I’m for proportional representation on the basis that voters should be represented in proportion, rather than on the basis that it might keep out those I don’t like.

For me it’s a principle rather than a temporary conveniance.

Hear, hear.

Not denying that. Just saying the BNP argument is used a lot by people who oppose proportional rep…

I’m a fan of Cruddas, but Jon obviously didn’t have enough space to provide many details on the big ideas he wants Labour to implement!

I’m vaguely in favour of electoral reform and I’d like to hear what specific system JC advocates. I like moderate measures the alternative vote which are designed to increase proportionality whilst maintaining single member districts. I

Fair play, Sunny.
About time.
I’m a firm believer that could signify the most radical chaneg in British politics at all levels.
Ask yourself why the two main parties are so scared of it.

1 Look at Italy and Israel
2 You cannot throw the establishment out
3 It hands even more power to the overmighty centre
4 It means you do not know what government you are voting for
5 There is no personal accountability to real people
6 Issues on which the political class as a whole difer from voters are even more unfairly biassed , the EU , immigration , crime and punishment , social conservatism generally
7 It accentuates bourgois control , hence 6
8 The Party liked least( The Liberals ) become the most powerful
9 It tends to be corrupting , deals ..bribes … ( Look at Labour bribing Paisley over Lisbon)
10 A referendum on PR would be lost, easily
11 It can only be an insider fit up imposed by stealth
12 The Labour Party only sing the song when they are losing !
13 Gerrymandering by a losing Party of this sort would be an assault on democracy
14 If it was used as a means of establishing a Labour Liberal Reich Conservatives would be foced to call for an English Parliament from which no system could eject us and the English want

Did I miss any ?

Forget it

As someone in Wales who has grown up with devolution, and went to the special conference that ratified the One Wales coalition, i think there is alot of scaremongering.

Ultimately the public see the punch and judy politics as a turn off – ‘they are all the same’.

It allows for my depth to each persons vote. It also allows for people to consider what parties they want in a coalition.

If we are to get people to vote, we must make it count. The person who votes tory in my constituency is a wasted vote, that is not right.

To say that ‘the ruling centre’ will reign supreme, well what is so different to what we have now? Do you believe that the votes of a few target seats arent the driving factors in the main parties thoughts at the minute?

If we are to get people to vote, we must make it count. The person who votes tory in my constituency is a wasted vote, that is not right.

That problem would be better addressed by open Primaries which would empower the voter not the Political elite

Newmania.
I think you’re actually taking the mick.
Look at Italy and Israel is such a trite cliche’.

It deliberately refers to two extreme cases. And it chooses to ignore all the rest: Germany, France, Spain and all other countries (including Wales and Scotland) without FPTP (there are various different forms of PR, semi-PR, AV, mixed system, etc) that offer stability with a fairer representation.

“If we are to get people to vote, we must make it count. The person who votes tory in my constituency is a wasted vote, that is not right.”

Indeed, which is why I support PR. I don’t understand how open primaries would change anything – it might make candidate selection slightly more transparent, but it would consolidate the parties’ grip on the electoral process even more and that is the problem to my mind.

In answer to the more substantial of your other objections:

“1 Look at Italy and Israel”

Look at everywhere else.

“3 It hands even more power to the overmighty centre”

I would argue it makes the centre reflective of what people actually want, rather than the arbitrary beliefs of the two main parties. However, as I suspect we violently disagree on where “the centre” is I don’t see this argument going anywhere.

“4 It means you do not know what government you are voting for”

Er, what? You vote for the party you want to have maximum influence, how does that differ from now – other than your vote might actually mean something?

“5 There is no personal accountability to real people”

This I agree with . Lists candidates are seen as less accountable and I think it is vital that there is a constituency element in the electoral mix. Pure PR is not – to my mind – a viable option for this reason.

“8 The Party liked least( The Liberals ) become the most powerful”

Not true. For a good example of the limits of minority power under PR, look at what happened to the Greens in Scotland recently.

“12 The Labour Party only sing the song when they are losing !”

It’s a sad fact that no political party advocates PR when it has just won an election victory because, by definition, it would have less power had PR been in place.

”I’m for PR”

Do you all. Do you support it for the Commons, Lords or Both. If one, what about the other. If both, what’s the point of two houses.

Just to be open, I want 100% democratically elected lords, using pure PR, votes to be cast at same time as commons vote on party list.

(6): ‘Did I miss any?’

No, I think you listed every bullshit argument I can think of.

Can I just point out:

a) Hitler came to power under a PR system

and

b) it does not exactly send out the most encouraging message to the general populace if we turn our entire electoral system on its head purely to keep out what remains basically a fringe party.

A PR system would in all probability result in MORE BNP votes not less, in the same way that UKIP got more under a PR system in 2004 than they ever have under FPTP.

Sunny (3): The problem is that as soon as you mention the BNP it gives the impression that we want PR for our own interests rather than for the country as a whole.

I’d support PR even if it DID bring more extremist parties into Parliament because even dick-heads have a right to representation.

For me, one of the main appeals of PR is that it would do over the Liberal Democrats, who would get one go at being in coalition government and then see their support collapse (as in Scotland).

Jon Cruddas’ argument in essence is that the voting system should force parties to seek to maximise turnout amongst their ‘base’, rather than targeting particular geographical areas. Two questions about this – does PR actually achieve this, and is it a good idea anyway?

I don’t really care about which voting system as long as it is simple to figure out how to vote, and people can vote for a person to be their elected representative and who they can contact if they’ve got an idea or a problem they need help with. If it got rid of the idiotic thing where large chunks of election campaigns are about ‘only x can beat y, don’t vote z because it will be a waste’, that would be good as well. The European election system, for example, is a PR system which fails on all these measures.

Sorry, too late.

Changing voting systems will note reflate British politics. Better to disengage from party politics and vote directly on programs. Not individual issues – that leads to less-tax-and-more-services paradoxes – but constructed sets of policies.

Most politicians are becoming rather pointless and seedy celebrities, who sit between voters and policy. So lets drop the theatre and focus on the menu. If you can create a properly costed transport manifesto, or sensible policing inititives, I don’t care which party you come from.

Politicians do not admit that areason why so many people do not vote is that they do not consider any of them to have achieved anything prior to entering politics. Politicians act as our elected leaders. Hardly any MP has experience of leadership , especially of making life or death decisions . Any corporal or higher rank, helicopter pilot, airline pilot, ships or trawler captain, lifefeboat coxswain, anyone with supervisory experience in dangerous industries , senior nurse working in A and E or ICU , police officer, fireman , paramedic etc , etc has had more experience of making critical decisions in very little time under stressful conditions than our MPs. Our MPs are a bunch of middle class paper shuffling office dwelling graduates . Most people do not trust MPs to find their own backsides with both their hands , a mirror and map. Andrew Marr and Peter Oborne amongst others has pointed out the lack of experience of most MPs before entering politics. We have created a political class -it was time it became extinct.

Please tell me how PR will improve the amount and degree of experience of MPs before they enter politics and they will be more receptive to constituncy issues and not dependent on their parties.

Mark Heenan,

ré this:

Hitler came to power under a PR system

Can I just say it was all a bit more complicated than that?

It is true that the National Socialists never gained a majority of the German vote. It is also true that they did constitute the largest party.

I wonder whether your, presumeably, favoured, first past the post system would have precluded them from attempting to form a government?

Martin toy Parliaments funded by English taxpayers and the weakly accountable democracies of the high tax Euro zone are the worst possible direction. Germany yes theres a Nations with a rich democratic tradition , Spain ! .It would be like taking your first driving lesson and the instructor stepping into the car in full clown fig including squirty flower …. and the rest are similar , we have an altogether more individualist dissenting tradition in this country which is why no-one wants PR ( On a PR basis …got that ?)
We may differ on where the centre is but as I base my views on Polling evidence across a range of issues and you base yours on arrogant contempt for ordinary people the fact is that you are wrong and I am right . Sorry but that’s the way it is if you want Engkland to become whatever socialist hell hole you have in mind try getting support for it not imposing it by a class based hierarchical system . Just a thought
” The Greens ” ? …rather than crowing about the limits of their power why are you not wondering what sort of insanity makes Party supported by virtually no-one so powerful in the first place ? Lunacy.
Now what about open Primaries , why am I the only person who wants more voters and less politicians as if we didn’t know . I would also suggest a House of Lords partly elected by a the same votes as the GE on a PR basis and half nominated experts and experienced folk. The HOL needs beefing up anyway to counteract the tendency to centre power on few people . This would also stop tactical voting which sells the Lib Dem vote beyond its true support and at all events is not a good thing

Such a system would be a real democracy where everyone’s view counted and everyone could look the man/woman who represented them knowing they could not be ignored

PR is the policy of those who hate democracy cannot gain wide support but think they might just wangle a deal with a few insiders. As I say it it was ever forced on us then it would be the end of the UK as the Conservative Party would be forced to call for an English Parliament which they would govern undisturbed by any system whatsoever

The problem of electoral reform is far too much attention to the anorak question of whose favourite system – STV or AMS or whatever – and too little to a strategy to make it possible. I looked at this in detail. So I say “electoral reform” is the key, and PR is part of that,

I wrote a very detailed piece about this – “how to reform the electoral system” in Autumn 2007, at the height of the Brown bounce.
http://fabians.org.uk/20071030369/Publications/Extracts/Call-for-Lab-LibDem-deal-on-Alternative-Vote.html

Of course it is now more difficult. Labour must put electoral reform in its manifesto, in my view. (AV for the Commons, PR for the Lords; pr for local government too in my view). In the event of a Labour victory or hung parliament, we should do it. (But it is much more legitimate to do it in the event of a hung parliament if you are pre-committed to it). In the event of being in opposition, the failure to do so would make it much more difficult to then support PR for the following general election. I would favour beginning some effort – a constitutional convention – to bring the question back a couple of years into the next Parliament, finding cross-party support and not dictating the outcome – to get over the problem of the current political cycle.

I personally will suport any more pluralist electoral system (the Alternative Vote or a PR-system) which can commend a consensus. (Of course, there is no chance of that being a system with less voter choice of MPs than the currrent system: Israel-style PR list systems would never be adopted for UK General Elections, because there is absolutely no support for them).

I am not going to be theological about electoral systems. But over the last two years I think the strategic argument has shifted in the direction of those of us who think AV is the possible reform which would move us forward, and that anything else is longer-term. I am pretty confident this has long been the view of the vast majority of the LibDem frontbench, for example
http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/ourkingdom-theme/stuart-weir/2008/06/20/should-supporters-of-electoral-reform-back-av

The Electoral Reform Society (advocates of PR and STV) recently published a good paper by Lewis Baston on the Alternative Vote, which is very well informed, but also captures how the debate is shifting about strategies for reform
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=55

As I say, there are pros and cons. The political and sometimes theological debate about the desirable properties of each system should not crowd out the political question of pressure for reform, and the strategy for building a winning consensus/coalition to make it happen.

I meant to say “electoral reform” with where PR fits in as part of that being part of the debate.

I don’t like PR. Rather than rehearse the arguments again though, I’ll just point out that forcing Labour to concentrate more on core support (if PR would do that) doesn’t necessarily mean we would build more council houses, it could mean the government does more cracking down on benefits cheats and asylum seekers. It could mean that Labour tries to thwart the BNP by taking over more of their territory (after all that seems to have been the main strategy for dealing with them since 1997).

Honestly, I think there are good arguments both ways for proportional representation versus first past the post.

Being in favour of more open primaries and less central control over the selection process, I think that prop. rep would undermine that so on balance I’d prefer keeping things the way they are.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens though if the tories win a plurality of votes but not enough seats to form a majority.

20 and 21 Sunder K . How do you mean to improve the quality of MPs? How many MPs have any practical experience and in particular leadership experience ? We went to war In Iraq and Afghanistan and hardly any MPs had any combat or middle east construction experience:yet there is a need to rebuild war damaged countries with complex religious and ethnic tensions.
The reality is that pre WW2, there were more MPs with the practical and leadership experience for fighting and rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan than today .

Charlie, it’s really irrelevant how “experienced” MPs are. It is utterly unrealistic to expect them to be, as a mass, experienced enough for every eventuality AND humble enough to succeed to that authority of knowledge. The latter is the real problem of course, the whole war example you bring up is actually the singular example where MPs acted on expert knowledge and got it wrong solely because the experts…those with experience, supposedly, got it wrong.

Where they went utterly wrong was in ignoring the outcry of their people, which is what MPs are meant to listen to. The problem isn’t lack of experience in relevant fields (though it helps) it is lack of experience in REPRESENTATION…which is something PR helps to force our MPs to consider much more actively.

Also, PR isn’t more complicated for people than FPTP, no more at least than asking them to count apples, oranges and pears together is more complicated than just counting apples. Even the government’s own attempt to quash PR said that people didn’t find PR any more confusing than FPTP systems. This is because people don’t have an average IQ of 2

Sunder your link does not link

If we want to stop the rise of the BNP, then we must stop handing them easy propaganda victories.

Yesterday, this video was uploaded to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWmvqDWnGzI

It shows a segment of a speech made by Labour MP Shahid Malik a few months ago, in which he predicts that within thirty years Britain will have a Muslim Prime Minister, and that eventually every single MP in Britain will be a Muslim.

The BNP are having a field day over this.

LabourForever – I suspect most people will see his speech as buffoonery rather than a threat.

I’ve enjoyed reading the comments and the way so many people here have chipped in adding different arguments for electoral reform and especially combatting the myths about PR presented by Newmania. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m encouraging and providing resources for. http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/archives/2009/03/mythbusting_cha.html

This link, trying again

How To Reform the Electoral System
http://fabians.org.uk/publications/extracts/call-for-lab-libdem-deal-on-alternative-vote

25. Lee Griffin. Experience counts . Vince Cable’s authority is because he had the ability to be appointed Chief Economist of Shell and the experience derrived from this position, before he became an MP. Ashdown’s comments on the risk of civil war from the break up of Jugoslavia , his appointment to be the UN representative in Bosnia was due to his experience as a SBS officer and member of the FCO/MI6. Churchill’s expertise and suitability to be PM in 1940 is based upon his previous military and political experience and extensive reading and understanding of history and politics. Beveredge’s experience of the poverty in the East End of London gave him the ability towrite his report which gave us the Welfare State.

What is continually mentioned is that the House of Lords often has someone of international repute whatever the subject is being debated.

The ideal situation would be that whatever was being discussed is that someone in the H of c would have world class experience. The comments of a thousand idiots does not equal in wisdom the comments of of a wiseman/woman. An ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory.

The experts did not get it wrong. Most pointed out the doubt and uncertainty of the data but were overruled by Blair and Campbell.

Biggest thing to take into account, and Don’s semi right here, is that the voting system determines the party system.

Change the way we count the votes at Westminster, the party structure overall changes. Virtually every country that’s changed voting system has seem a different party structure out of it, and the UK would be no different (devolved and local tweaks don’t count as much as the party structure is determined nationally).

Ergo this strange belief that it would lead to perpetual Lib Dem/Labour coalition is bollocks. The current Conservative exists because it merged in 4 different splits from the old Liberal party (including Churchill’s Constitutionalists), a process that only finished in the 1960s.

The liberal/authoritarian split within both the main parties of the left and right could, and probably should, lead to a new party structure.

Charlie, it’s worth noting that the current single member seat system is a massive contributing factor to the nature of todays politicians, single member seats were mostly finalised in 1948. The House of Commons voted for STV in 1917, but the Lords blocked it.

I do agree with those that say there’s no way it should be introduced by the current Labour govt, it would discredit the whole idea, and with Sunder on the idea that we’d need a middle stage of AV first before STV.

Oh, Newmania’s repeated myths already mostly debunked, but he might also want to look at actual vote proportions in England for the different parties. The phrase “differential turnout” might also help him understand the 2005 results as well.

Matt the problems I mention are not myths. If there were not other considerations than the proportion of MP`s being equal to the proportion of votes then full PR with a list system would not be the only form no-one supports anymore .( One thing any PR junky is bound to say in about ten seconds is , that you are criticising a form of PR with which he does not agree ).
In a list system the voter is represented by 1 /650th of each MP ie by no MP and he does not like that. Polling shows that while the public dislike politicians as a whole ( and wish to be able to chuck them out ) they usually like their own MP of whatever hue . Regional or half and half solutions have much the same problem of remoteness and increasing the already dreadful yes man factor
The various versions of letting the loser vote twice or transferring votes from the right and left into the centre are such obvious gerrymandering they do not deserve attention and have lost the original dubious claim to “Fairness” proper PR had in the first place . These are staging posts in the ratchet effect of PR . The price of the middle group will always go up , it can never be removed and eventually you end up with lists maximising the beneficiaries power which by the is more than anyone else’s and would in fact run a Lib Lab Reich in perpetuity
A referendum would be lost I would be delighted for there to be an agreement that subject to referendum this historical assault not to be part of bargain keep secret from the voters unless a referendum was held. I expect the question would have a couple of paragraphs removed and it would get done anyway.
The chances of PR actually being voted for are nil because while we disagree on much we , the English are in virtually unanimous agreement that we do not want to be ruled by the bloody Liberals
There are far more problems than that. Most votes are actually not cast on issue they cast on perceived economic interest. The Labour Party is the Party of those who benefit from redistribution in all its forms , a class above that solidly support the Conservatives. A class above cast luxury votes and has luxury lives . Let us say that normally the beneficiaries are numerous , those who pay less so and the upper echelon relatively inconsequential ,. You will see how both Parties try to extend their respective groups .
What saves the aspiring and economically actives lower middle class form being voted back into poverty is that while there are less of them they a re highly motivated to keep what they have made and tend be active people . They vote more and you will see that the Conservative turn out is indeed better . Given a reasonable geographical clustering they will be able to use this to organise better locally and get their vote out . PR would remove the need for local Parties ( another dreadful thing about it ) and leave the active members of society at the mercy of the more numerous others they have beaten. PR tends towards collectivism for this reason and occurs in collectivist countries usually .

I also think the sytek needs reform

Open Primaries
Fixed terms
Direct election of posts such as Police chiefs
More referendums
Entrenching Commons power to redistribute it back from the executive by such measure as secret ballots among Mps ( say for Select Committee chairmen)
A partially democratised HOL half PR and half nominated experts , great and good etc.
A reduction of the Number if MPs
A severe reduction the number f Scottish and Welsh Mps as a rough and ready cure the WLQ
A Parliamentary timetable that refelct the fact 70%of legislation comes from Brussels so we see the laws that govern us actually debated
UI would be prepared to consider a two stage election if the winner did not achieve over 50%

That sort of a package could reignite politifcs , PR would send it to sleep whih is what you want , except amongst politicians

Oh and we urgently need to address the problem of Fair seats , 26908 votes to elect a Labour MP and 44373 vote to elect a Conservative (and more a Lib Dem). This is partly the operation of FPTP but more importantly the extreme slowness of the boundary commission

Newmania, really busy right now, and your comment at 34 is really difficult to read, so I can’t go through it quickly. But at 35, you highlight one of the biggest issues with FPTP but still want to keep it?

I personally don’t give a shit about “fair” votes, and have always thought it a bad campaigning slogan, I’d rather campaign against safe seats, in all forms–I object to closed list PR even more than I object to FPTP, as it also creates ‘safe’ seats for senior MPs and similar–any MP that knows they’re going to get re-elected almost inevitably is an MP lacking incentive to do their job properly.

But seriously, another issue with the numbers is differential turnout–there’s a clear trend line on a graph of turnout vs seat safety, but Labour seats have a lower turnout if they’re very safe–if those seats become competetive for some reason or another, turnout soars.

In order to avoid the spam filter, I’m going to post some old links in seperate comments, I used to write extensively about electoral reform and other onstitutional issues, but that blog is effectively defunt now I contribute here instead. The first is:

Myths, realities & voting systems – cutting out the crap

Which addresses some of your points fairly effectively.

The second is about FPTP as a specific, and some myths about “tactical” voting, the comments go on to a discussion of different voting systems, specifically STV which deals with the issue effectively and also deals with a number of other points:
Tactical Voting: Myths and reality

The third is a follow on from the discussion of the second, and is about STV as a specific with some proposals o how it’d work–note that reducing the number of Westminster MPs is there as a clear objective to me as well as to you:
STV – how it could work in Britain

Rather than deal with the clunky server issues there, keep the discussion here, the spam protection setup on that site is more than a little problematic currently.

STV favoured by second choice Party…hold the front page , no shit ! I do not see why the Labour Party’s efforts to delay he boundary commission is a problem with FPTP it’s a problem with the honesty of the Labour Party ,
I have read your stuff its all reasonable enough but counts weak preferences as on a par with strong ones with the obvious intention of swelling the weakly tolerated Party no-one likes …Is this fair ? Not particularly . I have numerous other objections to it but one slightly troubling one is this . …
Society has within it the aspiring and hard working , if they succeed they will tend to vote Conservative because they will fear that the Labour Party or a Left centre Party once in power will redistribute from them to the more numerous losers . As they tend to be more determined and active they organise better and defend themselves from the equalising tendency of a “Perfect “ democracy . FPTP allows this to happen imperfectly , obviously, but to some extent .

Consider this .-Five survivors arrive on a Desert Island , I get up , kill a wild pig and cook , it .As I am about to eat the other four vote that under our democracy it belongs to them and they eat it . I am allowed enough to get up the strength to kill the next one . That’s democratic but its not fair .
We make a boat , or rather I do because they voted that I should . We see some rocks ahead and we vote on which way to go around them three say East and two say West. Having lost the vote the West Party claim they have no voice and demand their views be represented proportionally . We go Noth East and straight into the rocks . That was fair ..,.or was it ? No-one wanted to go into the rocks ( Aka the Liberal Party ! ) , and anyway as we plunge to our deaths it becomes clear that as matter of functioning as a boat we have to have to be decide and then do it .
So your assumption that ‘democracy’ is the only consideration is not one I share anyway.

I do not share the assumptions you have about designing human systems on paper at all , as you would expect. I would be against any such proposal on the basis of its alien oddness alone quite aside from anything else . This , you would call the “Stupid “ Party but actually it is based on an understanding of the complexity of people and their interactions and reasonable doubt that one person or a small class will know the answer. Evolved solutions are preferred on a logical basis although you may not know what that logic is . It is un English. I do not like it .

Anyway if I have the time I may gather my thoughts together on my own occasional blog . I know the conlusion

Two fundamental problems with that one. First is an attribution error.

Similar to many who are strongly partisan, you assume that I favour STV because I am a Lib Dem, the opposite is true–the blog I link to above was set up in 2005, I was persuaded to join the Lib Dems as a result of the strong case I was putting for reform, there are posts about that in Feb/March 2006. I’ve also made it very clear (including up thread here) that the current party structure came about because of the 1948 reforms, if we get STV, I’ll end up in a different party eventually, probably the Co-operative party if it demerges from Labour.

The second is that you believe STV to be some new, untried, created on paper thing. Wrong. It was used until 1948 for two English constituencies, has a strong precedent in this country, and is referred to occasionally as “the English system” as it’s a fundamentally English solution.

Your middle point is weird, the whole point of representative democracy is that we elect people to make decisions on our behalf. In that case, as a believer in representative democracy, I’d have suggested much earlier we elected someone to be in charge, I beliebe boats traditionally call such people Captains.

Even if a ote was taken for every decision, the idea you’d insist on driving onto rocks is utterly insane. Don’t belittle a serious debate by such stupidities, unlike many on this site I do you the complement of assuming you’re not a troll. Don’t act like one.

Do I detect a soupcon of hurt pride ? I am always amused when the wraith of young Winston appears on blog but try imagining you are talking to someone and not making the speech you practiced with a hair brush and jejune solemnity ( ..hint you ought to feeling a bit silly…. ) . You say such a boat is the constituency , I say it is also the country and I have this in common with many other people in their objections to removing a system that provides a clear choice and a strong government . ( Even if it is ‘democratic’ ), and has worked . That , as I say is only one objection , but if it was around in 1948 that’s ok ….Fascism also , Euthanasia Eugenic sterilisation , but you know best

Off shopping Matt , you will have to save the world single handed
tara

http://iznewmania.blogspot.com/2009/03/electoral-reform.html