Fairer Voting System
Old Man 43
Posts: 6,214 Forum Member
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I have been talking to one of my colleagues at work who has been moaning about UKIP not getting enough seats.
I pointed out to him that PR would involve permanent coalition governments where the manifestos would be watered down.
He agrees that he does not want that but he is adamant that there must be a fairer way of doing it without risking permanent coalition governments.
When I tell him that there is no way (without throwing away democracy) he tells me that there must be and that all it needs is some people who are cleverer than we are to work it out.
So can anyone tell me what kind of system would be fairer and not involve permanent coalition governments.
I pointed out to him that PR would involve permanent coalition governments where the manifestos would be watered down.
He agrees that he does not want that but he is adamant that there must be a fairer way of doing it without risking permanent coalition governments.
When I tell him that there is no way (without throwing away democracy) he tells me that there must be and that all it needs is some people who are cleverer than we are to work it out.
So can anyone tell me what kind of system would be fairer and not involve permanent coalition governments.
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Comments
Its not a question that has an easy answer in my opinion there are good points from both sides of the argument.
The strength of the Holyrood system, is that it keeps the FPTP constituency link and each voter can also raise concerns with any of the list MSPs for their region, who can represent a variety of parties as they are elected by proportional vote.
I know that the party which gets most constituency votes in any region has more difficulty qualifying for a
list MSP, although I'm unclear about the formula for this part.
As for a system I like the German 2 vote system - each constitiuency has 2 MP's - one is voted in FPTP like here in the UK the 2nd is allocated by PR so you get two votes - one for the MP you want locally and one for the party you want in power, which also has the advantage that you can vote for a particulary good MP locally even if they're from a party you dislike eg. you dislike the Tories but have a very good Tory MP is works hard for your constituency, so you could vote for him locally and then the party whose policies you agree with nationally. It also wouldn't need a change in the number of MP's you'd just double the constituency size eg. Portsmouth instead of Portsmouth North and Portsmouth South.
All votes are important. The 2007-2011 government had one more MSP than the next largest party and ran a full term minority government.
I'm just not clear what happens when a "top up" MSP dies or resigns. Is there are regional by-election or are they replaced by the next person on the list?
;-)
Are you claiming that no other, more proportional, system can retain the link between MP and local constituency? If so, you're wrong.
Go and read the explanation posted earlier about the Scottish system.
We don't deal in fact on here...never mind the reality that some more proportional forms of voting are already in use across the whole the whole of the UK now
Our "democratic" system hasn't made us a better run country has it?
If anything the reverse
There is nothing about PR that mandates permanent coalition governments.
If none of the parties concerned can achieve a majority of the vote share, that is their fault, not the system's.
Nobody should get a majority government without a mandate, the mandate being the majority of people voting for them. And 'majority' is NOT the same as 'largest minority'.
Besides, a coalition government is always preferable to having dangerous, extremist minority parties like Labour and the Tories running amok.
In one UK constituency, the winning candidate polled 24.5% of the vote. The lowest for a winning candidate ever. With a 60% turnout there, the MP was elected with just 14.5% share of the total electorate.
South Belfast?
In theory you are correct. However in practice it is very rare for a PR system to produce a single party majority government in the UK parliament. In fact it has not happened in this country since the 2nd World War.
How would you feel about having a Conservative-UKIP coalition now? They got 49.5% of the vote between them across the UK (and 55.1% in England)
But you still have the constituency MP under the systems used for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and the London Assembly - with a PR top up to make it more representative of the total vote.
If it's good enough for Scotland, Wales, London - and Germany - why can't we have this top up electoral system for the UK.
Certainly beats having a majority government again which two thirds of us didn't vote for!
Unless you are lucky to have a Frank Field or Kate Hoey or Peter Bone or Zac Goldsmith most of these constituency MPs just vote the party whip line 99 per cent of the time - so are hardly any more independent than a list MP would be.
It happened in 2011 at the Holyrood election
Who choses your local MP? Yep the local party, so whomever stands is chosen by the party not the locals, and there is also no guarantee it's a local that stands as quite often party favourites who fail elsewhere can be parachuted in, especially if its a safe seat - look at Boris for example, he used to represent a lIverpool constituency now he represents a London one he chose to stand for which was a pretty safe bet to get him elected. Personally I'd like to see a rule brought in that to be allowed to stand to represent a constituency you should have lived there since before the previous election to stop parachuting in favourites and letting them chose safe seats.
The same weakness as the FPTP elections to the Westminster parliament. It's hard to oust an MP, too.