For decades we were the party that was known for wanting electoral reform. Many people thought it was our only policy.
We went on and on and on and on about it. Then we realised we were getting nowhere with it and started to shut up about it. Then came the AV referendum debacle which shut us up even more on the subject.
I think it is now time that we start talking a lot about our broken electoral system – unashamedly – and join forces to work for reform with UKIP, the Greens, SNP, Plaid plus apolitical organisations and people across the spectrum of society.
Tomorrow the Electoral Reform Society publishes a detailed report which argues that the 2015 general election result was the most disproportionate electoral outcome in British history.
Andrew Rawnsley is on superb form this morning in the Observer and argues the case for reform brilliantly in an article entitled “The real reason David Cameron is sitting on a Commons majority”:
Before we start to forget what happened at the election, we ought to reflect on the most gobsmacking aspect of the result. I do not mean that the Tories won. I mean how they won. Some have attributed their shock majority to the dark arts of Lynton Crosby. Others to the lack of appeal of Ed Miliband. Some opine that the Tory win demonstrates that the English are an essentially conservative people. Others think Labour’s failure is a symptom of a worldwide crisis in social democracy. On they go, the theories. I have barely touched on the many interesting explanations for what happened. And they are all wrong. For sure, they may be among the factors that contributed to what happened on 7 May, but they are all insignificant compared with the main explanation for why David Cameron is at Number 10 enthroned atop a Conservative parliamentary majority.
There is a big, basic and brute reason why we have just heard a Tory Queen’s speech, will soon be listening to a Tory budget and have five years or so of Tory law-making ahead of us. It is so bloody obvious that no one is talking about it – it is the electoral system.
By no normal definition of the word popular were the Conservatives popular at the election. They received 36.9% of the vote. By no normal definition of the word mandate did they get the endorsement of the electorate to fully implement their manifesto. Nearly two-thirds of voters did not put their cross in the Tory box. Factor in the turn-out and the Conservatives secured the backing of less than a quarter of the registered electorate. It is first past the post that alchemises a minority vote share into more than half of the seats in the House of Commons, every seat in the cabinet and the power to pursue an entirely Tory agenda for the next five years.
You can read Andrew Rawnsley’s full article here.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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105 Comments
Good article. I think the key thing if the Lib Dems put electoral reform at the core of future campaigns is that sufficient effort goes into explaining what exactly we propose, and what the effect of it would be. From canvassing/talking to people generally, a lot of people don’t know what proportional representation/AV/all the other forms of voting methods actually are nor can they usually appreciate the difference in outcome they would provide. All completely understandable, but maybe those of us very interested in politics are guilty of forgetting to make sure everyone is following our message in a comprehensible way.
I agree 100% and we should campaign for STV in local elections as a first step, as they have in Scotland. And accept that STV will disadvantage us in the few remaining places where we still have control of councils, but puts real power in the hands of the voters. To really make a difference you do need more than 3 councillors per seat, so that people start choosing between the candidates of their own favoured party
And the Labour Party have connived with this for the last century despite promising otherwise.
The Green, UKIP and SNP injustices should help. Previously it was just us.
Yes to this. Lib Dems have been terrible at convincing working class voters of the need for electoral reform, the SNP and UKIP will probably have better luck with these demographics after the election result. We need to strike whilst people are still miffed that their vote went nowhere.
We are already talking about it, see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tim-farron-to-propose-massive-overhaul-of-uk-electoral-system-10286931.html
The problem is that as we saw in 2011, roughly 67% of voters, whether shy to admit it or not, are quite OK with the status quo. As on many other Liberal issues, Labour will make encouraging noises in opposition, but when put in a position to make the hard choice will turn away.
I am not sure that even if we do ‘pipe up’ that we will be heard. Of course, this is not a reason to give up and I think there is a virtue in deciding on a preferred system and sticking with it. At least AV can be pushed out of the discussion now, however the reality is that there will be no change to the voting system, nor changes to the Lords with this government.
I do believe that in the immediate term Liberal Democrats will do well to concentrate on local government, arguing against the centralisation pursued by Labour and Conservatives. Part of this, in agreement with Andrew, we can argue the virtues of STV for a healthy, accountable, local government . A suggestion could be to allow the adoption of STV by local referendums.
@Martin
“The problem is that as we saw in 2011, roughly 67% of voters, whether shy to admit it or not, are quite OK with the status quo.”
You can’t draw that conclusion from the referendum result, since all the referendum actually offered was two variants of FPTP.
ChrisB 31st May ’15 – 2:21pm
“…Lib Dems have been terrible at convincing working class voters of the need for electoral reform…”
In reality working class voters have voted in tV elections for generations and not just in Northern Ireland.
STV elections have been used in some Trade Union elections, Church of England elections, etc and these have not been coded to working class voters.
I used to vote every year in the RACS elections.
It is not the working class that needs to educated in this area it is stuck-up, middle class pundits at the BBC who only seem to be able to count election votes beyond ten by removng their shoes and socks.
I agree that we should start with local government. The multi-member wards which already exist in many authorities would make it much easier. We should publicise cases where the current system works in our favour such as Sutton so that we want fairness, not just more seats.
Stuart:
I took 67% from the election result as it happens! Any look at how the 2011 campaign unfolded will show that criticism of AV treated as if it were Proportional Representation, so conclusions can be drawn from the campaign and its result. A few cyber oddballs and cranks did claim they would vote NO because AV is not PR, though in most cases a look at other stuff they produced, it looked more likely that they were clutching at a flimsy justification for retaining the status quo: perhaps more dishonest than cranky..
13,013,123 voted “No” to the Alternative Vote, in 2011.
You do not help the case for STV (which has always been Liberal Democrat policy) be repeating a myth that it was rejected in a referendum. It was not.
Nor was FPTP enthusiastically supported by anything like a majority of UK voters in a referendum, that was not the question put in the referendum but if there had been overwhelming enthusiasm for the status quo one might have expected rather more than a quarter of voters rejecting any change.
What was rejected was the system that even Nick Clegg once described as “a miserable little compromise”.
The 2011 AV referendum ended up as one on the popularity of Nick Clegg. Clearly proper PR should have been an absolute coalition red line; no referendum, just change the rules.
John:
“You do not help the case for STV (which has always been Liberal Democrat policy) be repeating a myth that it was rejected in a referendum. It was not.”
Sorry, John. Who is this remark addressed to?
I referred to the “AV referendum debacle” which, although AV has never been party policy, has rather led to people saying to us “you’ve had your chance” which, I think, may have discouraged us from speaking out on voting reform.
Wow. Not much self awareness in the LibDem camp, is there?
The 2011 Yes to AV campaign was represented as a means of ensuring a perpetual Progressive government to serve a “progressive majority”. The campaign was run by Guardian readers for Guardian readers. It steadfastly excluded any non-progressive voices and made very clear that the purpose of electoral reform is to disenfranchise all of the millions of (even slightly) right-leaning voters. It was sold as a way to replace the little choice remaining in British democracy with an endless Social Democratic shamocracy.
Now look at the 2015 election result.
The Liberal Democrats poisoned the well of electoral reform (don’t even get me started on what you did with Recall)! Any reforms achived in the future will be despite you, not because of you.
Can I say I told you so? I’ve said a number of times on the LDV forum that the Lib Dems should put electoral reform top of the agenda and also accompany that with a full proposal for a model federal constituion. It’s a package as a whole and shows that we have vision. The SNP and UKIP both have visions and we currently have pretty much zilch to make us stand out. It’s taken everyone rather a long time to wake up to what ChrisB said in a comment above: “Lib Dems have been terrible at convincing working class voters of the need for electoral reform, the SNP and UKIP will probably have better luck with these demographics after the election result. We need to strike whilst people are still miffed that their vote went nowhere.”
Let’s get on with it.
I don’t think that many people are keen on a change of system, they are comfortable with what they know. Also if we take the last GE as an example, would it really make much difference to the outcome? Cameron would almost certainly been supported by UKIP and the Irish Unionists – giving him more than 50% of the vote – and we may well have had a more extreme government than we have now. You had a chance of changing the system and failed miserably. I know it would give the LibDems more seats, but I think most people are comfortable with the tried and tested method we have now.
Lets be blunt. Banging on about electoral will have no effect on our ability to recover. At present we have the fight of your lives to remain in the political arena. It will have no meaning to peoples daily lives and if we are to get back in any way in the large cities, such as Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Nottingham, Birmingham, Rohdale etc etc where we have all but destroyed, we need to resonate with what is happening to individuals, rich and poor alike. WE NEED TO GET BACK TO BASICS AND QUICKLY.
Likewise the Greens are our enemy at the moment, they can easily replace us over the next 2 years, unless we are careful.
We need a new approach, fresh policies , fresh ideas and excellent communication skills, not listening to those who do not necessarily accept the party establishment approach.. An apology from HQ and our leaders for failing to change over the past 4 years despite the appalling losses of councillors, MEP’sand MP’s and income might also be helpful.
Paul Walter
Apologies – I should have made it clear that I was responding to this comment –
Martin 31st May ’15 – 2:27pm
“…….The problem is that as we saw in 2011, roughly 67% of voters, whether shy to admit it or not, are quite OK with the status quo. ”
Hence my response —
“…You do not help the case for STV (which has always been Liberal Democrat policy) be repeating a myth that it was rejected in a referendum. It was not.
Nor was FPTP enthusiastically supported by anything like a majority of UK voters in a referendum, that was not the question put in the referendum but if there had been overwhelming enthusiasm for the status quo one might have expected rather more than a quarter of voters rejecting any change.”
@John Tilley “It is not the working class that needs to educated in this area it is stuck-up, middle class pundits at the BBC who only seem to be able to count election votes beyond ten by removng their shoes and socks.”
What is your evidence for this assertion?
Theakes
The Greens may be our enemies at the moment, or maybe not our very best friends but the same is true of the Conservatives, Labour, the SNP, UKIP, PC and sundry others.
In the 2015 General Election we tried to fight on five fronts at the same time and as a result we lost significant numbers of seats to Conservatives, Labour and SNP.
In many localities it will make sense to co-operate with some of our enemies to beat the common enemy.
When it comes to national campaigns such as electoral reform, save the HRA etc it makes perfect sense to line up alongside people who agree with us.
We have spent the last five years lining up alongside Conservatives who disagree with us 90% of the time. Conservatives profoundly disagree with much that we stand for and with our fundamental beliefs.
In comparison, working with The Greens on electoral reform would be easy.
In the 2020 manifestos of as many parties as possible should be a broadly consistent proposal for electoral reform, and then the Lib Dems at least must not go into coalition again without the subsequent general election being fought on PR.
We do not need to talk about PR the whole time, we just need to make it the red line for our involvement in any coalition. And for the next 5 years develop lots of new exciting policies so that the British people like what they hear from us.
Malc, why do you default to a “people are probably happy so let’s not worry about this” stance when it’s clear that this is a good time to motivate people for change, especially seeing how 2015 was demonstrably the most unrepresentative result of any UK election?
Theakes: back to basics: what could be more basic than a complete overhaul of the constitution as a means to an end, a means for people to elect better politicians, a means to elect more locally-focused parties in federal UK (just as Scotland does now) and to allow different regions within England to show each other how they can improve our lot through the comparison and competition of different ideas. And what is more basic to the principles of Liberalism and Social Democracy than fairier government and better representation?
What fresh policies can there be that don’t show us to be nothing more than Tory-lite or Labour-lite, as we managed to do so well at this May?
I vote LibDem, when I do, because they support Electoral Reform (and will never vote Labour or Tory because they oppose it). This does mean I can vote Green (although not, for other reasons, UKIP).
Sadly my view, although not unshared, is in a minority. Sadly also for some reason AV was represented as prorportion represention (unbelieveably to me) , and PR is in itself unpopular as a concept for some people. Oh well.
Michael Kilpatrick – ‘what could be more basic than a complete overhaul of the constitution as a means to an end, a means for people to elect better politicians, a means to elect more locally-focused parties in federal UK (just as Scotland does now) and to allow different regions within England to show each other how they can improve our lot through the comparison and competition of different ideas. And what is more basic to the principles of Liberalism and Social Democracy than fairier government and better representation?’
I would be extremely careful with this. Firstly it’s not at all clear to me that, ‘locally-focussed,’ parties are really all they are cracked up to be. But more than that however I really don’t think you can make blithe assumptions that people elected by PR will somehow be better than those elected by (say) FPTP. I see no reason why that will NECESSARIILY be true. There is no reason to believe that PR will always lead to, ‘restrained,’ coalition. I see no reason to assume that, ‘different, ‘ parties in coalition/competition would be the outcome of STV. The drone voter was one of the stronger arguments against AV and it holds for most PR systems. Those in favour of PR do have a habit of really over-selling and over-promising and it doesn’t help the argument.
The argument for PR (STV) runs something like this. At present we have a system that doesn’t give second-prizes. Whilst some people might be comfortable with this, not unreasonably, it is leaving large numbers of people with no real skin in the game. STV may or may not do certain things, but what it does do is confront all voters with a meaningful ballot. There are no guarantees that the result would be effective politics and government, after all at local level FPTP has produced effective and ineffective coalitions. But STV would at least give voters in particular areas more than a protest pot-shot.
STV/PR is what it is – a system of voting. It is not an outcome or an end in itself, and nor should it be. People got bored about hearing about PR because there was a tendency to seriously oversell. It is what it is and it should be sold as such.
David Blake – ‘The multi-member wards which already exist in many authorities would make it much easier.’ True, but then I suspect that PR probably wouldn’t make much difference in those areas. I may be wrong on that.
One thing in favour of STV is that voters can tell the truth.
AMEN.
Paul, are you hacking my computer? I started and then gave up writing an article on these lines about a week ago.
I am not comfortable in a party that espouses simply ‘liberalism’ (whichever of its many forms you take as your personal cup of tea) without marrying that with democractic reform. This is why I am highly sceptical about the various rhetorical nods towards changing the party name which came as responses to the election. We need to not forget that we are Democrats as well as Liberals.
As to STV, I wouldn’t die in the ditch for ‘pure’ STV and only that, but would want every electoral process for every elected chamber we have to have a significant STV element. It is one of the best systems around, although it does represent a cultural shift from our current system of 1 MP per constituency.
The 2011 referendum should serve as a textbook example of how the establishment fights its corner, as a warning to those who wish to take them on, and as a lesson on the vital necessity of anticipating and being prepared to counter what will inevitably be a well-prepared strategy and effective close-term tactics.
It started with them choosing the battlefield — the Conservatives insisted that the referendum must be a straight choice between FPTP and its non-proportional cousin, AV. This immediately threw those on the reforming side into confusion and internal debate and hence onto the back foot, having to make a positive case for a less-than-ideal system that they were in no way united behind.
Consequently, “Yes” then ran a pretty pathetic campaign. They utterly failed to clearly and repeatedly state what ought to be an irrefutable case: that FPTP is broken; long past its sell-by date, and regularly fails to deliver the “strong government” (what’s that anyway?) that its advocates claim is its virtue. This argument alone should have led to an inevitable rejection of FPTP at the referendum.
The “No” campaign, by and large comprising the Tory party and its trusty backers, then skilfully used its massive financial resources to sow confusion, misinformation and doubt in the minds of the electorate, and in doing so they were aided by the “Yes” campaign’s repeatedly shying away from exposing and calling out their misinformation and downright lies.
In the end, fear won, just as it would once more in 2015.
Would-be reformers must comprehend that the hedge funds, bankers, corporations, and media barons who bankroll the Tories don’t merely do so out of belief, conviction or a passion for the Conservative cause. No: these are people with a profound understanding of power and money, because that’s what they are all about. They each contribute their tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds, and their millions, because to do so is quite simply worth it for them. It’s a sound investment. To do anything else would be a dereliction of their duty to their wealth.
Mark Scott – The AV referendum was quite simply the public being smart enough not to buy a bad product. No more no less, and certainly not fear. The public aren’t dumb.
I’m not sure that I understand your last paragraph – are you suggesting that a change in the electoral system would reduce the influence of money in our politics? If so I can’t see any basis for such a conclusion.
STV/PR should not be oversold. It’s a better system for turning votes into results than what we have now – no more and no less.
Unfortunately, the Lib Dems aren’t in a position to demand electoral reform any more, neither are UKIP. And I don’t expect the SNP will do it for them. The SNP don’t really care about Westminster that much and the voting system there means they get almost every Scottish seat anyway – I really can’t see the SNP fighting UKIP and the Lib Dem’s battles for them.
The Lib Dems had their chance to get electoral reform during the hung parliament negotiations and they settled for an AV referendum. I believe AV was an acceptable compromise to the Lib Dems at that time not because they thought it would deliver a parliament that reflected how people voted, but because they believed that Tory and Labour voters would mostly put them 2nd and it would benefit them, but anyway the Conservative ran rings around them on that one.
If the Conservatives weren’t willing to give PR under any circumstances then the Lib Dems should have considered either saying no to a coalition at all or demanded something else like one of their MPs gets to be home secretary or something else. But an AV referendum? AV didn’t strike me as an improvement for the country, just a possible improvement for the Lib Dems.
If you think of an election as merely picking the best independently minded person to represent your local area in parliament then FPTP makes a lot of sense because it a elects the candidate that has more support than anyone else. And if you think of General Elections that way AV probably makes even more sense, because it also ensure that the candidate isn’t to decisive and is also acceptable to the majority of people in the area.
But if you think of an election as the country as a whole picking a parliament and a government then FPTP doesn’t make a lot of sense because the results don’t reflect how the country votes, and AV makes even less sense because it is even less proportional than FPTP.
That is why I voted against AV, because it is less proportional than FPTP and it seemed a little self serving of the Lib Dems to ask for it. If the Tories wouldn’t have allowed a vote on PR then I think the Lib Dems should have asked for another price for the coalition (such as one of their MPs as Home Secretary) because AV is not an improvement if your goal is to get a parliament that reflects how people voted.
Anyway, it’s all academic now because the Lib Dems are not longer in a position to do anything to get PR, a campaign isn’t likely to be successful, changing the system that the UK uses to elect it’s MPs strikes me as the sort of thing you can only do if you have a lot of MPs. I really don’t think letter writing, petitions and demonstrations are going to cut it for this one I’m afraid. I really think it’s going to take more than that.
@SmokedKipper “Wow. Not much self awareness in the LibDem camp, is there?” – Now ain’t that the truth.
@SmokedKipper “The 2011 Yes to AV campaign was represented as a means of ensuring a perpetual Progressive government to serve a “progressive majority”. – That’s what they believed would happen, but I’m not sure it would have had AV passed. I think if AV had passed the Tories would have a bigger majority than they have now, the Lib Dems would have had less than 8 seats and the Greens would have had zero seats. Like I said AV struck me as rather self serving based on the belief that it would benefit the Lib Dems – but as time has shown a lot of their beliefs have turned out to be wrong.
@theakes “Likewise the Greens are our enemy at the moment, they can easily replace us over the next 2 years, unless we are careful.” You are of course right, but I don’t think the party believes that this is possible, yet. What do you think the Lib Dems percentage of the national vote would be if they didn’t recover in the next 5 years and they get in 2020 the same percentage of the vote they got in 2015 minus the incumbency votes from the 49 lost consistencies?
In next years London elections the Lib Dems could easily finish 5th behind the Greens, 6th behind CISTA is actually a possibility too but unlikely I think. But you never know. 5th behind the Greens is also a possibility in Holyrood too, especially if the Carmichael thing costs them a seat in Orkney.
We must still campaign for PR (STV), it annoys me that now that UKIP and the Greens are now going on about it. However I do not think that their will be any changes in the near future.
Jackie Paper: I suppose what I mean by my last paragraph is that since electoral reform is opposed by powerful vested interests with deep pockets, reform of campaign finance is at least as necessary as reform of the voting system, and may even be a prerequisite.
Michael Kilpatrick:
“Can I say I told you so? ”
Well, everyone else is at the moment so please fill your boots! 😉
I think that the key to a campaign for PR is to have a clear case that the electorate can relate to. Yes I know this sounds like stating the bleeding obvious, but the AV campaign was anything but clear to many. I heard it described by one senior Labour Assembly Member who was broadly for it as having been “run like an anti politician campaign”.
Any ideas on how to make the case?
…and head off in the pass the arguments made for FPTP.
Excellent post by Little Jackie Paper 31st May ’15 – 6:27pm
AWillis – one of the problems with the AV campaign was that it assumed that, ‘change,’ was inherently good to the point of being self-evident. It was far from clear to me exactly what some of the AV campaign thought AV would improve, still less how it would do so. As I said earlier, put simply the public didn’t buy a bad product, that was being badly sold.
In terms of selling PR/STV I think it is critical to sell the message that change to the voting system is NOT about the production of any result, it is NOT about attempting to create (or not) coalition, it is NOT about stimulating new parties and it is NOT a guarantee of any different/better MPs. It should be stressed that there is no reason at all why STV can not produce a single majority if that is what voters choose. A voting system is just that – a mechanism for effectively translating votes to results. It can not and should not aim to produce any particular change or outcome. Too often this basic message has been lost.
What STV does is what FPTP all too often does not which is present voters with a meaningful ballot, precisely what a voting system should do. That’s why we need reform. At the moment concentrations of support, whilst no bad thing, leave considerable numbers with no meaningful ballot. An STV system would give everyone a meaningful ballot wherever they are – what they do with it should not matter one jot to a YES to STV campaign. If it leads to greater representation for causes that the LDP membership might not like then so be it. Selling STV should be wholly about the process, NOT the outcome.
I would also like to see term limits for all MPs, Lords and Councillors.
Absolutely, well put.
So the question to put to people could be “Do you want your vote to count/make a difference? If so say yes to STV.”
Really important as you say to make it clear that it’s not about a desired result – but about fairness.
There was a good piece on R5Live this morning about PR. The interview was with the head of the Electoral Reform Society so it was obvious what her view was likely to be. However she pointed out that SNP got 95% of the seats in Scotland with about 50% of the vote (her figures so I assume they are right). Add to that the fact that UKIP got only one seat in Westminster despite having polled a hefty proportion of the votes cast. It is clear that, despite occasional protestations to the contrary, the Conservatives and Labour are always going to go for FPTP but things are changing with the electorate. A great many of them are now sympathetic to smaller parties who are getting a raw deal at the moment. This really is the time to push for PR but we do need to be clear exactly which form we want and why.
Do you think Labour, who may not get a majority ever again, will now back the idea?
1. The selling message on PR is not just that it makes the system fairer (sounds dull), but that it makes everybody’s vote count.
2. We need to build a united front across all the opposition parties and stop talking about any of them as “the enemy”. How can anyone believe that coalition politics can work when even those who support PR talk in such antagonistic terms.
3. That united front has to convince the new Labour leader that the route to them winning the next election is for Labour to adopt PR.
4. PR is just part of a package of constitutional reform to include House of Lords and devolution – but all the reforms need to be based on making our political system engaging, fair and efficient.
Mr Wallace
But if you think of an election as the country as a whole picking a parliament and a government then FPTP doesn’t make a lot of sense because the results don’t reflect how the country votes, and AV makes even less sense because it is even less proportional than FPTP.
No. Under some circumstances it could be less proportional than FPTP, but what you write here suggests it always is, which is just not the case. It would be less proportional if there is a large centre party which gets most people’s second preferences, but also enough first preferences to be there to pick up the second preferences. In the UK with a third party (i.e. us) which gets (or could get in the past before people like you helped destroy it) a lot of second preference votes and enough first preference votes to be able to benefit from the second preference votes, it would lead to a slightly more proportional result.
What AV cannot do is benefit a party which gets a lot of second preference votes but few first preference votes, because that party’s candidates will always be eliminated before they get the chance to benefit from transfers. So, attacks on AV which we saw in the referendum which said that it would result in candidates winning who no-one really wanted as a first choice were wrong.
Also, claims that AV would mean third or fourth placed candidates (under FPTP) would often win, which were a common part of the ‘No’ campaign, were wrong. A fourth placed candidate could only win if there were enough votes for fifth and sixth and so-on placed candidates to transfer to the fourth placed candidate when they are eliminated, so the fourth placed candidate is no longer fourth placed by the time there are four candidates left and the bottom one then is eliminated. The fourth placed candidate would need to have become third placed due to the transfers, and when the former third-placed candidate is eliminated, most of that candidate’s transfers go to the former fourth-placed candidate, enough to push that former fourth-placed candidate above the second-placed candidate. Then for the former fourth-placed candidate to win, most of the former second-placed candidate’s votes would also need to transfer that way. Well, these are pretty unusual circumstances, which would arise only if the first four candidates were very close in terms of first preference votes so the actual order is not that relevant, or there really was a huge amount of latent support for that fourth placed candidate. Or, to put it another way, the fourth-placed candidate would not have been fourth placed had those other candidates not stood, and they may not have stood under FPTP anyway due to this vote-splitting situation.
Now, the problem here is that this sort of argument needs a little bit of mathematical reasoning, and we live in a country where being poor at maths is considered something to boast about. So, the “No” campaign was able to get away with claims that were outrageously wrong, yet most prominent commentators were unable to pick that up because almost all of them come from arts backgrounds and have no mathematical sense to be able to see why they are wrong. We’ve seen similar in USA presidential elections, where having some intelligence seems to be a disadvantage, and being not very intelligent, or pretending not to be, wins votes because people identify with that.
Little Jackie Paper
It was far from clear to me exactly what some of the AV campaign thought AV would improve, still less how it would do so. As I said earlier, put simply the public didn’t buy a bad product, that was being badly sold.
The advantage of AV is that it takes away the need to try and second guess who is going to come ahead and so vote for that person rather than someone else to avoid “splitting the vote”. It means you can vote for who you really like, safe in the knowledge that if it turns out that person doesn’t have much support your vote can transfer to someone else who you prefer out of the more popular candidates. I think taking away that sort of “got to vote for X to avoid splitting the vote and letting in Y” is sufficient argument for having AV even though it doesn’t resolve the proportionality issue.
Also, if people are worried about “splitting the vote”, they will mostly take the safety-first approach of voting for a candidate from the established political parties rather than someone from a new party or an independent challenger whose real support is much less certain. By breaking this, AV makes it easier for challengers to propose an alternative and at least see if it has some support without the “don’t split the vote” stopping people from supporting them. I think this would have been a real winning argument had it been properly put – which it wasn’t.
Martin
The problem is that as we saw in 2011, roughly 67% of voters, whether shy to admit it or not, are quite OK with the status quo. As on many other Liberal issues, Labour will make encouraging noises in opposition, but when put in a position to make the hard choice will turn away.
Well, sure, which is why we should have kept banging the line that in effect it is Labour who are “propping up the Tories” by supporting an electoral system which does just that. Why is it that this point was not made in the AV referendum? Why is it that when Labour big-wigs say “We should have an electoral system which gives the biggest party many more seats than their share of the vote, so giving us a one-party government”, that’s considered fine, when it’s actually even more extreme than the Liberal Democrats agreeing to a modified Conservative government? That is, those who said “I’m voting No because I don’t like the Coalition” were in effect saying what they would have preferred to see was a majority Conservative government. But if that’s what they think should have been in place, shouldn’t they have been applauding the Liberal Democrats for giving it to them, if that’s what they believed they were doing?
The illogicality of this line astounded me, so why were so many Labour supporters allowed to get away with pushing it? Why did the “Yes” campaign not point out how ridiculous it was?
Now, I think the issue with electoral reform is that most people don’t understand it, and are encouraged that way by innumerate commentators who lack the ability to think through it themselves, but also by vested interests who want to push the line “Oh, that’s too complicated, don’t even think about it, just reject it”.
I don’t think people rejected it in 2011 knowing exactly what they were doing. Most just didn’t bother at all, encouraged not to do so by those vested interests, and others were encouraged to vote “No” by the “nah nah nah nah nah”s as a way of doing what the leaders of the “nah nah nah nah nah”s want: destroying multi-party politics in order that they can retain a perpetual monopoly in being the opposition to perpetual Tory governments.
The reason I keep pointing out what people did in 2011 by voting “No” i.e. voting to support the Coalition by voting in favour of the distortional representation system that gave it to us is to encourage people to THINK and not just accept what the vested interests tell them when they vote. I do really feel that if those “No” voters can be got to see that many voted for the opposite of what they thought they were voting for, it would result in the change in mentality we need in this country to get out of the political mess we are in.
At the time of the referendum I put together a few amusing scenarios which I think could have been used to explain AV and get people to see what it means. One of them involved two twins who everyone liked and were good people, but had the one problem that neither would ever step down to the other, so when they both stood as candidates for MP, the vote was split and someone people didm’t like won. Another about a once popular and respected person who was a long-term MP, who had become very lazy and complacent, but no-one dared stand against him as an independent for fear of splitting the vote. Another a story about someone coming along at the last minute to be a candidate, but they tripped up, missed the deadline, and so the vote wasn’t split and so on. None of them involved any mention of any actual political party.
I think with a bit more imagination and skill with putting across abstract ideas in a way that grabs people’s attention, it could have been done. The “Yes” campaign was just so incompetent. But that was like the people running the LibDems and their national image throughout 2010-2015. If there was a way to get things wrong and to lose support, you could be sure they’d do it.
The reason to change the voting system is simply to make it fair for the individual voter – fairness that each individual voter has a straightforward vote that will make a difference in the way the voter intends.
This applies both to the party the individual votes for, and the election of the local MP.
It is not about producing a better government, more variety in the House of Commons, consensual politics etc etc
Lib Dems should think again about the electoral system. STV is not a proportional system, it is not good enough to say ‘it usually is’, or is ‘more proportional’. The degree of proportionality depends on district size, the number of competing parties, and how the votes are distributed across the UK.
Most of all, it depends on how the votes are cast. The electoral system we back should be able to cope with voting patterns we can’t foresee.
In the last election it would have not produced a very proportional result for example with the SNP still being over-represented, and the Greens (as well as UKIP and Lib Dems) being under-represented.
If we change our voting system (which we should) we should choose a proportional, not a preferential, system.
@JohnTilley
>It is not the working class that needs to educated in this area it is stuck-up,
>middle class pundits at the BBC who only seem to be able to count election
>votes beyond ten by removng their shoes and socks.
You misread what I said, which was essentially that UKIP and the SNP would have better luck convincing that demographic than the Lib Dems did in the referendum. Are you saying the Lib Dems are performing better with the working classes in elections than UKIP or the SNP? Otherwise, you’re misrepresenting my point.
The biggest correlation in the AV referendum stats was by “political knowledge”; the more politically educated, the more likely a person would vote for AV :
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/research/microsites/epop/papers/Whiteley,_Clarke,_Sanders,_and_Stewart_-_Britain_Says_NO.pdf
Chris B
But according to that Exeter uni report, even those with the most political knowledge (however that was defined) were more likely to vote for FPTP than AV!
Matthew Huntbach 1st Jun ’15 – 11:17am
“…most people don’t understand it, and are encouraged that way by innumerate commentators who lack the ability to think through it themselves, but also by vested interests who want to push the line “Oh, that’s too complicated, don’t even think about it, just reject it.”
Yes exactly right, Matthew.
I would be a rich man if I had been given a fiver every time during the last 40 years that a Dimbleby (or equivalent) had said something like “it is one of those PR systems which are terribly difficult to understand … …”
Some of the older BBC regulars on election programmes do not even understand much about the basics of elections. One of my favourite pieces of BBC election coverage is a Dimbleby talking over the result being announced when Geraint Howells was first elected.
Dimbleby is saying something along the lines of —
“We don’t really know what is happening here – – – they seem to be making the announcement in another language – – – Why are they doing that, David Butler? – – – Oh because it is in Wales – – – so, what language are they speaking? … …”
ChrisB
I was making the point that working class voters are no less likely to understand STV elections than middle-class voters or the so-called experts in TV studios.
That is why I said —
“….In reality working class voters have voted in STV elections for generations and not just in Northern Ireland.
STV elections have been used in some Trade Union elections, Church of England elections, etc and these have not been a problem to working class voters.”
Apologies for my typos in the original version which probably obscured what I was saying.
The words horse dead and flogging come to mind. Yes we all believe in democratic reform and let’s back it whenever we get the chance but boring people rigid is the nice way to put it, People think we want reform so we will get into power. For goodness sake let’s leave it alone for a while and campaign about things that other people might feel passionate about not just Lib Dem stalwarts. There is so much wrong in our society that directly affects peoples’ lives like housing in all it’s forms, low wages, benefit cuts and the HRA and we have limited resources now. Isn’t it time we put social justice first and then when we have proved ourselves again, then might be the opportunity to promote PR.
@Peter Galton. Why are you annoyed that ukip and the greens want pr? In 2010 the lib dems had their best chance ins life time of being able to get electorial reform and they choose to accept AV – a system that would have in all likelyhood harmed ukip and the greens even more that FPTP. It’s no wonder they want proper PR now.
I suspect that the only reason the lib dems wanted AV was because they mistakenly believed it would benefit them, not because it would be fairer, and by fairer I mean produce a parliament where all political views (like those of ukip and the greens) get some representation. I think the lib dems wrongly thought that AV could stich up the voting system in away that would ensure they were always in government, but the voters are far smarter than to allow that!
As someone said, people weren’t dumb enough to buy a bad product, even if the existing product they are using is also crap. If the referendum were about addicting 20% of additional members making it the same system as in the scottish and welsh assemblies then I think the public could have bought that.
“People think we want reform so we will get into power.”
I’m afraid Sue S is right — even though the “people” she cites are largely wrong. (For the doubters — I’ve known many people who have first joined this party specifically because it supports voting reform, not the other way around.) But most people, I fear, accept as gospel a remark I heard from Ken Clarke at a 2010 hustings: “Most parties tend to support whichever electoral system happens to favour themselves.”
Perhaps the blatant injustice of the result for UKIP and Green supporters will help to fuel public interest (ironically, it would probably have helped if Lib Dem wind-whistlers had been right and we’d got 30 MPs with 10% of the vote, making us far more influential than UKIP with fewer votes rather than equally irrelevant). But I doubt it: two-thirds of us still vote Labour or Tory and probably see that as the only really important question; and the UKIP voters are getting their referendum even without winning parliamentary seats, so they may not be as bothered as we Lib-types have traditionally been.
No, Sue S.
We should stick to our convictions. If the party just blows with the wind, it’s not a political party. If people don’t hear it from us they will assume we are blowing with the wind.
We need to stick to our political philosophy, but we should be wary of being too precise about policy solutions.
In this case, we should rethink our support for STV.
Mr Wallace
As has, I think, been pointed out to you several times: Lib Dem policy is and has always been for STV. AV was a compromise, taken to be the best that could be extorted out of the Tories in 2010 and badly mishandled. Your repeated claim that it was the preferred policy of this party on the basis that it would “stitch up” the system in our favour doesn’t make sense (because it would never have worked that way) and completely ignores the political circumstances out of which it arose, and the very long history of the party’s support for proportional systems and in particular STV.
Lib Dem policy support for STV has to change. STV is not a proportional system.
If we change our voting system (which we should) we should choose a proportional system so that it is a fair system for all parties, even in circumstances we don’t expect.
If the 2015 election had been held using STV, Party A with 4.7% of the vote would have 34 MPs while party B with 7.9% of the vote would get 29 MPs. Party C would get 3 MPs with 3.8% of the vote.
This is not good enough.
The illogicality of this line astounded me, so why were so many Labour supporters allowed to get away with pushing it? Why did the “Yes” campaign not point out how ridiculous it was?
Sadly Americanisation of our society has stunted our sense of irony. Perhaps this is why Nick Clegg wanted to give Labour ‘a brain’ so that its adherents might better understand these things.
When people on these pages apparently fail to be able to understand AV, I do fear for the prospects of explaining STV or PR.
In practice AV, though not PR is more proportionate. It is simply the equivalent of the French two rounds of voting but carried out in one vote; its advantage is that in the final round the winner can claim some kind of support from over 50%. STV, similarly is not actually PR, but is more proportionate again.
Whatever system is advocated, there will be opponents who will protest that the ‘wrong’ system has been chosen and seek to undermine change with specious argument. Others will profess to not understand a voting system that with which those in other countries have absolutely no trouble, dismissing explanations as too complicated; when a simplified version is offered, it will be rejected as a fraudulently simplistic. We do know this, because this is what happened.
AV is the equivalent, not of the French two round system, but of an exhaustive ballot with as many rounds as it takes to get a majority of the voters.
If the LibDems switch from STV to a party list system, they will lose my vote.
I notice that Ireland understands STV, while England, we are told, fails to understand AV.
Guys, all of you, I think Sue S has just given some excellent advise. If the party want to do well I strongly suggest they take that advice.
The chance for electorial reform is gone. You had the chance in 2010 and blew it. It won’t happen until you get the chance to get into office again, if you ever get that chance again. In the mean time going on about how unfair the election was after the voters delivered their judgement on the lib dems will only look self serving and turn the voters off. But by all means do that if you want too, after the coalition, tuition fees and the bedroom tax I could care less.
Fiona White said: “This really is the time to push for PR but we do need to be clear exactly which form we want and why.”
Sorry to pick on one quotation but – I think precisely the opposite applies.
The truth is: (a) ALL electoral systems have serious faults, (b) but the results which FPTP produced in 2015 are so crazy that the public is entitled to demand a change. We should first establish that a change is mandatory. Then we should sort out what the change should actually be. That is the only way we can defeat the Tories at their little game.
The Tories, who gain from FPTP, will spend millions on rubbishing any alternative. One of their trump cards is that all alternatives do have faults. In 2011, the Tories told us that AV was a miserable little compromise invented to please Nick Clegg, and that it was far inferior to proper PR, which sadly wasn’t being offered as a choice. If in 2018 the electorate were offered a referendum on STV, the Tories would tell us the STV was a load of academic nonsense dreamed up by the likes of Nick Clegg, and that it was far inferior to a sensible arrangement like AV, which sadly wasn’t being offered as a choice.
We need to stop them gaming this. Here is how.
We demand that FPTP is scrapped. We demand an Electoral Convention, chaired by judge, led by academics, participated by all comers. The EC should have the job of analysing all proposed systems, reporting strengths and weaknesses, producing a long list, consulting, and then producing a short list of at least two systems. The public should then vote in a referendum as to which of the systems on offer it will choose.
Whatever they choose, the system will be reformed. And if people prefer e.g. a list system over STV – well, that’s real democracy for you!
There is a certain immobilism which leads people to oppose change, but I don’t think the 2011 result was a conclusive rejection of electoral reform. Certainly 2/3 of the electorate are not against it. The 2011 vote was a rejection of politicians, the political establishment and the coalition by different people with different reasons. The system offered was flawed and there had been little to prepare people for it. What can happen now is a broad-based movement for change which does not appear to be dominated by any one party.
As for the present system being tried and tested – yes, indeed, tried, tested and failed. Apart from its gross unfairness, look at how it concentrates about 80% of the campaigning into about 20% of the seats, so that most people have one or two leaflets from each party and that’s it, no personal contact, while a voter in a key marginal may get about fifty leaflets, ten phone calls and three personal visits – which turns many people off.
And if the system’s so good, tell me – have German or Swedish governments really been so much worse than ours over the last fifty years?
Stephen Johnson
“If the 2015 election had been held using STV, Party A with 4.7% of the vote would have 34 MPs while party B with 7.9% of the vote would get 29 MPs. Party C would get 3 MPs with 3.8% of the vote.”
What are you basing that claim on? It is at best highly speculative, as there was no preferential voting in the election that was actually held and the precise result would have depended on vote transfers, and also on the size and distribution of constituencies.
@malcolm Todd. Party policy was STV right. But party policy was also for no tuition fees. Party policy was once to legalise cannabis, since when did party policy matter to the MPs and leaders?
I’m a member of ERS so I knew this was about coming together as parties – to work for PR. In the past we, as LDs, couldn’t get support from Labour for PR, but within ERS there are many from Labour. With the nationalists looking after their own countries, we must have Labour with us in order to get PR for England. And I think they realise it is their only chance now.
“If the 2015 election had been held using STV, Party A with 4.7% of the vote would have 34 MPs while party B with 7.9% of the vote would get 29 MPs. Party C would get 3 MPs with 3.8% of the vote.
@Malcolm Todd
It’s from the Electoral Reform Society report (correction – party B gets 26 seats)
Lewis Baston has done a similar study with similar results (which is where the 29 figure came from)
Ok, thanks for the explanation, Stephen. I’d still say it’s highly speculative, but I’ll blame ERS, not you!
There is another point about STV, of course, which is that it takes account of second and subsequent preferences as well, so simply comparing first preference votes with number of seats doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. The trouble with that, of course (and it is a thing that bothers me about STV) is that while it’s easy to compose a metric by which to judge the fairness of a system at reflecting people’s wishes when you just count first preferences, it’s not at all obvious what would be a “fair” result when you start taking later preferences into account. Hm.
Perhaps David Allen’s right about the best way to go about it. On the other hand the party’s pretty wedded to STV, it has a long (and continuing) history in the UK, and whatever its flaws as far as proportionality is concerned it’s obviously a huge improvement on what we’ve got now. Above all, we have to not get distracted with intense navel-gazing discussions about ideal voting systems. There’s no such thing as an ideal system.
I have lifted this from Wikipedia on how electoral reform was achieved in New Zealand.
The vote was overwhelmingly for reform, with a large preference for the mixed member proportional voting system that is used in Germany, whereby voters vote simultaneously for a constituency representative and for a party.
A follow up referendum in which the beneficiaries of FPTP fought tooth and nail to reject confirmation of the reform, failed to achieve what Conservatives and Labour managed here in 2011. The reform held on, but with a much reduced 54%.
One problem with STV (and similar ranked-list methods) is that once people get past listing their first choice (“the candidate I’d ideally vote for”) and second choice (“the candidate I’d tactically vote for”) everyone else is going to be listed more or less randomly, because all the voter knows or cares to know about those candidates is “I don’t like them”; and yet those 3d and down choices could easily have real impact.
Malcolm Todd – ‘There is another point about STV, of course, which is that it takes account of second and subsequent preferences as well, so simply comparing first preference votes with number of seats doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story.’
It’s an important point. This is another aspect of PR/STV that I feel has been oversold. No electoral system resolves the issues you talk about. Of course the nature of majoritarian democracy and elections is that there are victors and not victors. The advantage (and weakness) of FPTP is that it doesn’t give prizes for second place.
That said, discussion of electoral systems must be about just that – systems. The outcomes should not matter. The point is that STV confronts voters with meaningful ballots. They might give hours of thought to their order, they might just cast a single preference like FPTP, they might just put whatever ordering a central party asks them to put – it does not matter. The point is that the ballot is meaningful in a way that it is not for an alarming number of people under FPTP.
I think the party would be better to focus on campaigning for electoral reform and the mechanism by which this could be brought about, with no preferred/chosen system at this stage.
We should see it as a two stage process for the country.
1 Agreement that we have to change and a route map for the process.
2 A mechanism to choose the system that would be recommended to the electorate. Eg A constitutional convention, or whatever.
Formal agreement to the principal of change would be an important milestone. Agreement on the choice of electoral system is much more difficult to achieve, but the debate would be conducted in a very different atmosphere if the principal of change was agreed.
Interesting parallel, Martin – thanks! I’ll draw some tentative conclusions:
The initial impetus needs to come from public recognition that FPTP has short-changed them. A point perhaps best revived when the Tories lose popularity, and opponents can point out that they gained 100% power with a 37% vote.
The NZ Royal Commision did a crucial job by identifying and recommending a single system (AMS, not STV!), which the public broadly accepted. Without that, the anoraks would still probably be arguing the toss as to what is ideal, while FPTP carried on in use!
The big party / parties who benefit from FPTP can and will do their best to buy the referendum result, as the Tories did in 2011. However, there is a cost to their reputation as well as their bank accounts. In hindsight, the 2011 referendum was perhaps the first skirmish, not simply a defeat. To coin a phrase, a good “narrative” can be made of what happened. The Tories offered the LDs a dodgy deal with a dodgy AV system, and deliberately chose a system they thught they could win an expensive campaign against. The LDs thought they’d been offered something a bit better than the status quo, so they fell for the trick. Cameron promised to be neutral, then broke his promise and spent a fortune to win the referendum, mainly by slagging off the LDs. All totally unsatisfactory. Needs to be done again and done properly this time!
This “narrative” could be quite powerful – but not if led by the Lib Dems! It has to be someone like 38 Degrees, or the ERS, who take the lead.
I don’t really see the advantages of STV over a form of list PR for multi-member regional constituencies. The latter is at least easier to understand: each person has one vote, there is proportionality between vote and result, there remains a regional connection, and everyone gets some representation except those who choose to vote for very small parties.
I’m not saying that’s the best possible system, but I don’t see how it’s worse than STV, and it’s a lot more comprehensible.
STV is for voters (enabling them to express preferences independent of partisan affliction); list systems are for parties. I can well imagine which system party bosses would impose.
The chief advantage is that it gives voters a say over individuals who are elected from within a party, not just which party gets how many seats. One can argue about how much that matters, for sure; but I think the argument about the anonymity of list systems has a lot of traction with the public. With FPTP people feel like they’re voting for an individual — even if realistically most people just vote by party.
And of course, the safe seats problem: If a party’s all but guaranteed at least one seat in a constituency, then the candidate on top of their list is safe; and depending on how the parties select their candidates there can be a significant transfer of power away from local parties (still relatively rooted in their communities) to professional party leaderships. There are other answers to that besides STV. Mixed member systems mitigate some of the drawbacks.
Genuinely open lists are also possible, and may be better than STV for parliamentary elections. (I think STV’s certainly better for local elections.) David-1 is right that lists are a lot more comprehensible: comprehensibility is FPTP’s one big advantage.
STV has for long been Lib Dem policy for a very good reason, and it is NOT because it is the most proportional system (although it does a good job of correctly representing parties with either a regionally concentrated vote, or more than a certain threshold that depends on constituency size). STV does not favour small or extreme parties, and there are good reasons to be happy about that – just look at Israel!
But what STV does do is give real choice to the voters. They can prioritise candidates within their own party and within other parties. The candidates who work hardest or are most trusted are likely to get in…. My strong suspicion is that STV has done more than anything else to promote the unexpected outbreak of (relative) consensus in Northern Ireland. Politicians like Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams realised that most voters wanted peace, and would prioritise politicians who would deliver it. So suddenly the mongers of conflict and division for decades changed their tune…
List systems (as we have for Europe) in contrast give all the power to the parties who determine the order of the list. Some parties have democratic ways of ordering the list, and some do not. But in the end people are voting for parties not people and that is what I do not like.
People everywhere are very keen on ranking things in order, and where STV exists it has always been popular. It is ideal for local government (although really you want 6 member seats, not 3). Nationally I would want STV for one House, and AM or similar for the other. At the moment as various people have said, electoral reform is not going to be on the agenda of the government, who have just won a “clear mandate” with 37% of the votes. But we should have a clear policy, and this thread suggests we do not…
We should have gone for STV in local government in the coalition and a referendum like the New Zealand one for national government… But as in so many other things we were outmaneuvered by the Tories….
STV is hard to explain but once people start using it, it seems to become perfectly comprehensible… Of course only geeks like me know how the counting works!
“People everywhere are very keen on ranking things in order”
Please, show where “ranking things in order” stands in an ordered list of other things you are keen on!
“But we should have a clear policy, and this thread suggests we do not.”
Oh, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the Lib Dems’ clear (and long-standing, pace Mr Wallace) policy is to have STV for all elections in the UK. The fact that a few people on the internet aren’t convinced it’s the best policy doesn’t change that. Nor does the fact that in a coalition negotiation our leaders made a hash of it. (Even then, they never tried to get the party policy changed; on that at least, even Clegg always said that coalition policy was a compromise, not his party’s policy.)
David-1
Top comment! 😀
1) Ranking things in order
2) Reading comments on Lib Dem voice
3) supporting a hopeless football team
4) random displacement activities instead of marking things
5) there is no 5
David Allen:
There is an additional factor about 2010/2011. Labour had already floated AV as an out of reach tantaliser in their manifesto.. I think this softened us up to be duped. Compromising with AV would have made sense in coalition with Labour as such a coalition could then have backed AV. I suspect that having worked out that AV was a runner in a Lib-Lab coalition lured us to accept it in the Lib-Con coalition even though it was the preference of neither side.
Hindsight tells us that no proposition of electoral reform for the Commons would have worked in coalition with the Tories. I am not even sure that reform could have been passed for the Lords or local government.
Of course if we had not attempted something, the nay sayers would claim that we had missed a surefire opportunity and broken our manifesto commitment. It was really a no win situation. I think the best we could have gone for was a New Zealand type of initial referendum which would have been effectively a vote of confidence or hopefully no confidence on FPTP.
We could demand a referendum against or in favour of FPTP. Assuming that Cameron’s referendum on the EU goes ahead, this will set a precedent for the use of a referendum as a vote of confidence in the status quo. Accordingly, our simple demand could be such a referendum as a vote of confidence in the electoral system.
Martin, you’re right about dealing with the Tories. Everything the Tories do has to be in their long term strategic advantage. They didn’t give us a share of government just for the sake of five years. They did it in order to demolish statist and entrench marketised systems in public service provision. They cherry-picked the reform agenda to choose five-year fixed-term parliaments which take away the opportunity for a democratic challenge to unpopular mid-term policies, thereby increasing their power.
Why would they ever do differently over electoral reform, which they know would hurt them badly, getting rid of the inbuilt advantages FPTP gives them? They wouldn’t of course. Their offer was bound to be a sham. Lynton Crosby and his fellows get very well paid, and they don’t get paid to make awful mistakes like relinquishing FPTP!
David-1
I don’t really see the advantages of STV over a form of list PR for multi-member regional constituencies.
A list system is just a degenerate form of STV. If in STV you were forced only to make your preferences for one party, and you were forced to put them in the order that party wanted, you would get the same results as the list system. For each party, all their votes would go to the top of their list candidate, once the quota is taken away they transfer to the second in the list and so on. So, the number of MPs a party gets would be in exact accord with the proportion of votes it gets.
Now, this shows why STV is superior to a list system, because STV enables voters to put together their own list. There are two reasons why people say this is “less proportional”. One is that STV tends to be used with smaller numbers of MPs per constituency, so the rounding factor applies more. The other is that voters don’t always vote on exact party lines, so it is wrong to suppose that every first preference should be counted as a vote for the whole party of the candidate of the first preference. So, the former criticism is legitimate, but the latter is not.
David-1
One problem with STV (and similar ranked-list methods) is that once people get past listing their first choice (“the candidate I’d ideally vote for”) and second choice (“the candidate I’d tactically vote for”) everyone else is going to be listed more or less randomly
Er, no. Haven’t you ever had the experience of listing lots of middle choices fairly randomly in order to make sure those you really dislike come last?
In practice, later choices under STV count for very little. Your vote will mostly be counted as part of the quota of a candidate high up your choice list. For a lower choice to count a lot, you have to be someone who votes very weirdly, so all your early preferences are for no-hopers who get eliminated.
David Allen
Why would they ever do differently over electoral reform, which they know would hurt them badly, getting rid of the inbuilt advantages FPTP gives them? They wouldn’t of course. Their offer was bound to be a sham.
Indeed. People say we should have stood out for STV, but I’m sure the Tories would never have agreed to that, since if it got through it would mean destroying forever their usual pattern of having majority power most of the time. Given that though we feel strongly about it most people think electoral reform is some very boring side-issue that doesn’t matter much, had the Liberal Democrats said “No, we won’t support a coalition unless it pushes through STV”, I’m pretty sure the consequences would have been from both Labour and the Conservatives denunciation of us for causing huge damage by denying the country a stable government, and all for some obscure political issue which no-one else but us cares about, and we only care about it because we are the main beneficiaries.
Well, now we have what the supporters of FPTP say is so great about it: majority government by a party with the support of less than four out of ten of those who voted. And really gross regional distortion.
Now, for anyone who says that doesn’t matter as all we are doing when voting is electing a government and that’s it, I think they need to explain just how FPTP works to do that. How does it come about that 36% of the vote can in one year elect a majority government and in another not? How does it come about that the biggest party in seats is not always the biggest party in votes? Most people when you try to explain all this glaze over just as much as when you try to explain how STV works. Actually, I find most people are surprised when you tell them that the current system we use doesn’t elect MPs in proportion to the votes cast. They sort of assumed it did. People really do believe the whole of southern England consists of nothing but people who support the Conservatives because they see the whole of southern England returns Conservative MPs (except, I shall point out once again, the constituency I grew up in), and this forms the basis for much political commentary, like all those Labour leadership candidates saying Labour must become more like the Tories to win in the south.
“In practice, later choices under STV count for very little.”
If that is the case in practice, then isn’t the exercise of filling out a complete list rather pointless? Why not just have voters list their first and second choices and be done with it?
The most general problem with STV and its ilk is that they are devised by mathematicians with an eye to achieving an abstract mathematical perfection. Reallocating fractions of a vote sounds well in theory, but doesn’t have much to do with the way people actually think about casting their ballots. Voters can understand voting for a person, and they can understand voting for a party (which is what I think most people do except in rare cases where a politician has a very strong, individualistic personality, and not always then); but there is really no point in making people rank a bunch of candidates they don’t care for just for the sake of the exercise — unless the point is to make voting a dull and discouraging chore.
Returning to the theme of what are the common critiques of STV that we need to counter, a common one – which I believe to be the most convincing for many voters – is that it ‘weakens the consituency link’; or rather, it removes the one-person representation principle which is the most compelling feature of our current version of FPTP.
This sort of thinking bolsters the Tory ‘strong leadership’ cult which is also a key part of the rhetorical arsenal for single-person city directly elected ‘mayors’.
I think we need to do some thinking on how to communicate around this issue (although doubtless someone somewhere has done this already) because we are ourselves, as a party of community politics, historically complicit in (trans)forming the concept/cult of the ‘good’, dedicated community MP who is the go-to person, who holds surgeries, who seeks to resolve issues for their constituents. The LibDems and predecessor parties have therefore helped (out of good intentions) to feed the dragon we seek to slay as people think therefore of ‘my’ MP and if you have more than one MP you haven’t got the ‘certainty’ of ‘knowing’ who is ‘your’ representative.
*GEEK WARNING… read not further if history bores you.*
I know we are now effectively ‘the’ party of STV almost by definition, but those who like a long view of history need to acknowledge, historically, that the old Liberal party was the party which created the single-member representative ‘principle’- largely through the individual work and decisions of the Radical MP Charles Dillke in the 1880s during Gladstone’s governments – in the Third Reform Act and the associated Redistribution Bill.
Dillke’s work took the old, multi-member FPTP system in precisely the opposite direciton to the multi-member STV system that was simultaneously being created.
Dillke’s reasons for effectively creating what we now know as FPTP have been varoiusly alleged to be:
1 – Cyincally, he saw politics as a straight two-party fight between a ‘centre-left’ Liberal/Radical party and a ‘centre-right’ Tory party and wished to be rid of the aristocratic centrist Whigs who were muddying the waters, as he saw it (this is before the Home Rule Crisis screwed with the party system completely).
2 – Idealistically, he wished to create a system that was as simple, uniform, and universal as possible – as many people from as many classes as possible had one vote in one constituency for one person (he didn’t entirely achieve that in the 1880s but he got a lot closer than anyone else had) – whereas previous to the 1880s people could in the same general election have multiple votes for different reasons in different constituencies, based on landownership, rental prices, income, university membership… Therefore certain classes of people could vote in a ‘borough’ (ie town) constituency and also simultaneously vote in the election for the overlapping county. This was an inconsistent biased mess which offended Dillke, who was a fan of precision, and politically fascinated by France and the French Republic, which he visited frequently.
…I’ll get me coat.
The key to Liberal Democrat principled support for STV is — as many posts have pointed out — that is does much more than deliver party proportionality, desirable though that it is. Crucially, it transfers power and choice to the voter. So while we have to be ready, of course, to explain what it is and how it works, let’s focus first on what electoral reform/STV will do for voters and what it will mean for the quality of our democracy. This way we can put it firmly in the context of the need for liberalism in our politics and society.
And do join us — Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform (LDER). We’re at http://www.lder.org
(Keith Sharp is Chair of LDER)
David-1
If that is the case in practice, then isn’t the exercise of filling out a complete list rather pointless? Why not just have voters list their first and second choices and be done with it?
Yes, and if they want to do that under STV they can. So what’s your point?
David-1
The most general problem with STV and its ilk is that they are devised by mathematicians
No, Thomas Hare was a lawyer, not a mathematician. See the Wiki page on him. where it explicitly states that.
David-1
if you want to see how the transfers go in a real STV election look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Antrim_%28Assembly_constituency%29 (2011 results)
There were probably a few people whose vote transferred from Green to SDLP to Alliance and in the end Sinn Fein. Equally people who voted TUV may well have seen their vote transfer through all the DUP candidates to end up with Roy Beggs or Stewart Dickson
You can also see how the DUP voters clearly ranked their candidates in order and the first three got elected, the third of whom only had 5.5% of first preference votes. I don’t know anything about these candidates but I feel sure that the voters thought carefully about their preferences both for parties and candidates, and in most cases were happy with the result
“Crucially, it transfers power and choice to the voter. ”
The voter is still stuck with whoever is on the ballot, unable to add in new candidates of their own choice or to vote “none of the above” (and have it mean anything).
“There were probably a few people whose vote transferred from Green to SDLP to Alliance and in the end Sinn Fein.”
And this was the kind of thing that Matthew Huntbach was saying couldn’t realistically happen. You can’t have it both ways.
The fact is that if I put somebody fourth on my ranked list that means that I do not want that candidate to be elected, and yet under STV my vote may still end up being recorded as a vote for a candidate I find appalling.
Interestingly, Australia, which elects its Senate by STV, introduced an “above the line” voting option, where voters instead of listing their own preferences for individual candidates, can simply vote for the party of their choice (which means that their votes are deemed to be preferential votes on a pre-published pattern decided by that party). An incredible 98% of voters choose this option.
Now, admittedly Australia has the peculiar rule (also in its AV elections for the lower house) that for a vote to be valid you have to number every single candidate, and as the Senate elections involve choosing six members you can expect at least 20 or 30 candidates (and apparently there can be as many as 80 sometimes) — so there’s rather a strong incentive to give up and just tick one box instead. It would be interesting to see how many people would choose to vote “above the line” if they had the choice of voting for as many or as few candidates as they wanted otherwise. However, it does suggest that people aren’t terribly wedded to the idea of being able to carefully choose their preferred individuals from within parties, or without regard to party, which is the big USP of STV.
“The fact is that if I put somebody fourth on my ranked list that means that I do not want that candidate to be elected, and yet under STV my vote may still end up being recorded as a vote for a candidate I find appalling.”
Then don’t vote for them — unless there are other candidates you find even more appalling, in which case if it comes down to it you may be relieved to have helped to stop them. Anyway, why do you say that if you put somebody fourth you necessarily don’t want them elected? If you’re voting in a district with 6 representative for example (as in the example Andrew linked to), surely you would give your first six preferences to people you do want to see elected?
@Mr Wallace
If you are so certain that electoral reform is a bad idea which no one of any relevance in this country wants, why do you see a need to stop the Lib Dems, (or anyone else) talking about it? Surely it is obviously no threat?
I have been cheered up by reading this thread because it demonstrates that there are still people who understand and promote the party’s policy of STV.
In particular I like the comments of “Andrew” such as —
Andrew 1st Jun ’15 – 9:14pm
“..STV is hard to explain but once people start using it, it seems to become perfectly comprehensible… Of course only geeks like me know how the counting works!”
For me, the counting process in an STV election is a like a mobile phone.
I could not explain in 2 minutes how to design and construct a mobile phone. Yet anyone can learn how to use a mobile phone in 2 minutes.
It is the same with STV elections.
Leave the counting to geeks like Andrew, the important thing is to use STV.
Unfortunately our MPs and Lords have never been the best at putting the case for STV. Perhaps because they are not “geeks” and are ashamed of their ignorance because in practice they would struggle to organise the count of an STV election.
Hence the “miserable little compromise” of AV (as no less than Nick Clegg once described it).
Oddly – all of our MPs seem happy to use a mobile phone.
Andrew
if you want to see how the transfers go in a real STV election look here:
Well, if you go to electionsireland.org, you can see full details of transfers in all Irish elections, so you can find plenty more examples.
David-1
“There were probably a few people whose vote transferred from Green to SDLP to Alliance and in the end Sinn Fein.”
And this was the kind of thing that Matthew Huntbach was saying couldn’t realistically happen. You can’t have it both ways.
No, that is not what I said. If you look at the East Antrim results given by Andrew, a small number of people do indeed give 1st preference to a DUP candidate and 2nd to a SF candidate – a total of 10 votes shifted that way on Count 2 with the transfer of Sammy Wilson’s surplus. It is surprising to see things like this, but if one has analysed STV results in detail as I have done, one finds it happens. The people who voted that way had some sort of criteria for choosing candidates that you and I may find strange, but who are we to question them? This sort of thing shows very clearly that many voters are not straight-down-the-line party supporters, and do pick between candidates of parties on other issues.
The fact is that if I put somebody fourth on my ranked list that means that I do not want that candidate to be elected, and yet under STV my vote may still end up being recorded as a vote for a candidate I find appalling.
No, putting someone fourth on your ranked list means you regard them as the fourth best choice. In the East Antrim election quoted there were thirteen candidates, so if you put someone fourth in that situation it means you regard that person as preferable to another nine that are on offer.
Your vote as a whole would only go to your fourth preference if your first three preferences had so little support from others that they were eliminated early on. What that means is that if all you had was the remaining ten candidates, that fourth preference is the candidate of those ten you would want the most. Well, what sort of person are you if the only candidates you do not regard as “appalling” are people whose support is so weak that hardly anyone else voted for them?
What you would be having offered to you here is that if, unfortunately, your point of view is so different from almost everyone else’s that none of the candidates you not regard as “appalling” get elected, at least you can choose between all the appalling candidates left and pick the one you regard as the least appalling. If you think they are all so appalling it does not matter, well then, you needn’t bother expressing a fourth preference.
Since for this to happen your views would have to be very unusual and supported by hardly anyone else, under the FPTP system the likelihood is that the first three candidates you liked would not even bother standing, as they would know they stood no chance of winning. If they can’t get enough support from across a whole multi-member constituency to get a quota of votes, how on earth could they get more votes than anyone else if it was divided into six constituencies and they stood in one of them? So, since you regard all those other candidates left after your first three preferences are eliminated as even more appalling than your fourth preference, and you might not be in the single constituency where this appalling-but-not-so-appalling-as-the-others candidate stood, under FPTP the most likely thing would be that was on offer to you was just a choice between even more appalling candidates.
So, David-1, why do you balk at being offered a wide choice and say it would be better to have a narrower choice which is restricted to options that are even more appalling than the one you dismiss that STV would give you?
Malcolm Todd
Now, admittedly Australia has the peculiar rule (also in its AV elections for the lower house) that for a vote to be valid you have to number every single candidate
I think this is very silly, I struggle to find the rationale for it. Perhaps the idea is to put people off making a full choice so that they do instead opt to turn STV into a party list system by choosing the default list as put forward by the party of their choice.
Malcolm Todd
However, it does suggest that people aren’t terribly wedded to the idea of being able to carefully choose their preferred individuals from within parties, or without regard to party, which is the big USP of STV.
Well, how it works in Ireland doesn’t go along with that, but it’s a choice. If people want to operate STV as a party list system they can do so. If everyone voted for just the candidates of one party in the order the party told them to, it would result in EXACTLY the same result as a party list system (such as used here for MEP elections) would give. That’s what I meant when I said a party list system is just a degenerate form of STV.
What STV means as Thomas Hare envisaged it is that no-one is forced into a constituency, instead everyone chooses their own constituency. When people want representatives they get together with fellow-minded people and when enough people agree on one candidate to be an MP that candidate becomes an MP. People are free to choose who THEY want to be their MP, not told they have to be restricted to a choice in one constituency, and whoever gets elected there is “their” representative, even if they find that person appalling and he or she stands for everything they are against.
STV is just a practical system to try and achieve something of that ideal with paper ballots, that’s all.
One of the projects I offer to my students is to try and devise and build a system that is more like Thomas Hare’s original idea, but taking advantage of modern technology. Sorry to say no-one has yet really taken it up and got it working as I envisage, but I offer it now to anyone else who is interested. There’s a good academic paper we can get out of it if we can get something put together.
JohnTilley
Hence the “miserable little compromise” of AV (as no less than Nick Clegg once described it).
Oh no, I think it was more that the Tories would never agree to proper proportional representation.
Nick Clegg, as he did throughout, messed it up. What he should have said on this, as on much else is “it’s not good, it’s far from our ideal, but it’s all the Tories would shift to, and as it’s mildly better than what the Tories would want if they had all their own way, we’ve had to agree to it. If you want something more Liberal Democrat, next time vote in more Liberal Democrat MPs”. Instead, with this as with every other miserable little compromise coming out of the coalition he and his spads and his ad-men thought the way to get support was to sell it as super-duper wonderful.