Our party is proudly committed to the replacement of archaic First Past The Post with Single Transferable Voting, an electoral system which satisfactorily balances proportionality, local representation and voter choice.
However, a major roadblock to the introduction of STV for Westminster and English local elections would be quizzical or apprehensive attitudes amongst a sizable section of the British electorate over its precise technical details, which our party currently fails to address. As a party, we should develop our position on electoral reform by adopting more specific policies regarding technical details for STV.
Firstly, we Liberal Democrats should consider adopting as policy the requirement for a minimum number of candidates to be ranked, as currently mandated in elections for the Australian Senate and the Tasmanian House of Assembly. This would mean that voters would be required to rank at least as many preferences for candidates as there are available seats for their ballots to be deemed valid.
Whilst STV is designed to encourage split-ticket voting and foster political cooperation and moderation, FPTP would likely cast a long shadow for several parliamentary terms after being replaced. Some voters would probably vote solely for candidates from just one party, or even just for one candidate, with FPTP having imprinted upon them either a deeply engrained partisanship or an imperative to vote tactically, both of which are intrinsic components of said system.
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