Tag Archives: electoral reform

Alex Foster

What challenges might the future bring?

By Alex Foster | Fri 16th April 2010 - 10:40 pm

Challenge #1 – the electoral system

I nearly wrote this a few weeks ago, at which point it would have looked prophetic – writing it now just looks like I’m crowbarring it on the back of the rather sensational Yougov / Sun poll, news of which is breaking on Twitter.

Any number of people have taken the poll figures, Con: 33 (-4); Lab: 28 (-3); Lib Dem: 30 (+8), plugged them into UK Polling Report’s uniform swing calculator, and reeled, aghast at the revelation that our awful electoral system is so completely bust that it’s conceivable that the party …

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Mark Pack

A graphical demonstration of just how broken our electoral system is

By Mark Pack | Thu 15th April 2010 - 10:20 am

I’ve blogged before about how if you are under 40, nearly half the seats in the country have never changed hands since you were born. That isn’t a system that gives real power to people’s votes. Nor is it a system in which MPs are held accountable for their behaviour.

Now this great map has been put together illustrating the point (click on map for larger version):

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Stephen Tall

Forget hung parliaments. This is the general election result which is truly scary.

By Stephen Tall | Wed 31st March 2010 - 11:45 am

For the last month the opinion polls have been suggesting a hung parliament is the most likely outcome of the forthcoming general election. This has spooked some of those “pin-striped Scargills”, who would much rather their Tory friends were able to start slashing public spending without the restraining need to build consensus ahead of what will be inevitably painful cuts.

It’s an odd argument: in previous serious crises, whether war or depression, most people in Britan have recognised the need for petty tribal differences to be set to one side. After all, we are supposed to be all in this together.

But in the last day or so, there seems to have been a slight upswing in support for the Tories on the back of Alistair Darling’s third budget. It’s far too early to say yet that it’s a real trend, but still – it looks more likely this week than it did last week that the Tories will sneak back in with a slim majority.

And that’s the result that should worry everybody.

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments
Stephen Tall

Is this the general election result that would usher in electoral reform?

By Stephen Tall | Sat 27th March 2010 - 8:45 am

So the polls are narrowing, the Tory lead tottering along within the range of 2-7%. As we all know, the Tories need to poll at around 40% to be sure of a working majority, or else they will have to significantly out-perform their national ratings in the key marginal battlegrounds.

And if they don’t succeed? Well, that will clearly be a disaster for David Cameron’s leadership which has been predicated on the fact that he’s the Tories’ talisman. A hung parliament with a minority Labour/Tory government, perhaps with the tacit consent of the Lib Dems, appears at this stage the …

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Posted in General Election and Op-eds | 9 Comments
Helen Duffett

David Howarth on Parliamentary Reform

By Helen Duffett | Mon 22nd March 2010 - 10:40 pm

In case you missed it, David Howarth MP gave a speech last week, as part of the Hansard Society’s Parliamentary Reform Lecture Series.

The speech includes a discussion of the various systems that need reform: the government, the judiciary, political parties and the media.

David Howarth also covers Lords reform, electoral reform and the loss of trust in our political institutions. He emphasises the need to restore power to local government. He cautions that the General Election will not be enough to end this crisis, which has partly been brought about by MPs’ misuse of expenses.

He ends by saying:

These reforms would not

…

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Jonathan Fryer

Tweeting for STV

By Jonathan Fryer | Thu 25th February 2010 - 9:50 am

Like many former Liberals of a certain vintage, I was wooed to the cause of electoral reform by the diminutive but formidable figure of Enid Lakeman, who even at an advanced age could spear opponents with her logic and conviction. I wish she were around today to add her appraisal of whether Gordon Brown’s referendum on AV is a step forwards or a step backwards in the long march to Fair Votes.

As virtually everyone seems to be talking about ‘fairness’ these days, surely it is time that LibDems seized the moment and trumpeted our belief in STV? Moreover, we should …

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Mark Pack

And the winners in the Power 2010 poll on political reform are…

By Mark Pack | Wed 24th February 2010 - 8:50 am

The polls have closed and over 100,000 votes been counted in the Power 2010  online consultation on political reform (which we’ve previously covered here).

The most popular proposals, with people able to pick more than one from a list, were a proportional voting system, the end of ID cards and government data hoarding, an elected House of Lords, English votes on English laws and a commitment to drawing up a written constitution.

The next stage in Power 2010’s campaign will involve candidates being challenged to back this set of proposals. The campaign’s director, Pam Giddy, says, “The vote shows that voters can make difficult choices …

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Mark Pack

What Disraeli really meant when he said “England does not love coalitions”

By Mark Pack | Thu 11th February 2010 - 9:20 am

It’s a favourite quote amongst Conservatives who are opposed to electoral reform wheeled out to suggest that there’s something fundamentally alien to this country about coalition government “England does not love coalitions”.

But what did Disraeli really mean when he said it on 15 December 1852? The words were uttered during a debate on the Conservative budget, which was under attack for proposing a deficit. What’s more, the day before he had tried to get the group of Radical MPs to agree to back him and eventually join the Cabinet.

In other words, it was more a matter of “England does not …

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

The 14 non-Lib Dem MPs who backed the Single Transferable Vote

By Stephen Tall | Wed 10th February 2010 - 6:43 pm

The House of Commons yesterday voted by 365 votes to 187 to hold a UK-wide referendum on changing the voting system next year from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote. The Lib Dems reluctantly voted for the alternative vote, as the most modest of improvements on the current, broken system.

But the party, in the person of Cambridge MP David Howarth, also moved an amendment to leave out ‘an alternative-vote’ and insert ‘a single transferable vote’ – in other words, to ask Parliament to approve an electoral system which would at last reflect the votes cast for parties across the country, …

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , , , and | 13 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Chris Huhne – The alternative vote is not the solution

By NewsHound | Tue 9th February 2010 - 4:20 pm

Over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free site, Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne argues Labour has got it wrong in proposing a referendum on the Alternative Vote: only the Single Transferable Vote will remedy the unfairness of the present system. Here’s an excerpt:

is very similar to first-past-the-post in two key respects. Because it is based on single constituencies – a virtue for its proponents, who say they prize the constituency link – the parties continue to select one candidate each, and the voters only have one choice for each party.

That means that in the majority of parliamentary

…

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Sara Bedford

Daily View 2×2: 9 February 2010

By Sara Bedford | Tue 9th February 2010 - 9:53 am

Welcome to this morning’s Daily View.  I am sure I cannot be the only person to be cheered by waking to the news that the Conservatives believe that their no. 1 electoral weapon is George Osborne.

On this day 60 years ago, United States Senator Joe McCarthy launched his anti-communist crusade, with a speech accusing more than 200 staff in the State Department of being members of the Communist Party.  On 9thFebruary 1979, England and Birmingham City forward Trevor Francis signed for Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest for £1 million, the first UK footballer to move for a seven figure sum.

Today is also the third anniversary of the death of actor Ian Richardson CBE, best known for his portrayal of the Machiavellian Conservative politician Francis Urquhart in the wonderful House of Cards trilogy.

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Stephen Tall

Vince: financial markets have nothing to fear from hung parliament

By Stephen Tall | Sun 7th February 2010 - 6:25 pm

Here’s how the Financial Times reports it:

A hung parliament might frighten the markets, but according to Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, the concerns are “completely and totally irrational”.

The Lib Dems point out that many of the world’s leading economies, including Germany and Italy, hold elections that almost always produce results where the leading party has to do deals with smaller parties. They add that some countries with single party governments, such as Greece, have some of the worst records in dealing with fiscal crises, while multiparty coalitions, such as the one in Sweden in the 1990s, conducted fierce

…

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The Voice

Electoral Reform Bill must give voters real choice – Howarth

By The Voice | Sun 7th February 2010 - 12:19 pm

A news release from the party reports:

The Liberal Democrats have tabled amendments to the Government’s proposals for a referendum on electoral reform that would:

  • Offer voters a real choice between first-past-the-post and a truly proportional system (Single Transferable Vote), rather than AV
  • Bring forward the date of the referendum to next May
  • Close a loophole allowing the next Government to kill the proposals without an Act of Parliament

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Secretary, David Howarth said:

“Voters deserve a real choice – between the discredited status quo and a system where every vote matters and there are no safe seats.

“The Alternative Vote system is …

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Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged | 2 Comments
NewsHound

Lib Link: James Graham on electoral reform

By NewsHound | Thu 4th February 2010 - 4:21 pm

James Graham gives Comment is Free the benefit of his views on Gordon Brown’s electoral reform fudge:

AV is the perfect electoral system for Gordon Brown. It enables him to look in two directions at once: supporting a system which ensures that fewer votes are wasted while being resolutely non-proportional. Superficially it sounds like a big deal, but in most elections it will probably only change the result in a handful of seats. And, like all Gordon Brown policies, it has a fair chance of blowing up in his face; because of AV’s habit of exaggerating swings, the system is

…

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Alex Foster

Daily View 2×2: 4 February 2010

By Alex Foster | Thu 4th February 2010 - 7:04 am

Good morning, on this misty day which in history saw three awful earthquakes – in Haicheng, Guatemala and Afghanistan.

This day is a birthday to American civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks (pictured) as well as to the American vice-president famously unable to spell “potato”, Dan Quayle.

Deaths on the 4th February include Liberace and American novelist novellist writer Patricia Highsmith, who wrote Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr Ripley, and – according to Wikipedia at least – the first lesbian novel with a happy ending.

Today is also Facebook’s 6th birthday. How many other 6 year-olds earned $300m last year, had new words entered into dictionaries, and caused moral panic?

2 Big Stories

Legg Report published

Later today, Sir Thomas Legg’s report will be published on Parliament’s website. The Guardian – MPs ordered to pay back more than £1m reports:

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Mark Pack

Don Foster on the Digital Economy Bill: carrot, pause and then stick

By Mark Pack | Wed 3rd February 2010 - 9:10 am

Yesterday Don Foster (Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Secretary) kindly gave over some time to talk about his views on the Digital Economy Bill and the line the party is taking. It’s a topic we’ve often covered on The Voice, particularly the question of the balance between carrot and stick in responding to internet piracy. Should the response be making it easier for people to buy legal content and a move to new business models (the carrot) or should it be a crackdown based on the existing copyright rules (the stick)?

Don’s answer was that the carrot should be tried …

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Sara Bedford

Daily View 2×2: 2 February 2010

By Sara Bedford | Tue 2nd February 2010 - 9:38 am

Today is Groundhog Day, but I’ve resisted the temptation to simply give you yesterday’s Daily View again. It’s also the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc, which symbolises the turning point of winter towards spring.

Twenty years ago today President FW de Klerk began to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, announcing that he had lifted the 30-year ban on the African National Congress, the Pan African Congress and the South African Communist Party. De Klerk also committed to release jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela, who was freed nine days later. Commenting on the news, Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “He has taken …

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Stephen Tall

Huhne: AV “small step in right direction” BUT not proportional

By Stephen Tall | Tue 2nd February 2010 - 9:32 am

What is it about Labour? Why are they waiting til the dying days of their last government for X years to propose anything new and radical? Yesterday, LDV posted the news that Labour has, eventually, U-turned on non-doms, and agreed to Lib Dem proposals that they will no longer be able to sit in Parliament.

And then later last night came the news that Labour will put to the Parliamentary vote next week proposals for a referendum to be staged as a step towards replacing the ‘first past the post’ system.

Chris Huhne, the Lib Dems’ shadow home secretary, …

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Stephen Tall

Déjà vu all over again: what the 1974 Liberal Party manifesto said

By Stephen Tall | Fri 29th January 2010 - 9:30 am

This election will make or break Britain. It is already certain that the government that takes office after the election will face the greatest peace-time crisis we have known since the dark days of 1931… Before any government can begin to get to grips with the economic situation, it must regain the confidence and respect of the electorate.

A big tip of LDV’s hat to Rudolf Fara, co-director of Voting Power and Procedures (VPP) at the LSE (via Politics.co.uk) for pointing out the similarity.

Mr Fara, who was speaking ahead of a lecture last night by Vince Cable setting out his …

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Mark Pack

It’s Brown vs Brown on electoral reform

By Mark Pack | Wed 20th January 2010 - 8:28 am

In a weird display of the mutual weakness at the top of the Labour Party, the Prime Minister and Chief Whip are in disagreement over Gordon Brown’s plans to legislate for a referendum on AV (which would be held after the general election).

Earlier this week the Parliamentary Labour Party debated the proposal and ended up divided and without agreement.

Whilst Gordon Brown and, rather surprisingly given his views on the Liberal Democrats, Jack Straw are both in favour, prominent opponents include Chief Whip Nick Brown. He seems to be particularly motivated by fears that under AV he would lose …

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Stephen Tall

First-Past-The-Post: the ‘safe seats’ system that breeds lazy, corrupt MPs

By Stephen Tall | Thu 14th January 2010 - 10:20 am

Calls for the First-Past-The-Post voting system to be abolished in the UK were given a real kick-start last year after it became clear – thanks to the work of Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson – that it was MPs with large majorities who were more likely to be implicated in cheating the expenses system.

It’s obvious if you think about it: if you were given life tenure in a safe seat where the Labour/Tory majorities are weighed not counted, how concerned would you be with the irksome business of being transparent and accountable? To put it bluntly – as …

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NewsHound

LibLink … Vince Cable: Hard hats on, here comes the Rotten Election

By NewsHound | Sun 27th December 2009 - 1:40 pm

Over at the Mail today, Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable anticipates a year of fevered political battle, and issues a call for a reformed political system and a grown-up debate. Here’s an excerpt:

Once the seasonal festivities are out of the way, the public will be on the receiving end of months of sustained political bombardment over the airwaves and through the letterbox until a General Election puts an end to it. As someone who will be firing a lot of the ammunition, I am ready for this battle but I am conscious that the old rules no longer apply.

…

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Philip Young

What the papers say…

By Philip Young | Sat 26th December 2009 - 3:43 pm

Civil  servants are as bad as bankers … The Telegraph trumpets Gladstone’s anniversary … Tories support Labour’s school Sats Tests … Another dodgy Tory donor exposed … Labour split on voting reform … Lords skim expenses cream … BBC to make film on Thorpe tragedy … what Chris Huhne thinks of Prince Charles … Unions sit on money for Labour … look at who says Hauge is Vauge …and the only thing the final polls of the year can agree upon is that Liberal Democrat support is holding up

Now Civil Servants join bankers in ludicrous bonuses – Daily Mail,, 24.12.09

…

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Mark Pack

+++ Labour set to legislate for a referendum on AV to be held after general election

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st December 2009 - 11:05 pm

The news from the Labour Party is that they will legislate before the general election for a referendum on PR – to be held after the next general election.

The referendum would be on AV (the alternative vote versus the status quo).

UPDATE:

The proposal raises two issues: timing of referendum and choice of options within it.

My own preference on timing would have been for Tony Blair to have stuck to his promises, and Labour to have stuck to their manifesto, with a referendum on electoral reforms years ago. But given where we are now, this proposal is the best of the options …

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Posted in News | 26 Comments
Helen Duffett

LibLink … Stephen Tall: Help save Labour with PR? No thanks

By Helen Duffett | Tue 1st December 2009 - 3:09 pm

Compass, the left-leaning pressure group, has launched a campaign for a referendum on proportional representation. Music to the Lib Dems’ ears?

Lib Dem Voice’s own Stephen Tall explains today at Comment is Free why it’s not something we’ll be supporting as a party, this side of the General Election:

Labour has had 12 years in which to renew the democratic fabric of this country. They failed to do anything about it because, quite simply, they didn’t care enough about it. If they care now, it is only because it’s expedient to; and expediency is the worst possible motive for reform.

Stephen argues …

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Lord Roger Roberts

Lord Roberts writes … Our Electoral System – not fit for purpose

By Lord Roger Roberts | Sat 28th November 2009 - 6:45 pm

The need to reform the Electoral System was underlined by a number of us on the Liberal Democrat benches in the House of Lords.The possibility of it being included in the Queen’s Speech was always minimal but we dared to hope..

We are still living in an age with a system that goes back 200 years. We are trying to run a modern democracy on a dinosaur of a system. In 1832, the Great Reform Act just doubled the electorate from half a million to 1 million. In 1867, the electorate was increased to 2.5 million. In 1884, agricultural workers were added and the electoral total went up to 5 million.

In 1918, the great leap forward came when women aged over 30 were given the vote and the total electorate became 21 million. This was further increased to 28 million in 1928 when women and men aged 21 and over could vote. In 1960, 18 year-olds were added and today the total electorate is in the region of 45 million.

We are using a system devised for half a million people for an electorate that is now 45 million. The system goes back to the time when there were only two parties, Whigs and Tories, later Liberals and Conservatives. There were straight fights in every constituency apart from those with unopposed returns.

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Mark Pack

Imagine having a well-paid job for life

By Mark Pack | Thu 5th November 2009 - 9:07 pm

So starts Nick Clegg’s comments in the latest Channel 4 Political Slot film from the party, featuring himself and Sarah Teather talking about changing our political system:

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Posted in Lib Dem TV | Also tagged and | 1 Comment
Stephen Tall

Time for a Citizens’ Convention

By Stephen Tall | Mon 12th October 2009 - 9:20 am

I’m one of some 30 signatories to a letter submitted to the Guardian, and published today, calling on the Prime Minister to take immediate action to reform democracy in the wake of the public collapse in confidence sparked by the MPs’ expenses row. Gordon Brown signalled some half-hearted recognition of the need for change in his conference speech by advocating a referendum to introduce the alternative vote electoral system some time in the next Parliament – it’s a typical Brown demi-measure, falling far, far short of even the minimum required.

no expenses sparedThere’s something rather bizarre at seeing on display the Telegraph’s book of this year’s scandal, No Expenses Spared – it’s the subtitle, The inside story of the scoop which changed the face of British politics. Bizarre for this reason: it’s hard to see how the face of British politics actually has been changed. For sure, some of the faces within British politics will have changed, with many of those MPs who were implicated standing down, voluntarily or under pressure.

But in every other significant respect, British politics is – six months on from flipping, duck island etc – entirely unchanged.

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Geoffrey Payne

Opinion: Forget open primaries, and go for STV instead

By Geoffrey Payne | Sun 4th October 2009 - 10:45 am

During the debate on MPs’ expenses at the Lib Dem conference recently, one of the speakers, Michael Meadowcroft, suggested that instead of having open primaries as a way of restoring trust in the political process, why not use the Single Transferable Vote (STV) instead?

STV has been the preferred voting system of the Liberal party and Liberal Democrats for many decades, and was championed by the greatest liberal of all, John Stuart Mill, in the nineteenth century. This week Gordon Brown announced that Labour, if re-elected, would propose a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) system, in which instead of marking your ballot paper with an X, you write down your preferences by rank, 1, 2, 3, etc …

The problem with AV is that you are still only electing one person per constituency.

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Stephen Tall

12 years to re-state a watered-down pledge. So much for progress. #lab09

By Stephen Tall | Tue 29th September 2009 - 6:25 pm

The Labour Party manifesto 1997:

We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system.

Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour Party conference 2009:

There is now a stronger case than ever that MPs should be elected with the support of more than half their voters – as they would be under the Alternative Voting system. And so I can announce today that in Labour’s next manifesto there will be a commitment for a referendum to be held early

…

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