By: Reece Lingard, Student Voices writer
When it comes to political reform nothing seems quite as
confusing as electoral reform. There are multiple different systems that could
be implemented and all in many different categories. In this article I will try
and break it down and show you what reform might look like.
Let’s start with looking at what we have now. First Past The
Post (FPTP) is a majoritarian system. This basically means whoever wins the
most votes in a constituency wins. FPTP often delivers majority governments (2010
General Election being a recent exception) and as it requires party’s to have
concentrated support it keeps extremist parties like the English Democrats out
of power. Despite this FPTP does not make the number of seats proportional to
votes. For example at the 2015 General Election the SNP won 1,454,436 votes and
56 seats. UKIP won 3,881,099, however they won just one seat showing just how
disproportional the system is.
A different system would be Party List. Party List is a
proportional system (PR) meaning seats are proportional to the number of votes
a party gets. This system is already in use in the UK, but only for EU
Parliament elections. An example is let’s say there is a constituency with 100 000 people. The Lib Dems win 40% of the
vote (I know just run with it), so they are allocated 4 representatives for
that seat. The Greens also win 40%, so they also get 4 representatives. The
Tories, however win just 20%, so they only get two representatives. As you can see
this means seats become multi member constituencies and nationally will create
a more proportional result. PR systems do throw up a number of problems. One is
that having more than one representative will weaken an important MP
constituent link. Also PR systems make it virtually impossible for a single
party to win a majority creating Coalitions that may not be stable or keep the
largest party out of power.
However there is an alternative. As we can see both FPTP and
PR have bonus points. So, why not put both together? The Additional Member
System (AMS) uses both FPTP constituencies and PR constituencies, this means
the electorate will place one vote in their constituency and another for a
party list in their region. This system allows a more proportional result while
not having some of the quirks of PR and gives mostly majority governments
without the total unfairness of FPTP. There is also the advantage that we know
this system works as it’s used to elect MSPs in the Scottish parliament.
It was good to see Chuka Umunna last year with Jonathan
Reynolds press for AMS in the House of Commons. However with attention on
Europe and little appetite with the Tory’s for electoral reform the next
election will still be fought on FPTP. But if other parties stand on this issue
and show what changes will mean 2020 could be the last disproportional
election.
Meet the author:
Writer
I'm a college student from Sheffield studying Politics, History and Sociology. I'm a keen member of Labour and Progress and intend on campaigning for Britain to stay in the EU. Tw: @LingardReece.
We Need Electoral Reform, But How Do We Go About It?
Reviewed by Admin
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Very much an A Level politics piece
ReplyDeleteA great many European countries live under pretty well permanent Coalitions and seem none the worse for it. Not least among them is Germany, which is hardly a striking example of political instability. I'm not sure why we should be afraid of a PR system that led to our having to live with Coalitions.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not sure why we have to preserve the role of the MP as a constituency representative particularly. I'd quite like parliament to be concerned with national and international questions, with a significantly reinforced form of local government to deal with local and individual matters.
A far great problem with PR, for me, is that UKIP would end up with a substantial number of MPs. But that may just be the price we have to pay for a more democratic arrangement. If a fairer representation is what we need, we have to accept it even when it plays against us.