its not democracy if snp and greens get the same votes but only 1green mp but 40 snp mps

[ljwales]

Just heard someone say this on the radio, I don't doubt it.

How can this be democracy? They must change to PR now we are not two party system.

Manatee

UKIP not doing well in the polls of late though, and I wonder how many people were prepared to vote for them in the EU elections because of the EU question, and would still want to vote for them in a Westminster election if they had a realistic chance of a serious wedge of seats. The EU elections had a fairly low turnout, and certainly where I am nobody was really discussing what the parties would do if elected. Of course UKIP probably do have a core of supporters who think they would be brilliant at running the UK, but as far as I can see they also have people who voted UKIP last year as a protest against the EU, but don't necessarily want UKIP running the UK.

Nope - still not getting it. The referendum was based on a Yes/No vote per person so a simple adding up of those, surely?

Yes it was. Sorry, I thought the,other person was saying that if the referendum had been carried out in the same way as a WM election then each constituency would have returned yes/no rather than each person and the result would have looked very different.

My preference for a fairer voting system would be for each MP to have voting power within parliament equal to the average number of votes their party received at the last general election. (There would probably have to be some sort of electronic voting to implement this, rather than the archaic procedures currently used.)

As now, the candidate with the most votes in any constituency would be its MP.

For every party mainstream enough to get at least one MP elected, their voting power in parliament (assuming all MPs voted the party line) would be exactly proportional to the number of votes the party received in the election, and not be related to the actual number of seats they won.

Had this been in place at the 2010 election:-
A Labour MP would have had 33K votes
A Conservative MP would have had 35K votes.
A Liberal Democrat MP would have had 120K votes,
The sole Green MP would have had 286K votes

One Liberal Democrat MP would have had the voting power of 3.6 Labour MPs, and the Green MP would have had power equivalent to 8.6 Labour MPs.

UKIP would have had no power, as they won no seats. The may do better in 2015.

From an individual voter point of view, the only wasted votes would be those cast for a party not mainstream enough to win even a single seat.

By "average number of votes their party received" I mean the average number of votes needed to elect a parties MP, i.e. total votes for the party divided by the number of MPs they got.

I think if SNP do get seat numbers predicted on the current predictions of share of vote PR arguments are overwhelming. This would give closer to 30 seats for them but not sure of effect for other parties. Also Scotland already has PR for Scottish Parliament. I think it is possible to argue for PR just for Scotland even. Anyway if I were a Lib / Dem I would be pushing for this as part of any coalition deal!

This has long been an issue with FPTP voting systems. I recall a few elections ago, someone did a comparison for the number of votes cast per MP elected. It was something like 100,000 per Tory 120,000 per labour and 5,000,000 per lib dem (that's my memory I accept time and the death of brain cells will have played havoc with what the correct figures were).

PR is the only fair way to go, but as the Lib Dems are the only party that want to change the voting system, then if they get elected under the current system, they will immediately change it and get voted out at the next election. If you were Tory or Labour leader, you would never agree to change the system that almost guarantees you power every 5 - 10 years.

The system for the Scottish Parliament was supposed to be designed to ensure that no party would easily win an overall majority. And yet for some bizarre / perverse voting, the last elections to the Scottish Parliament returned a majority vote. Who would have believed it?

I am not an SNP supporter, but I believe that the political system here is more engaging than it is across the UK. Voters in Scotland have shown that it is possible to have a system where your vote has an impact. So a majority voted for an SNP government, and yet a minority voted for a YES vote.

imo that is a victory for the voting public. And the referendum on change to the voting system in the UK showed how apathetic people are about their own influence in politics.

Thinking back to the AV referendum I can't remember a lot of discussion about it - certainly don't remember campaigning or canvassing locally. That's certainly changed now, and hopefully Scotland will continue to have a high turnout - 85% at the referendum compared to 50% in 2011. Although I was surprised that the EU elections had quite a low turnout, as the political heat here was rising at that stage of the year.

If the entire UK had high turnouts then the political map could change very significantly. And I know people will talk about safe seats and it not being worth it - I grew up in a safe Tory seat, which then became SNP and is now Labour. No idea how it will go this time. Things can change.

What worries more about 'full' pr is that it would see a rise in power of UKIP, BNP et al. The true 'toxic' parties.

I'm not a fan of BMP, but if people vote for them in mass they should get representation.

Also would make it easy to get in someone from the monster party, that can only be good and an improvement

We have PR her in Ireland, it's very complicated and has lead to unstable government in the past. We always have some kind of coalition and there have been governments held to ransom by independents who will only toe the line in exchange for some favour for their constituency.
I think it is fairer than FPRP though because constituencies return 3, 4 or even 5 TDs (MPs) so you can vote for the person rather than the party.
I think a system where the percentage of votes a party get equates to the percentage of seats in Parliament must be more representative of the people.

The only UKIP MPs so far are defectors from the Tories - having seen some of their candidates I imagine if they get into Parliament they may not do that good a job of representing their constituents and might not be re-elected. I also wonder how many people see UKIP/BNP (although my perception is that BNP support has massively fallen) as a protest vote - doubtless there would still be core support that would vote for them but I wonder how many would if they actually thought they would be elected?

There are different forms of PR though, we could have a process of examining those then voting on several choices?

So Jackieh what your saying is that some people should not get the representation they vote for? just because you don't like who they vote for.

That's not the way democracy works Jackie - if enough people vote for something or someone then, regardless of whether or not you agree with them, that vote should count.

I would prefer PR rather than FPTP for Westminster elections but I think if you're one of the people who voted to keep FPTP or didn't bother to vote in the recent ballot on this you can't complain for getting what you wanted. You had your chance for a different system and you wasted it. I agree AV isn't proper PR but it would have been a start.