I strongly believe we need a new political system in the UK.

I agree with all of this.

And referendums should be set with the need for a fairly large majority - at least 65% - before a massive change is imposed.

For people moaning about the two party system, how many parties do we need? One centre-left and one centre-right. Unless you're an extremist that's all we need. Smaller parties don't need to govern to get their policies implemented. Their more popular policies effectively get adopted by the main parties because the policies enjoy popular support. I'm referring to things like sensible green policies which presumably everyone supports - and Brexit, which you prefer to conveniently ignore even though it falls in to the same category! Let's remember that UKIP would have almost certainly been in government under PR - perhaps even the biggest party - or are we overlooking that because it doesn't fit the argument? Perhaps you've all forgotten how well UKIP did in the EU elections. Presumably everyone here welcomed that result because it was conducted using a PR system and that makes it good, right?

Just let it sink in that all people would be represented - even ones I strongly disagree with

It's arrogant to try and prevent some people from having their opinions heard by manipulation of the voting system - and actually probably leads to a growing support for reform who trade on the hard done by narratives

Society divided isn't a functioning happy society even if we have to talk to reform people we need a country that works for all.

But in a PR scenario that would have been impossible to resolve. We would have a 50/50 split.

I'd be staggered if the Lib Dems were in any position to make demands any time soon. More to the point, regardless of what their historical stance was, their current electoral strategy is geared around a ruthless exploitation of the FPTP system, and targeting specific seats.

That's why they're probably going to get ten times as many seats as Reform, conceivably even more than the Conservatives with far fewer votes. I can't see them making a big push for PR while the opposite is working so well for them.

It is interesting for of all the assemblies and parliaments founded in recent years - none have gone for FPTP.

London has a party vote as well as a constituency for GLA members (we used to have single transferrable vote for the mayor until the Tories got rid of it this year). So you get three votes - a vote for the mayor, a vote for the candidate for your constituency and a vote for a party.

The parties with the biggest proportions of the third vote get to nominate cross London assembly members.

The new voting system that was offered was, if anything, even worse than FPTP. People clearly don't even understand the drawbacks of FPTP - which, for example, gave Johnson a 80-seat majority based on the votes of just 30% of the electorate - so it is no surprise that they didn't understand the alternative being proposed.

There are several voting systems that are used across the Western world that are better alternatives, but in the UK there seems to be very limited knowledge that other systems successfully exist, what these systems are and how they might be better than FPTP. People in the UK seem to be totally unaware that only one of the 27 countries in the EU does not have some sort of proportional representation and are seemingly happy to accept that FPTP is the only system for the UK "because that's how we've always done it." The major political parties have no interest in PR because it would mean losing control of the cosy two-party duopoly.

If PR existed we would have had 80 UKIP MP’s in 2015 and about 24 Green MP’s. Just let that sink in.

Brexit, George Galloway, Nick Griffin are a few names that spring to mind.

The referendum should have had a threshold figure I.e. 70% before it's allowed. (I say this as a Brexiteer but feel the marginal win wasn't good enough to make such a huge decision.)

George Galloway getting a seat and Nick Griffin as a MEP- both extreme ideologies. Just imagine the chaos.

Then you have Labour wanting to give 16 year olds the vote, again it should be a referendum, not just change the voting system to what makes your party more likely to win.

I do understand that people are sick to death of the same mediocre choices but the reality of minority parties having a bigger presence, seems worse in my opinion.

I agree with PR. FPTP, in spite of its many vociferous advocates has had its day.

However, I won't sign the petition.

Nobody ever changed anything with an on-line petition.

If you want PR. Vote Lib-Dem. Hopefully with that fool Clegg gone, next time they won't fuck it up.

Also, fptp can lead to some real anomalies. Can't remember the year but one election Labour actually got more overall votes than the Tories but the tories won the most seats so formed the government !

I agree.

First Past The Post encourages broad-church parties which are effectively coalitions. The strength of our system is that you get to see the form of the coalition before you vote,

I would prefer some variety of PR but that is an interesting point.

The problem with our system is that if the candidate you didn’t vote for becomes the mp for your constituency then you can feel unrepresented and that can lead to so many people feeling disengaged. People feel their vote counted for nothing.

Remember, this is the level of desperation to cling to power that comes out when the topic of any sort of vote reform is remotely on the table.
Says it all.

AW thanks @Kendodd I would love to understand politics properly. But my brain can't quite get its self around it! Now admin... that's my area of expertise!

I don't think you're stupid at all!
In fact I think you're far from stupid as you're clever enough to ask if you don't know. People who are really stupid are the ones who don't ask, and just carry on not understanding something important.

Ahhh OK. Thank you.

And thank you @JudyWinagain that makes perfect sense

Maybe?
But I don't want the thread to derail, which it would...

First past the post

Country divided into areas

Each area can have one politician

They are elected based on the votes in that area

Sounds fair but is sensitive to where boundaries are so you get weird effects ( and boundaries are always being tweaked "for fairness") ( although the tweaks always seem to be in the interest of the party making them )

It is possible for a party to get a larger share of the overall vote and not have a majority

Whats happens in practise is a party get a relatively low share of the overall vote and have complete dominance in the parliament - you can form a government with less than half the country voting for you. 2017 43% Tory, 41% labour yet labour had no say in the policies that formed.

People who like this system say it leads to strong government as one party get to rule. They despise a "hung" parliament where no one party dominates

Others say our system leads to a weak government who get their own way unchallenged, don't need to work with people or different opinions to find a better solution that works for all - it's a macho dominanat way of running things

Many seats have so many of one voter that they are "safe" seats - if you don't support that party you may as well not vote

Alternatives involve proportional representation- in it simplest form if reform get 8% of the votes they get 8% of the seats - with their candidates ranked according to how many votes they got . That means everyone's vote matters

Although the uk establishment hates the idea it does work well in other countries and scotland has a form and germany

Here are the results of the UK 2015 election, with the percentage of votes. The party with the biggest percentage of votes wins. The Conservatives won with 36.9% of voters voting for them.
That means most voters didn’t vote for them. 63% didn’t want the conservatives to win.

CON 36.9%
LAB 30.4%
UKIP 12.6%
LD 7.9%
SNP 4.7%
GRN 3.8%

I wonder if you live in the country I live in that has Proportional Representation @Towerofsong ?

@Kendodd thank you for explaining. Please don't think I'm stupid. How does it work, as in how do they get such a strict percentage of votes...?

Surely a PR type system requires mandatory voting?

No. Mandatory voting is not required under PR. Why would it be? Voting or not voting is no more significant under PR or FPTP.

No way, the thought of extreme left& right parties and religious ones getting seats, makes my hair curl. How can you expect anything to get done, when there all coming out with some crackpot ideas and not agreeing on anything unless their policies are agreed too.

There's usually a threshold. For example, in Germany a party needs 5% of the national vote to qualify for representation under the second Party vote. An extreme party not meeting this would only get into a representative into parliament if they won a local constituency seat with a local majority in that constituency. The threshold ensures you don't get a long tail of extreme minority parties. The exception is when the extreme goes mainstream, such as is currently happening with the AfD. The burden of responsibility generally tempers the extremes when that happens - it's easy to have extreme policies when you're a minority with no responsibilities, much harder when they might crash the economy. Extremist parties generally get shut-out of coalitions.

You don't want PR or some different system, you want a government that benefits you, just like everyone else.

The Scottish Parliament is elected using PR. So please tell us in what ways the Scottish Parliament has provided all the advantages you cite. It hasn't.

By the way, we always have a coalition government in this country - always. How come? First Past The Post encourages broad-church parties which are effectively coalitions. The strength of our system is that you get to see the form of the coalition before you vote, not whatever gets cobbled together afterwards which may include extremists and deplorables to make up the numbers - a tiny minority then exerts influence disproportionate to their share of the vote.

The same thing happens under FPTP, but the disproportionate influence is instead wielded by mainstream politicians, not by extremists.

But that's not the real problem. Here's the real issue: Why do we vote? Partly to appoint governments. But also, much more importantly, to dismiss governments. And that's the problem with PR.

Under FPTP, relatively small changes in voter patterns lead to significant changes in the outcome. It's much easier to kick politicians out of office. Whereas, under PR you get several main parties each of whom can reliably count on 15-40% of the vote and you get decades of political deadlock. For the senior 'List' politicians it's a job for life. That's not democracy - it's actually patronage. They owe nothing to the voters because they can't be removed by the voters. It's why the extremists are taking over in Europe, because people are frustrated with more-of-the-same and no way to change it.

We need better politicians, not tinkering with a system that does it's job well - it makes politicians vulnerable at election time.

Winner take all is a better description.
You have one seat (constituency) five candidates. Four candidates get 19% of the votes each, one candidate gets 24% of the votes. That candidate wins 100% of the seat as only one MP is sent to parliament. Multiply this across the country you have a government with 100% of the power that only 24% of people voted for.