We need a voting system of proportional representation. Thoughts?

[KitKat1985]

Looking at the election voting statistics yesterday, what is really apparent again is that our 'first past the post' voting system is completely failing people versus a proportional representation system.

Look at the vote stats:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50779901?fbclid=IwAR1FshPtsgWymKc7aiYu2kLDL_zMvlUU8-GpB2xEwCyVUz9-o3sFQhyGCr8

In a nutshell, just over 43% of people voted conservative. If you combine the figures for people that voted Labour, Lib dem, SNP or Green you get nearly 50%. In a nutshell, that means the majority of people voted for left wing parties, and yet left wing politicians are now only now a minority in government. No wonder so many people were pissed off on results day. Hardly very democratic is it? Our current voting system is no longer fit for purpose now that multiple political parties can be voted for, and we should move to a system of proportional representation. Thoughts?

I agree that proportional representation in the Lords would be great. But there is a clash between voting locally and nationally when the MP is linked to an area.

Personally I think it shows that we need a widely appealing left party rather than splitting the left vote as electoral reform will not happen as the ones who are currently in power benefit most from the old system.

Nope.

The needs of different areas are fundamentally different - this election showed that. This is why we have local MPs who should understand their local constituents demographics and needs. For example London is so very different from much of the UK.

I live in rural North Yorkshire. York central is a very safe labour seat has been for all of my days. York outer (greenbelt / farming communities) is as blue as they come. The needs of York outer are very different from York central. We have two MPs who very clearly reflect and support and lobby for those different needs.

I agree Sunset. I said to DH when the general election was first announced that I wish the Lib Dems and Labour would have worked together to form a coalition as they would have had a better chance of beating the Tories that way. Frustratingly from the voting numbers, Labour and Lib Dems combined had more votes than the Tories did. If they had just worked together they may have won.

It would be a disaster IMO.

Nothing would ever get done.

One party would have the highest percentage but they would constantly have to negotiate with other parties to have a majority vote on something they wanted passed into law.

Parliament descends into endless ‘you scratch my back now, I’ll scratch yours later’.

Remember the Lib Dem’s and the University fees?
Voters will find the party they voted for agreeing to things they said they wouldn’t.
Voters will trust MPs even less ( if that’s possible )

No, in theory it's a good idea, but as twins and tans have said nothing will get done, plus it removes the local MP which then in itself removes direct accountability in a constituency.

God, it would be awful of politicians had to learn to compromise.

Totally agree. The make-up of Parliament does not at all reflect what people voted for. It is completely unrepresentative that the governance of the country is decided by decisions in only a minority of constituency seats. LDs for example got 11.5% of the vote share but have nowhere near 11% of MPs (11 as opposed to 65ish).

Other European countries routinely use PR. It encourages consensus-building among political parties which is badly needed in the UK. As for local matters, we either need to build up stronger local government or create better links between local and national government. As I said, it is widely practised in many other places, so really should not be that difficult to implement.

Yeah I see your points. I can't help but feel there's got to be a better system out there though then the one we have now.

My constituency is Conservative and in true Tory heartland area. It's so soul destroying that every election about 30-40% of voters vote for other parties (so a significant minority) but our views go completely unheard every time because it's always a Conservative MP who wins. I think it's a lot of the reason people round here often just don't bother to vote at all.

Or you could use the D'hondt system like in European elections where there are still regional groupings but within that grouping votes are still allocated proportionally. It's not as representative as true PR but a darn sight better than FPTP.

I think it would be interesting if each candidate could put a brief description of themselves on the wall. Who they are, what they've done in the area what they plan to do, but not political party.
Then political parties are not mentioned on the ballot paper.

In our area you could put a soft toy as the party candidate and they would get elected. I rarely hear anyone say anything good about him (he's well known, you could almost call him infamous! ) but he still gets in with a massive majority.

And how did you all vote in the 2011 referendum we had on introducing an alternative voting system ?

We had a referendum on that and rejected it.

I totally agree that we need PR. We have it in the Scottish elections so we each have a local constituency MSP and there's a regional list too. The actual maths of the voting are complicated. but from a voter's point of view it's easy enough.

I voted for voting reform Pretty.

No, in theory it's a good idea, but as twins and tans have said nothing will get done, plus it removes the local MP which then in itself removes direct accountability in a constituency.

But PR doesn’t have to mean an end to local MPs and constituencies It just means bigger constituencies represented by more than one MP, so you might for example have a 3-seat constituency represented by two Tories and one Labour MP, more accurately representing the preferences of the electorate in that area. In Ireland we have PR-STV and the number of seats each party gets is broadly in line with the vote share. In the UK the two things are completely divorced.

Living in a permanently swinging seat, I don't believe that at local level the party of the local mp matters when it comes to how well they serve their constituency,

What does matter more is that they live locally, both to help them understand issues and to be available

In terms of getting things done, I don't have the aversion to hung parliaments. I thinks that is project fear from the parties that will lose out. Yeah brexit shows the problem , but brexit itself and egos was the problem.

I think the current system of forcing politician to always toe a party line is harmful. If you can't even carry your party with you, you have a bad idea. It allows a few people to dictate the way forward. It removes any possibility of real innovative solutions. If the cabinet is united something tends to go through no matter what everyone else think really.

Also, the first past the post system forces a simplistic left // right two party state on us. The only way to avoid boris was to cooperate...to reduce down to a simple 2 way choice.

So we need a system of PR for the primary decision making part...a slightly enlarged, party diverse cabinet if you like?

So election as normal , get the main body of the parliament elected. Then the cabinet members are chosen , with each party getting to put forward a number of MPs based on their overall share of the vote. And votes in the house are always free votes.

The. Politicians learn new skills like listening, compromise, empathy and negotiation
?

Many people seem to have forgotten we had a ref on this and I wonder whether it was deliberately poorly promoted.
It was lumped in with the local elections and I expect many people turned up at the ballot box with surprise at being presented with another paper. Consequently they didn’t have time to consider it so went with “no”.

I agree that we should have proportional representation. I also agree that many people seem unaware of the 2011 referendum on this and I blame the media coverage at the time.

You have the wrong stick. The voting system is proportional and good. The outcome was because you have a multi-party system. A vote for Labour is not a vote for Lib Dem or Green. They are separate parties.
And Lib Dems are more centrist than left wing.

The referendum was on AV which is not true PR and was rushed through
by the Tories as it was a sop to the LD coalition, without a decent information campaign.

it removes the local MP which then in itself removes direct accountability in a constituency.

I’m always baffled by the ignorance on this. Britain’s closest neighbour uses PRSTV, and TDS (MPs) there retain extremely strong local constituency links.

We have a single transferable vote system in Ireland, that facilitates a version of PR better since most voters are counted even if their first preference candidate is eliminated early in the count. Having attended counts many times I will say the system is a bitch to administer compared with first past the post but gives a much much more representative Parliament.

Oh and we absolutely have regular and easy contact with our TDs this year I’ve spoken to many of them trying to get an issue resolved. That is definitely not an issue.

The votes per MP are interesting.

Conservatives 38,304
Labour 50,649
Liberal Democrats 331,226
SNP - 25,883
Greens - 865,697

The Lib Dems increased their vote share and lost an MP.

I think that a more balanced Parliament would lead to more cross party working and more negotiations.

There are better voting systems out there that other countries use.

The referendum was a joke - I think that Labour should stand on a manifesto that says there will be a change. No referendum on it - just a change to the system.

PR would have been great here in Scotland. The SNP would only have got a measly 25 seats instead of 48!
Their vote share actually dropped from 50% to 45%, but they gained extra seats. Very unfair.

No. FPTP is unfair and unreflective of the country as a whole, which is why it's much better than PR. It keeps people engaged, prevents machine politics to an extent, and keeps politicians on their toes.