For electoral reform in UK general elections, AV+ (confused, well read on) (Politics)

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Product:	Politics
Date:	13/11/02 (276 review reads)
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Advantages: AV+ more proportional than current system, AV+ best all rounder system, Expand Voters choice

Disadvantages: Expensive to set up

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

Elections serve two main functions. The first is to decide who is to represent a local area or constituency, and the second is to decide the composition of the Commons among the political parties, from which the Government is formed. In terms either of finding the most popular candidate in a constituency or distributing seats among the parties, FPTP is not an efficient system.

Representation using the current electoral system, ‘first past the post’ causes many problems such as:

FPTP creates 'electoral deserts'. In Surrey and Dorset 25% of people voted Labour in 1997. There are no Labour MPs in those counties. In Scotland and Wales there are no Conservative MPs, despite 17.5% voting Conservative in Scotland and 19.6% in Wales in 1997. The views of supporters of these parties from these areas are therefore not represented at Westminster.

Safe seats are bad for democracy. They discourage people from voting at all. Safer seats have generally lower turnouts than marginal seats. Parties take them for granted, and the views of minorities and all but the supporters of the winning party are not represented.

Parties focus entirely on winning the votes of a few hundred thousand 'swing' voters in marginal constituencies.

FPTP prevents the development of new parties or those representing minority interests or groups.

Due to the factor that constituency parties can only choose one candidate, parties are not currently choosing female candidates or those from minority ethnic groups to fight 'winnable' seats. This reinforces the white, middle class, male profile of Parliament.

FPTP encourages people to vote tactically against a candidate
they dislike rather than positively for the candidate they do like. For example, in 1997 the widespread desire to oust the Conservatives led to a high degree of tactical voting by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters. This meant that the result was even more distorted and fewer Conservatives were elected than would have been the case without tactical voting on such a scale.

A government using the current electoral system, ‘first past the post’ causes many problems also such as:

Governments are normally elected on a minority of vote (43% for Labour in 1997) with a large parliamentary majority. This means they can effectively implement policies, however radical and unpopular policies, against the wishes of the majority of the electorate are also implemented e.g. Poll Tax, rail privatisation.

FPTP can produce odd election results. In 1951 the Conservatives won a majority of 17 seats having polled over 700,000 fewer votes (2.6%) than Labour. In February 1974 Labour formed a minority government having won 4 more seats but 200,000 fewer votes (0.8%) than the Conservatives.

When an election swings against the governing party, a large parliamentary majority exaggerates the result. Governments therefore concentrate on the short-term goal of winning as large a parliamentary majority as possible at the next election, rather than the needs of each constituency, or long-term national policies e.g. Pensions, transport etc.

Also FPTP does not necessarily deliver a stable government, evidence of this is from the last years of the Major.

Another factor is that although Governments often have large majorities this is not always true. From 1964-1966 and 1974-1979 and 1992-1997 governments had very small or no overall majority. In these cases coalition governments are more likely to occur as the governing party unites with a smaller party to increase its majority would be more likely to occur. But when coalitions are f
ormed, the smaller partners usually have less power than their larger colleagues do. A larger majority gives a party more power to exercise in areas such as legislation. But coalition governments can be fatal due to one main reason, which is both party’s most likely share different views that conflict with each other. In the extreme cases, parties will fight within the coalition partnership that leads to an isolation period where no government action is taken due to the weakness of the partnership, this could include such factors as no bills being passed.

As discussed above there is a range of problems with the FPTP electoral system. However there are many different electoral systems, which can be used. In fact, the possibilities are almost infinite. Alternative electoral systems include the AV system, SV system, and Additional Member System (AMS) and Proportional Representation (PR). There are now a number of different systems operating in the UK, for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London and elections to the European Parliament.

But the system that would provide the most effective change to electoral reform is the AV (alternative vote) electoral system, which represents the policies: the requirement for broad proportionality, the need for stable government, an extension of voter choice and the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies.

Under the AV+ system each elector has two votes, one for a local constituency and one for a local region. Each constituency would elect one MP, but on the ballot paper voters can rank candidates in order of preference (a system known as preferential voting). If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote then the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and voters' second preferences are redistributed among the other candidates. This process is continued until one candidate wins more than 50% of the vote. The factors above just implement the advantages to the AV
system, while there are even more advantages still to be discussed in the AV+ system. Pure AV does little about safe seats and electoral deserts. It is the regional top-up element of
AV+ which addresses this problem. Also AV can actually result in larger majorities than FPTP and could therefore be less proportional than FPTP. Plus pure AV will not assist the election of more women and minority ethnic candidates. While AV+ carries the benefit of solving all these problems and appeals to everyone. The AV+ system means regional MPs would be elected from regions based closely on counties and cities in order to make them recognisable to voters. Regions would elect either one or two MPs depending on their size. While each voter would cast one vote for a candidate from lists nominated by the parties or, if they did not/could not distinguish between candidates of the same party they could vote for a party instead.



Lord Jenkins (independent commission of voting system thought up this system which was built on the existing British traditions. Due to this factor, the effects of AV system would not be dramatic, and some changes would be gradual. But it would avoid many of the flaws inherent in FPTP outlined above.

The representative advantages to the AV+ system would be the following:

Voter choice will be increased with two votes and preferential voting for constituency MPs. This will more truly reflect how voters feel about different parties, and reduce the incentive for tactical or negative voting.

No MP will be elected on less than 50%+ of the vote. This means that candidates who more broadly represent the views of the voters will be elected.

Parties will not be able to take, as easily for granted seats where they poll more strongly, as voters will also be able to vote for a Top-up member in their region.

Supporters of parties in areas, which have been ‘electoral deserts’, will have some
rep
resentation at a regional level if they reach about 10% of the vote.

The government advantages to the AV+ system would be the following:

Parties would have to attract votes from a wider spectrum of the electorate, even in safe seats, because each elector would have two votes.

In the constituency ballot preferential voting could alter the result. A candidate with broader support than the candidate who won the highest number of first preference votes might be elected.

With AV+ parties are unlikely to suffer unjustified heavy losses of MPs and therefore have less incentive to change unnecessarily key public services like health and education, or give pre-election tax cuts. Instead, politicians will be able to take a longer-term view, providing a more stable environment in which public services can evolve.

Governments currently claim to have popular support for some policies despite commanding less than 50% of the votes at an election. Bad or unpopular legislation would be more difficult to push through under AV+, as backbench MPs and other parties would have more chance of altering legislation would.

All parties in my opinion would adapt to the AV+ system and foster it once they have seen the benefits. This includes parties such as the conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and nationalist parties.

Evidence of this is shown for the Conservative party since the FPTP has shown recent trends show that tactical voting against them by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters leaves them severely underrepresented in Parliament. In 1997 they received 30.7% of the vote but only 25% of the seats. This would not be the case with the AV+ system.

Evidence of this for the Labour is that the Labour has always found it difficult to gather a majority excluding the last two general elections and this would not be the case with the AV+ system.

While for the Liberal Democrats, the AV+ system offers the
m the prospect of representation in regions where they currently receive a high share of the vote, East Midlands or East Anglia yet have no MPs.

In conclusion if the AV+ system was to be implemented into the UK electoral system, I think it would benefit everyone including the general public and the parties up for election. Since it would also carry the benefits of reducing the focus on short-term election-winning policies by governments, a more proportional voting system will foster the stable economic environment which business and industry need to plan for the future.

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