Losing Democracy Home Page

My brain can't handle voting reform

uksnapper

Still no space for "Non of the above" meaning we will still have to have someone we may think is unsuitable! Regardless of the system we still elect a dictator style government even if only for a single term. That will continue until we abolish the party whip system and let all MPs vote the way they and their electorate feel is best for the country. Its a simple concept but one which no ruling party would want because they would not get their own self serving way. Party politics is so yesterday.

OlderIsWiser.com

AV is the meagre sop Nick Clegg got in exchange for his party's soul. It neither works nor will be introduced, but is primarily there to save the DPM his blushes for throwing his lot in with the Tories. In practice, though, a defeat over AV will simply confirm what we already know about this loser.

jaystar 14 hours ago

Regardless of the outcome of the referendum, we need a better electoral system. AV may be better than FPTP, but it’s not good enough. Every voter should know that when they go out to vote their vote will make a difference to the election result. Election of the MP should be based on the merit of the candidate, not a consequence of wearing the right rosette. It should be uncomplicated, use the existing single member constituencies, employ simple voting and counting, and result in PR Government. Direct Party and Representative Voting – Google ‘DPR Voting’

Ind  20 Apr 2011

DPR Voting

Nick Clegg outlines plans for electoral reform

"We have a fractured democracy, where some people's votes count and other people's votes don't count"

In a wide-ranging statement, Mr Clegg confirmed the government planned to introduce legislation for five-year fixed term parliaments and to hold a referendum next May on changing the Westminster voting system from first-past-the-post to the Alternative Vote (AV), where candidates are ranked in order of preference.

If plans get through Parliament, it would mean the next general election would be held on 7 May 2015 and the number of MPs would be reduced by 50 to 600.

The Boundary Commission would be asked to redraw the constituency map, so each has roughly the same number of voters, by the end of 2013 - allowing new constituencies to be used in the 2015 general election ...

BBC NEWS  05 July 2010    

Prescott call to fight 'poisonous' vote reform

May date gets cross-party challenge

Clegg unveils voting and constituency reforms

Nick Clegg unveils election reform plans

Anger over Clegg’s electoral reform plans

Electoral Reform

New Politics: Nick Clegg's speech on constitutional reform

"The biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832" (?!)

The ITN News - 18:30 19 May 2010 - reported this speech in the most perverse manner.

First it asserted there would less CCTV, and second, suggested that the use of DNA might be restricted.

Clegg's speech supports neither distortion.

“So there will be no ID card scheme.

“No national identity register, no second generation biometric passports.

“We won’t hold your internet and email records when there is just no reason to do so.

“CCTV will be properly regulated, as will the DNA database, with restrictions on the storage of innocent people’s DNA.

“And we will end practices that risk making Britain a place where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question.

“There will be no ContactPoint children’s database.

“Schools will not take children’s fingerprints without even asking their parent’s consent.”

...

“This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state.

“That values debate, that is unafraid of dissent.

“That’s why we’ll remove limits on the rights to peaceful protest.

“It’s why we’ll review libel laws so that we can better protect freedom of speech.

“And as we tear through the statute book, we’ll do something no government ever has:

“We will ask you which laws you think should go.

“Because thousands of criminal offences were created under the previous government ...

Liberal Democrats  19 May 2010

PROPOSED REFORMS

Elected House of Lords
Scrapping the ID card scheme and the national identity register
Libel to be reviewed to protect freedom of speech
Limits on the rights to peaceful protest to be removed
Scrapping the ContactPoint database of 11 million under-18s

BBC NEWS  19 May 2010

Reduce and equalise?

Hospitals more likely to close in safe seats

The report by academics at the London School of Economics (LSE) shows that there is a far higher concentration of hospitals in politically sensitive areas “where no one wants to be blamed for hospital closure” than in areas where the Government enjoys a comfortable majority ...

The study, which looked at 100 hospitals, disclosed that patients taken to well managed hospitals after a heart attack were significantly more likely to survive.

It found that management scores in NHS hospitals were generally lower than in the private sector, including in the manufacturing and retail industries as well as in private hospitals.

Hospitals managed by executives with no clinical experience perform worse than those where doctors and nurses are promoted to senior management positions, according to the report, which will be published this week in the journal Centrepiece.

“People management” was particularly bad in the NHS, the report said.

In one institution, an NHS manager who was asked whether staff often ended up doing the wrong sort of work for their skill level said: “You mean like doctors doing nurses’ jobs and nurses doing porter jobs? Yeah, all the time. Last week, we had to get the healthier patients to push around the beds for the sicker patients.” ...

Telegraph  15 Feb 2010        Election 2010

MPs back referendum on voting system reform

MPs vote 365 to 187 in favour of move to ask the public to decide whether first-past-the-post system should be scrapped ...

joseph1832
9 Feb 2010, 10:13PM

On Jackie Ashley's figures, in 1997 with AV, the Tories would have had 70 seats and the Lib Dems 115. Yet the Tories would have had 31% of the vote to the Lib Dems 17%. It is not selfish to protest at such a system - it leads to greater extremes than FPTP.

It only notionally makes everyone's vote count. A Labour supporter in the Home Counties cannot contribute to a Labour victory, and in many places won't even get a second vote. To be anything other than Labour in much of Wales and the North is to be disenfranchised.

So, it cures none of the problems with FPTP, but is likely to aid Labour.

And the Tories defend FPTP, even though it has exaggerated their defeats. And may well do so again.

There really is no electoral system without its vices. Most end up with everything coming down to a few swing voteers in the centre. In some places it comes down to whether loony extremists can cross the threshold to hold the balance of power.

But corruption is found in all systems. The system is not the problem - if by that we mean the constitutional mechanisms. It is the parties that are the route of corrupution - for obedience to party is the main qualification for politicians, and that corrupts democracy more than anything.

Guardian  09 Feb 2010

... a Liberal Democrat bid to include STV as the referendum option, rather than AV, was rejected by 476 votes to 69, government majority 407.

Guardian  09 Feb 2010    

Gordon Brown outlines proposals to ditch first-past-the-post voting

Gordon Brown has announced that he will seek parliamentary approval for a referendum to ditch the first-past-the-post voting system for Westminster elections ... he also confirmed that a draft Bill to create a democratically accountable House of Lords will be published within the next few weeks.

And he gave his backing to parliamentary reforms to give MPs more power over the running of the Commons, new avenues for public petitions to be submitted for debate in the House and the swifter release of official documents under Freedom of Information laws.

As part of moves towards the creation of a written constitution by the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta in 2015, Mr Brown announced that he had asked Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell to codify the unwritten rules governing the operation of central government.

A separate working group will also identify the principles behind the constitutional relations between the state and the individual.

Amendments being tabled on Tuesday to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill are understood to provide for MPs to vote on whether a referendum should be held on the use of the Alternative Vote in Westminster elections ...

Mr Brown said that Britain faces a choice between "whether we advance towards a new politics, where individuals have more say and more control over their lives, or whether - by doing nothing or by design - we retreat into a discredited old politics, leaving power concentrated in the hands of the old elites" ...

Telegraph  02 Feb 2010    

Brown to campaign for voting reform referendum

A significant overhaul of electoral legislation to give voters a second vote, open polling stations at weekends and make it compulsory to participate is being proposed by the government to increase turnout and improve the legitimacy of the Commons.

Ministers will begin a consultation effort on the plan after local elections in May, and hope the measures will increase the authority of MPs and reduce voter disengagement. In the 2005 general election, only 61% of those eligible participated. Under the alternative voting system, ballot papers would allow for a second preference vote which would be redistributed from the lowest-scoring candidate's share until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.

News of the proposals came as Jack Straw, the justice secretary, prepares to publish a draft constitutional reform bill tomorrow, before a separate green paper on a British bill of rights and responsibilities and the opening of discussions on a statement of British values. ...

The Guardian 24 March 2008

Brown's Constitutional Reforms

12. A responsive electoral system – which offers voters a greater choice and diversity of parties and candidates – should be introduced for elections to the House of Commons, House of Lords and local councils in England and Wales to replace the first-past-the-post system.

13. The closed party list system should have no place in modern elections.

parliament.uk/commons 14 March 2006

The Single transferable vote (STV) is a system of preferential voting designed to minimize "wasted" votes and provide proportional representation while ensuring that votes are explicitly expressed for individual candidates rather than for party lists. It typically achieves this by using multi-seat constituencies (voting districts) and by transferring all votes that would otherwise be wasted to other eligible candidates. (STV can also be used with single-member constituencies, where it produces results similar to those of a two-round electoral system, rather than proportional representation.) STV initially allocates an elector's vote to his or her most preferred candidate and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, transfers surplus or unused votes according to the voters' stated preferences.

STV was pioneered in Tasmania, Australia, where it has been in constant use in the Tasmanian House of Assembly since the early 1900s. It is known as Hare-Clark, in recognition of Thomas Hare, who initially developed the system and the Tasmanian Attorney General, Andrew Inglis Clark, who worked hard to have a modified version introduced. Hare-Clark has been subsequently modified to allow for improvements, such as rotating ballot papers (the Robson Rotation). It is held up by its supporters, such as the Electoral Reform Society, as being the best and fairest electoral system in the world, though political parties have often been resistant to adopting it[citation needed] because it requires candidates to compete publicly with one another, which is felt by some party members to damage party cohesion. Supporters feel that it is entirely appropriate that candidates make the case for their own election directly to the public ...

Wiki

Electoral reform society

Elections for the Scottish Parliament were amongst the first in the United Kingdom to use a mixed member proportional representation (MMS) system.

The system is a form of the additional member method of proportional representation (PR), and is better known as such in the United Kingdom.

However, there are additional member systems, elsewhere in the world, which are not designed to produce proportional representation.

Of the 129 MSPs, 73 are elected to represent first past the post constituencies and are known as "Constituency MSPs".

Voters choose one member to represent the constituency, and the member with most votes is returned as a constituency MSP ...

The remaining 56 MSPs are elected by the additional member system.

In each Scottish Parliament election, electors have a second vote, where they vote for a party instead of a constituency representative.

These 56 are elected in eight different electoral regions, of which constituencies are sub-divisions.

Each region returns seven additional member MSPs.

Each political party draws up a list of candidates standing in each electoral region.

The total number of seats in the Parliament are allocated to parties proportionally to the number of votes the party received in the second vote of the ballot, calculated by dividing the number of "list" votes cast for a party by the number calculated from the number of constituency seats won in that region, plus the number of already-allocated "list" seats won in that region, plus one (to prevent division by zero), and the party with the largest number of votes remaining is allocated the first "list" seat.

This is repeated iteratively until all available "list" seats are allocated.

The number of seats remaining allocated to that party are filled using members from the party's list.

These members are called "List MSPs". If a List MSP resigns from the Scottish Parliament, he or she is replaced by the next member on the party list.

Members, constituencies and voting systems

Additional Member System

Parallel voting

Leveling seat

Mixed-Member Proportional Voting

Back to top      Home Page