the hands of the anti-reformists instead of learning the two clear lessons from the referendum:
1. We’ll need a better organised campaign next time
2. The British public will not settle for a compromise.
It would also be brilliant if we could read the polling data on peoples reactions to AV, and decide that the problems with AMS are far far worse, and the ‘worst losers’ system as advocated above is even worse.
Rupert, preferential voting isn’t dead, the research on why people voted the way they did shows that–there’s been very little opposition to STV for the Lords.
Anthony, your system has been proposed before and is in no way “new”, it’s been rejected, repeatedly, the idea that MPs voted out should come back in, and you really think that can be sold to voters? In 1997, I specifically voted against Rupert Allason, he was defeated by the smallest margin in that election. Under your system, he’d have stayed in the House–do you reall ythink that’s good?
STV doesn’t penalise the Greens over time–it does under current voting patterns, but wouldn’t if everyone that votes Green in the EU elections gave them 1st preference in General Elections.
Plus, your idea completely discounts the small element of the personal vote–many people vote for the best candidate, or to keep a respected local MP against national trends, the idea that you can conflate support for a candidate completely with that of a party is a terrible idea, and the principle objective, of simplicity, is a gross insult to voters.
Rupert, AMS is better than Anthony’s system, but as results in Wales and Scotland show, it can lose to AM/MSPs losing their seats because their party did too well, and can be gamed easily.
STV gets around all of these problems and is incredily easy to implement. Abandoning what is undoubtedly the most democratic system because of one vote for a different system is daft.
However, if we all agreed on following the New Zealand model for reform, that will work a lot better and can keep us all together.
I think this article commits two major errors from my perspective:
First, it accepts the No2AV line that preferential voting systems are “complicated,” when two of the home nations, Ireland, Australia and even the illiterate, pig-suckling tribespeople of New Guinea who we were invited to mock and ridicule, manage to use it just fine. Any constitutional reform which begins from the assumption that the electorate is stupid deserves to fail.
Second, it misses the most important point about the negotiations last May. We did not fail to achieve PR because the pro-reform side (the Lib Dems) were not agreed on a system, we failed because both the institutional old parties were opposed to change full stop. The Tories would have been no more willing to allow us PR if we had been proposing a different system.
Where I DO wholeheartedly endorse the author of this article is where he talks of a long-term cross-party campaign for PR. We don’t need to agree on a system for it up front, but an ongoing campaign supported by all pro-PR parties and which hopefully will grow beyond them, on the democratic principle of changing to a proportional voting system is essential.
The problem with Butcher’s proposed system is that it’s needlessly complicated; more complicated than STV by any metric.
And RTU is less proportional than STV in any case. Look at the page for Yorkshire; when I did my own calculation of what STV results would give us (partially because I thought the ERS was wrong when it said the South East would not return Caroline Lucas), it gave a roughly proportional result for Yorkshire (and indeed, the whole of the UK, except that a third of the BNP’s entitlement was scattered among other parties), on 3-5 constituencies. But RTU gives an advantage to the dominant party, to the point that Labour, with 36% of the votes, pick up 48% of the seats. RTU is not proportional representation; it’s more of the “majority party’s fix” we see in Scotland and Wales.
And neither does AMS give proportionality either, unless we can vary the amount of list seats like what happens in New Zealand. Even with the 60:40 system in Scotland, the SNP got more than their PR entitlement. And even with the 50:50 system, we still get parties getting much more than their entitlement.
Liberalism is a rational ideology. We think we are right about STV, as painful and unpopular as it is to make this statement in public, the general populace were WRONG about voting no to AV. Just because the general public has a vote on something and disagrees with us does not mean we should change our opinion, we should fight even harder to win the argument.
This type of thinking comes from Blairite style government where suddenly if people don’t like one of your key political beliefs you pretend it was never a belief (i.e. Blairs strong belief in God as important in politics).
Tosh. STV is the best system. We must be prepared to negotiate but this should be where we start from. Let’s not have another referendum though – there’s a reason there has only been 2 in history. However, right now we need to use our time in the limelight to help people understand what Liberalism is.
It’s simply not going to happen. Short of a political earthquake there isn’t going to be another referendum on any kind of electoral reform for a generation – let alone on proportional representation. Don’t waste your time debating the merits of competing impossibilities.
“Another exploitable weakness is that Lib Dem support for STV looks like blatant self-interest to anyone outside the party. Even the Electoral Reform Society’s own analysis of STV shows that it will do nothing for the smaller parties (UKIP, Greens), and will benefit only the third placed party… the Lib Dems.”
But surely that was because in the 2010 FPTP General Election the 4th and 5th parties were so far behind the 3rd party. Under some forms of PR, UKIP has done very well indeed.
Under STV many voters will vote differently to the tactical way they are forced to vote under FPTP, and quite right too.
What a stupid article! Lets drop the most liberal voting system possible, to be more liberal… does anyone else see the problem here? AMS still has many of the problems of FPTP
Furthurmore, AV failed because Rupert Murdoch and News International… sorry, I mean the public, don’t like Clegg much, and the No campaign was significantly better funded, using cowardly scare tactics.
Real Liberals shouldn’t block STV. It is BY FAR the best system. The Irish people seem to really like it too
Like that has got anything to do with the voting system. Nobody can name their MEPs because the media never, ever reports on MEPs. People don’t know what they do, why should people know who they are?
Thanks for the comments everyone, especially those who were polite. I hope that it provided a bit of food for thought.
I should add that I am not wholly against STV, and have suggested it as the system of choice if we can reform local Government:
http://takebackparliament.org/sites/takebackparliament/index.php/blog/lets-reform-local-elections/
@Andrew Hickey
Although you may be very keen on the idea of preferential voting, most people couldn’t care less about it and many are actively hostile to the idea. This was one of the weakest selling points of AV during the referendum, and put some people off. Most people can just about cope with voting for a party; the notion of not only ranking parties by order of preference (as under AV) but also ranking the candidates within the parties (under STV) is a level of complexity and decision making that just isn’t going to inspire the masses.
This is going to be one of the problems with the House of Lords Reform; we will have 10-15 parties standing in each constituency, each fielding up to seven candidates. Then there will be some independents too. That’s going to be an awfully long ballot paper.
I wasn’t specifically trying to promote RTU in the article – I am a fan of AV+, AMS and TR for General Elections too. The primary focus was to get the Lib Dems to reconsider their support for STV in the light of the referendum and the realisation that the public have rejected preferential voting.
I am not quite sure why a couple of people have suggested that RTU is more complicated than STV; that seems a very odd claim. Under RTU people cast one single ‘X’ vote. It is simply FPTP with a couple of bolted-on improvements to improve the proportionality. The whole point is that it is *extremely simple* for voters.
I should add that RTU would work equally well using AV as the primary voting tool instead of FPTP.
@Joe Donnelly
I am not a Lib Dem and haven’t supported STV! No change in thinking required 🙂
@TheoBP
There is no obligation for anyone to vote for a party without a candidate, it is simply there to add an improved list of choices. Many constituencies offer only three or four candidates, thus severely limiting the choice. Allowing people to support their favoured party even if they don’t have a local candidate is a good thing. In my experience most people vote for parties, not people, and I think that this would be a welcome bonus.
@MatGB
The idea of creating lists from the best second placed candidates is perfectly valid. They haven’t ‘lost’ their seats
As for the goal of simplicity being a ‘gross insult’, we clearly have very differing measures of what we find insulting. Most people I bore with discussions about electoral reform favour simplicity. I would rather we propose a system that most people would be comfortable with (i.e. no real change required) than a potentially horribly complicated voting system (STV) that has already been partially rejected by the public.
@Simon Shaw
I agree, people would vote differently under a new system, but we can’t ignore the ‘sellability’ of the idea. STV looks like a Lib Dem fix, and many people will object to it solely on that basis. I agree to an extent with that sentiment too – STV isn’t designed to help the Greens or UKIP , or any other smaller party and will only really redistribute the seats amongst the big three. If we want a system to get proper cross-party and independent support, it has to be one that will benefit everyone.
@Andrew Suffield,
I disagree. The reason that no one can name their MEPs is because there have half a dozen or more per region, and the regions are so large that people never hear from them.
Quite a few people can name their MP or a local councillor because the area they cover is much smaller and the people are much more likely to hear from them. There is still a sense of connection there, even if they didn’t vote for them.
STV would mean constituencies of 5-7 MPs (as they propose for the Lords), and the whole direct constituency connection would be lost. It is a terrible idea for anything other than local elections where we already have small constituencies of 1-3 councillors usually.
While a couple of people here have commented on the value of preferential voting, that only works if the majority of people have a clue who they are ranking. If we make constituencies of 5-7 MPs and then ask the public to somehow rank the individual candidates within and across parties, how can they seriously have any idea who most of them are? Most people couldn’t name their single local Lib Dem candidate under FPTP, yet we would ask them to rank 5-7 Lib Dem candidates whom they have probably never heard of?
The preferential system would just be an inconvenient waste of time for 90% of people when applied at a General election or HoL level.
And if the parties only put in the number of candidates that they expect to be elected, they are effectively operating a party list system anyway!
my personal opinion is you are wasting your time with a change to the voting system. what ever system is decided upon will meet the same objections from the 2 main parties. I think for a very long time electoral reform is dead in the water after the referendum loss.
@Richard,
you might be right, but that is all the more reason why the reform movement needs to organise itself. We cannot afford to go into another referendum in the same disorganised state. We need to educate the public, politicians and media about why this is such an important issue and how we can fix it. Then, when the next opportunity arises, we will already be 90% of the way there.
That’s the lesson I learned from this referendum. Unfortunately, as the comments on the article have shown, we are a very divided group and it may be that we will never be able to organise ourselves enough.
@ Anthony Butcher
Ah, sorry I had missed the ‘independent view’ part of the article title 😛
That changes my point somewhat, however, it does annoy me when you meet members of the general population who suddenly think electoral reform or STV should be dropped from our agenda just because we lost a vote on it…our policies shouldn’t be formed by what is popular.
However, as a lover of different voting systems I can’t be against the opening of a debate over which electoral system should be adopted. I would like if we could involve the whole of progressive Britain in this debate and by progressive I mean those on the intellectual side of the labour party and not conservative and even UKIP, Green and people in the tory party like douglas carswell. We need to make the AV referendum a case of ‘the genie being out of the bottle’ not electoral reform being over for generations.
How do you counter allegations of the systems you propose creating two tiers of MPs?
Is there any reason why the Danish system of PR (which is very similar to the Norwegian and Swedish flavours) is never seriously being considered in the UK? Basically, it’s Sainte-Laguë (which is just a variation of d’Hondt, which is used for UK European Parliament elections), but with the crucial difference that voters can vote for a person within a party instead of just for a party, and these personal votes are then used for deciding which one(s) of a party’s candidates that will get that party’s seat(s). In that way, you get proper PR, but the voter is in full control — the parties only decide on the layout of the ballot papers, not on who gets elected.
I’ve tried to show how the Danish system would work in the UK here.
So if I understand you correctly, your claim is that if people had only one MEP covering a smaller area, then the complete lack of media reporting would not stop people from finding out the name of their MEP? Or that if the media did report on what MEPs were doing, people would ignore the reports because there are too many MEPs?
I think you’re going to have to justify that one. (I don’t really see how you can)
The author is right to believe that many people voted against AV is because it would give the Lib Dems more MPs. Obviously the solution is to back a system that gives us no MPs. Right now you could probably get a majority for that.
Andrew Hickey
A small matter but could you please retract your unpleasant smear regarding UKIP being racist. I thought the entire populace, save for some Lib-Dem commentators it seems, had advanced beyond characterising those who are concerned about untrammelled immigration as racists. This was a now generally discredited tactic of New Labour, disowned by its current leadership. Indeed if recent reports are accurate even the signatories to Schengen appear to have belatedly recognised the dangers of unassimilated dissonant groups not prepared to embrace the mores of the host nation. That you are comfortable labelling people whose policies are probably more resonant with the vast majority of the poulation than your own “progressive” views with such a contemptible insult probably explains why you have lost favour and trust more than all the pontification on this site.
Must say I live in Scotland and have warmed to the idea of STV over the past few years but I’m not sure preferential voting is popular in England from the AV referendum and would be an easy sell there.
The main advantage is that it would get rid of parachutes, the disadvantage is it’s not necessarily as proportional as a list system.
AMS might be harder to implement on a larger scale for Westminster than for the devoloved institutions.
Personally I wouldn’t have a problem with 3-5 member constituencies.
Preferential voting without proportionality is never going to be easier to sell. STV can be an improvement on purely PR systems, but perhaps it is an argument too far to win in one step.
Perhaps an additional member system as a start, followed by allowing voters to decide on which “top up” members are elected as a second stage would be easier to sell ?
Somehow, the eventual makeup of the democratically elected chamber must represent the way in which the country voted…
No. Reform of the Commons should be on the backburner and the LDs should focus on policies that resonate more and, in a more low key way, in reform of local government, Lords and maybe EU elections. I do believe that the author has come to the wrong conclusion about what went wrong. The campaign was poorly run, we were running for a compromise position that enthused very few people and the no campaign lied out of their teeth from day one.
First, most of the powerful people opposed to AV will be opposed to any change. The system being preferential or not really doesn’t play into it, the lines may change but it’s not as if a referendum on AMS is going to have vastly different people on the no side compared to a referendum on STV.
Second, AV was rejected partially because plenty of young people didn’t vote for it because it was too minor a change, not because of its preferential aspect. I’ve only known one person who objected to the preferential voting side of things – and even then by their phrasing they seemed to object to how it works in AV and AV+ specifically.
Third, what were the “No” stories that resonated most? Scare stories about President Clegg or permanent coalitions – these are stories we’ll have to tackle regardless of what system is proposed. The whole “multiple votes” lie came into it, of course, but if a system called the “SINGLE transferrable vote” is proposed it’ll be harder to levy that accusation.
Fourthly, AV was labelled as complex and obscure. With STV you could rightly say that if the Northern Irish and Scottish can figure it out then the English and Welsh can too. If the Lords reforms pass in their current form everyone in the UK would have used it by the time the next shot to change the HoC voting system comes round. Even though it is more complex, it is, paradoxically, less vulnerable to claims of complexity, as there are more obvious counters to the argument.
Fifth, the media ignores 99% of MEPs. That’s why nobody knows them – not the system used. In Northern Ireland everyone knows their MLAs, elected by STV, as the media there focuses on them. In fact, they are more liable to know them even than their MPs.
Also, did anyone know their MEPs back when they were elected by FPTP? I doubt it.
Sixth, the ERS makes their projections using FPTP voting figures. More people would vote, say, Green, under a proportional system than under FPTP so these projections always by their very nature involve some unavoidable inaccuracies. I highly doubt that STV wouldn’t benefit some smaller parties as well as the LDs.
Seventh, you suggest that any list based systems are impossible sells but you include AMS as a preferred option. Which, to state the obvious, includes a party list.
Eighth, STV is “semi-PR” yet you support AMS? AMS would be an acceptable silver medal but it’s (also?) a semi-proportional system. Your other proposed systems look like they’d probably be similar, especially RTU (which is definitely more complex than AMS or STV).
Finally, you’re proposing that everyone settles on one system and yet you are proposing more systems? The Greens support AMS but would take STV – I’d imagine UKIP would too. STV is most likely to be the system settled on if all the pro-reformers just pick one system and run with it. In practice, I think that the aim next time will be to get a NZ style referendum so that the pro-reform side can just focus on pointing out the flaws in FPTP as their first priority.
I appreciate the effort that went into this article but I think that you’ve in some cases been working from the wrong information and have made wrong assumptions. So I find little to agree with here and I certainly don’t consider the systems you propose to be particularly sellable to the general public. Nevertheless, thank you for your time in writing up this post, even though I disagree with it.
Thanks DunKhan,
I do think that you need to consider the possibility that people voted against AV because they don’t like it. The YES campaign was incompetent and the NO campaign was dishonest, but when it comes down to it, people still voted to reject AV and thus preferential voting. Trying to convince people that they voted the wrong way is incredibly difficult once they have invested in it.
I do feel like your argument is more about convincing other Lib Dems that they shouldn’t worry about this massive public rejection of preferential voting, which is all AV really is.
You might be right that the other parties would get behind STV, but we won’t know until someone actually tries to organise this process. There is a reason that neither UKIP nor the Greens chose to support STV off their own backs though, and that is because they see it as an inferior system.
The partial problem with a change in the electoral system to AV is that the majority of those voting understood that even the people proposing it did not really like it. That is not a good position for proposing change.
Proportional Representation is not dead, it will need a different set of circumstances with a more positive radical mood and be clearly explained with a minimum representation figure to prevent far right extremists getting an easy foothold.
The German mix seems to be pretty good, expresses the need for proportionality and manages to put safeguards in to prevent far right parties gaining traction.
@Anthony Butcher
I apologise if I didn’t make myself clear, it’s pretty obvious that not many people were enthused about it and that those who opposed it were as opposed as they would have been if it were PR. I feel that you made some large factual errors and some false assumptions, I simply find a lot wrong with your post, even though it’s clear you put a lot of time and effort into it. Hence why I found nine things to bring up; four of which are just factual errors, incorrect assumptions or logical inconsistencies on your part.
Of course, feel free to just dismiss these points and my entire post as just reassurances, and to just state your opinion again rather than actually addressing the vast majority of what I said. The public rejected AV. They were not voting on preferential voting as a concept or on STV (a different system), they were voting on AV. So unless you can pull out some detailed polling on the matter post-referendum then claiming a rejection of AV is anything more significant than just a rejection of AV is just restating your opinion without backing it up.
I’m not sure of the reasoning behind the Greens and UKIP supporting their own particular preferences, presumably at their vote share they would want some list component, but I doubt they would oppose STV if it was that or FPTP – especially given they both supported AV (which would be far less likely to give them seats than STV). I even seem to recall Lucas co-writing an amendment to hold a NZ style referendum earlier this year, which included STV on the options, so I’m guessing she could live with STV.
I have yet to hear of a better electoral system for the UK than STV(RTU sounds awful as it spectacullarly fails the test of being able to vote out people if they lost their consituency election only to win a ‘top up’ seat) and until I do I will continue to support STV.
@Peter1919,
A second placed candidate would only make the top-up list if they received the highest percentage of the vote of runners-up. In other words; if they were genuinely popular. This has to be preferable to a party selected list system and far less complicated than an open list system. It’s a compromise of course, but one that retains both simplicity and the direct connection of everyone elected to a constituency.
Where did we get this idea of 7 candidates per party from? If we thought we might win about 50% of the vote and were fighting a 14-seat constituency, we might put up 7 candidates, otherwise it would never happen
@DunKhan,
Very well, I will go through it point by point.
1) I agree that the sides wouldn’t change, but my point is that the preferential part not only failed to inspire the public, most voted against it. Proposing another preferential system after having a similar one rejected will just make the next fight that much harder. You can claim that AV is not the same thing as preferential voting until you are blue in the face, but the media and opponents are going to see it that way, and that is all that matters.
2) “Second, AV was rejected partially because plenty of young people didn’t vote for it because it was too minor a change, not because of its preferential aspect.”
Having just accused me of making assumptions and factual errors, this seems to meet both of those criteria. I didn’t have a single person tell me that they weren’t voting for it because it was too small a change. Some said they wouldn’t vote for it because it wasn’t PR. Some voted against it because it was proposed by Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. Some said they voted against it because they don’t want permanent coalitions. Plenty said that they only want to vote for one party. Of course that is only my experience and it will depend on which NO voters you spoke to.
3) I agree, we are going to have to tackle the idea of coalitions being a good thing regardless of which system is put forward next time.
4) If we get STV for the Lords, then it would absolutely make sense for the Lib Dems to stick with STV if they still believe that it is the best system. However, there is a world of difference between STV used for small local election wards and wards the size of the West Midlands with 4 million votes in and 30+ candidates on the ballot paper. I strongly suspect that people won’t warm to it.
I can’t see the Conservatives backing STV for the HoL though. There would be no way to justify keeping FPTP for the Commons if they did. It will make for some very interesting times if the LDs manage to push it through though.
5) I think that you are grossly underestimating the problem of the disconnect between voters and MEPs. It’s not just the media, it is the vast regions that they represent and the fact that there is no single person that the voters or media can focus on. The media and the public thrive on the confrontational nature of politics (that’s not a good thing).
When there are half a dozen MEPs covering a huge region and none of them are actually in charge of anything, nor are they the sole representative, it make it very difficult for the media to get a handle on reporting anything of interest. You can blame the media or the public for lack of interest, but at its heart it is the structure of MEPs that creates the disconnect.
If we move away from the constituency link to having half a dozen MPs covering half a million people the personal link and the single person media focus simply won’t exist any more. Lots of people like having a single MP even if they don’t vote for that person.
6) I agree, although 13-25% is still a very high bar for the smaller parties and we could still end up with a gross under-representation of the smaller parties in Westminster. What I do see from some Lib Dems on this issue is the same attitude that the Tories have to FPTP – “if you can’t play the game and win, tough luck”. STV works for the LDs but not for the other reform parties, yet they are expected to simply lump it and be grateful.
7) I was referring to pure list systems. Clearly the public are happy enough with AMS because the lists are only used as a secondary system, which is a compromise solution that improves the proportional distribution. I would rather have those lists controlled by the public of course.
8) Apart from pure list systems, most of them are compromises in terms of proportionality. My measure of a proper PR system is whether it actively tries to look after the smaller parties, which clearly STV does not. It’s a lot better than FPTP in terms of proportionality, but doesn’t have any guarantee of seats at all even if a party gets a blanket 10% of the vote across the country. Obviously proportionality for the smaller parties is not a requirement for some people when discussing PR systems, and I accept that. As I said before though, it smacks of party self-interest and will be presented as such.
—
WRT RTU, suggestions that it is more complex than STV are just not true. Voters use a single ‘X’ vote to elect a local MP as they do now. The excess votes are then used to elect top-up MPs using the same system we happily use for the EU elections. That’s not complicated in any way, and it only uses mechanisms that the public are already accustomed to.
@Benjamin
The HoL bill suggests wards of 5-7 seats. If parties only put up the number of candidates they expect to win, or something close, then they will effectively be operating a party list system.
For example, if the LDs expect two candidates to be elected and only chose to put two or three in to the election, would that be a real choice for the electorate? It’s gaming the system to ensure that the favoured party candidates are elected. This undermines the preferential aspect of STV.
“The excess votes are then used to elect top-up MPs using the same system we happily use for the EU elections.”
You might be happy with it, I don’t know anyone else who is…
At last someone is making the obvious point that the principle of preference voting was rejected in the AV referendum.
Preference voting means nothing to me. I get to make some academic point that I’d prefer this party or that candidate before making my selection amongst the candidates that have a chance of actually winning. It merely enshrines the thought processes of tactical voting.
I want my vote to have a reasonable chance of affecting the result. That means I want it to matter if I’m supporting a minority party whose support is significant but spread too thinly to make an impact under FFTP. It also means I want my vote to count if I’m adding to an overwhelming majority for my party of choice.
STV is more proportional than AV but doesn’t address the points above. Forget that AV or STV favours a third party and have the courage to campaign for a proportional system where all votes really count rather than a system of meaningless rank ordering of preferences. Let’s show fair votes, real PR, is a genuine conviction issue of fairness and not some academic debate among nerds.
PREFERENCE VOTING
Second choices? Maybe. Third, Fourth etc choices? No! That’s why I voted No to AV. Since any reasonably proportional system gives voters a realistic chance of electing their first choice candidate, STV makes even less sense than AV!
STV also forces voters to rank their choices in order – meaningless for many voters who simply favour a particular party. And the counting method is more inscruitable than a meeting of the Chinese politburo – I seriously question the legitimacy of some STV results.
TOP-UP SYSTEMS
Much better than STV provided voters are allowed 2 votes (AMS is far better than Total Representation or Regional Top-Up) and provided the list ballot-paper gives voters the chance of overriding the ranking order favoured by their party – no CLOSED Lists please. But all top-up systems result in 2 classes of MP – a serious flaw.
FULLY OR SEMI PROPORTIONAL?
God save us from full proportionality! Democracy and good government would not benefit from a proliferation of tiny parties blackmailing everyone else.
LIST SYSTEMS
A truly “free” list system would allow voters to cast as many votes as there are seats (eg 4 votes in a four-seat constituency). There would be no compulsion to cast all one’s votes for candidates on the same party list, but voters who did opt for 2 or more candidates on the same list could optionally insert their own order of preference – overriding the party’s preferred order.
Seats would be allocated between parties (and independents if they polled well enough) by the d’Hondt method. As for which candidate(s) on a party’s list were rewarded with a seat, this could be determined by the stated order of preference using a simple method such as Borda count.
What the writer, and most of the responders are missing is that the argument at present is not over which electoral system is best — it’s over whether the electoral system should be changed at all.
AV has been defeated. That does not, as some think, mean that STV would have won, or RTU, or any other alphabet-soup system. What it does mean is that a major overhaul of the electoral system is dead for the next 10 years. If you want a meaningful debate over the best electoral system, the time to have it is after 2015 elections — not today.
What’s left? Is there nothing to be done? Not at all. It’s just that whatever changes can be made in the next decade are going to have to be small-scale, in the realm of tweaks to FPTP, not replacing it.
For instance, it might be possible to put through an electoral law under which, if no candidate in a constituency wins more than 50% of the vote, a run-off is held (about two weeks later) between the top two vote-getters — or, better yet, the top vote-getters whose votes, totaled together, equal more than half the total vote. That would not be proportional, or even particularly fair, but it would ensure that candidates representing only an unpopular minority would not win seats simply because of a split in the opposition. It’s a tiny step, an incremental reform, not a revolutionary overhaul of the system — but better than no reform at all.
Personally I think that after the huge margin for FPTP in the last referendum any change to the voting system will have to go on the back burner for some reason. Rightly or wrongly, the referendum result is widely viewed as a decisive rejection of a change to FPTP so any attempt to force another referendum on voting change in the near future would be doomed to failure. As far as what voting system we should have I do not think I could support any system which results in my vote being allocated to a party rather than an individual. On that basis I have to support STV as it seems to be the only system that is both reasonably simple and not reliant on a party list system.
For now I think we should concentate on reforming the House of Lords using an improved voting system. Maybe after the public have had a chance to see how it works a move to introduce a better system to the commons will be better received.
I agree that any meaningful reform of the voting system is a non-starter for the next few years. Lib Dems must now concentrate on other matters (I do wonder whether a less disastrous tuition fees policy could have been negotiated in return for dropping the AV referendum).
But the party needs to have some idea of what it actually wants, rather than the “anything’s better than FPTP” mindset which led to the decision to back AV. Yes I know the party’s always favoured STV, but let’s start with a clean sheet of paper instead of parotting the line pedalled by the Electoral Reform Society – whose sudden conversion to the “AV is Wonderful” argument was unconvincing.
A party list system isn’t so bad provided voters are free to cast their votes for individuals and (if they wish) for more than one party. It would certainly offer voters more choice than the current dilemma which arises if I dislike my party’s candidate, or admire the candidate standing for a rival party.
As for STV being simple, yes it’s simple for voters but there’s nothing simple about the counting process. This matters because all that transferring of preferences from candidates who were unsuccessful and – wierdly – from candidates who were very successful (elected by a larger margin than they needed) produces results which are not demonstrably linked to votes.
@David,
I agree that the reform movement has taken a major blow, but reform of the Lords is still on the cards and that could reinvigorate the debate.
What we can’t afford to do is do nothing with regards to reform for the HoC for the next ten years and then blunder into another referendum in the same shambolic way. We need to be a lot more organised, with a long term education campaign about why the current system is broken and how we can fix it. The problem is that if the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens are all offering different solutions, it will weaken the reform argument and make us look divided.
Andrew Hickey
No retraction but having visited your site it was a forlorn hope. I see in response to what I and many others would regard as robust but fair comment you responded thusly:
Andrew Hickey, on June 8, 2009 at 9:04 am said:
Every single thing in this comment is completely, utterly, wrong. Go away and read an actual newspaper, rather than the Express, and then try to learn at least the basics of economics, before you talk about stuff you know less than nothing about. Any further comments from you on this subject, unless and until they show evidence that you have done so, shall be taken as evidence that you’re a racist c*** rather than just the pig-ignorant imbecile you currently appear.
Andrew Hickey, on June 8, 2009 at 3:57 pm said:
I told you what you had to do to get further comments approved. You refused to do so, so your comments are now marked as spam. F***off.
(I blanked your more fruity phraseology)
Such a wonderful dismissal of the legitimate concerns of most of the country as evidenced by numerous surveys, and an attitude which has hardened against your opinion in the last 2 years . No point in dialogue with a “racist c***” like me I suppose. What brand of liberalism do you espouse exactly? I don’t want to seem tiresome so I will leave you and this site to your onanistic preoccupation with STV/AV/whatever as your MP’s show themselves to be exemplars of integrity and consitency and your party marches from strength to strength.
@Old Codger Chris
I am not sure that STV would be that simple for voters for the Commons or Lords though. When used for local elections, it is usually just two or three local candidates from each party who have leafleted and canvassed the area and are probably known to a reasonable number of the voters.
For the Commons and Lords, we would have up to seven seats available, which means more candidates per party, lots more parties, more independents and huge constituencies where the candidates will be almost unknown. Ranking several unknown candidates from a list of 30/40/50+ names isn’t going to be seen as that simple. Obviously the actual mechanism of numbering them is fine, but the mental decisions required from inadequate information could make this both a pointless and largely random affair.
@ Andrew Hickey
“Well the Lib Dems and the ERS are both agreed that STV is the best system by far.”
I’m afraid this calls to mind Tony Benn’s reaction to the 1983 election result – ‘eight million votes for socialism’. Preferential voting has just been delivered a killer blow by the electorate and it is time to recognise that.
Thought the original article was excellent. Sceptics may like to look at how PR was introduced via referendum in New Zealand, and note which system was chosen – AMS by an overwhelming margin.
During the local elections we in The Liberal Party handed out leaflets for the Vite Yes to Av Campaign and canvassed support for a Yes Vote. Without doubt much of the hostility to vote yes was its association with the “Clegg Sell out” as voters put it. However loosing a Vote is no reason for any party to drop the right policy. the Welsh devolution vote was lost first tie but we in the Liberal party never stop arguing the case for it. STV is the only system to transfer power from party machine to voters. In a City like Liverpool 4 or 5 seats by STV is more meaningful than endless boundary reviews!!!
The case for PR has had a setback but the case for it is as true as ever. It is a gross shame the Lib Dems compromised by voting against STV in the Commons and voted for Party Lists fro the EU Elections, it makes their ability to now argue for STV less effective. Dirung the AV we as Liberal made it clear we did not like AV and still wanted STV and that it was only a modest improvement than FPTP
We won’t get a consensus on STV for the following reasons
1 Electoral Bias – STV favours three main parties, and in practice it favours the Lib Dems. Lib Dems have put themselves in the position of supporting a system that favours their party disproportionately.
2 There is much to be said in favour of Single Member constituencies (in isolation). Multimember constituencies have some clear disadvantages, so arguing in favour of a system that depends on multimember constituencies is going to be divisive.
3 Complexity – for the system to be democratic, and for people to engage with the democratic process, the simpler and more transparent the voting and counting the better.
4 A preferential voting method is not seen as much of a benefit , and is seen as a disadvantage by some.
For these reasons, STV is a block to a consensus. (it’s a marmite system)
To get past the block, and to find a new system we have to have a radical back to basics rethink.
Any radicals left in the Lib Dems?
I think it’s probably true the electoral reform needs to be put on the back burner. However, I wonder if there might be a possibility of running some sort of trial or pilot – after all the referendum campaign turned into slanging matches about operational aspects of running the counting process.
In the same way that several different methods were trialled to increase turnout several years ago (different polling stations, 100% postal votes etc) even though this clearly could have affected the result, wouldnt it be possible to trial a different electoral systems in a few areas of the country. This would be much less contraversial and arguments on confusion and cost could be tested rather than speculated upon. If we cant get this done for a General Election, what about a by-election or a local authority – e.g. there is a very strong argument that FPTP is a bizarre system for electing 3 candidates to 3 positions in a multi-member election which is all up.
Gareth
P.S. I agree in most of the arguments for (a) transferable votes and (b) the constituency link which is why my preferred system isnt STV but AV!!!