Democracy and Voting Systems

So, at our current stage of evolution we need some sort of leadership / authority / control / government to keep society in order. And surely the most acceptable kind of governance is one that the people themselves choose. Simple, right?

Not necessarily. In actuality there are numerous ways of implementing democracy, each of which is capable of producing vastly differing results in practice. So the issue becomes one of selecting the best (or more realistically least bad) system.

For centuries Great Britain has used a system known as first past the post. The country is divided into a number of constituencies (currently 650) of roughly equal population. Each constituency holds a ballot to elect a member of parliament, with the candidate gaining the highest number of votes being elected.

The problems with this are:

• It inherently favors the big parties, namely the big 2 - Tories & Labour, ie in the 2010 election the Tories got 36% of votes but over 47% of seats, Labour got 29% of votes but nearly 40% of seats.
  
• It discriminates against smaller parties, eg Liberals got 23% of votes but just 9% of seats, other smaller parties are left completely unrepresented though earning sufficient proportion of votes for at least a single seat and thus a voice in parliament.
• It tends to produce majority governments from a minority of votes. This time around is a welcome exception from the usual situation in which a party with monority support is able to impose its will upon the majority that didn't support it. Hardly democratic, and a recipe for resentment.
• Elections tend to be decided by the relatively small number of floating voters in so-called marginal seats in which support is close enough to change hands depending on voters moods at polliing time. Voters in many safe seats, of various parties, are essentuially disenfranchised as their vote makes little difference as these seats are always held by a single party with a large majority.
• The proportion of parliamentrayy seats does not match the proportion of votes cast for each party.
  

Supporters of the current system argue it leads to "stable" government, albeit unsupported by the majority! Those countries operating proportional representation, in which votes cast are proportionally represented in the legislative assembly often rely on coalition governments of similar-minded parties. These generally function well and act as a check upon rash extremism. It's important also to allow non-partisan independents to gain election should they attract sufficient support.

A further argument in favor is that citizens have a recognized representative that they may petition (regardless of personal part support). Any fairer system should retain one or more recognized representatives for every individual.

A welcome effect of the current hung parliament is that it has forced the issue of voting reform onto the agenda as both major parties sought deals with the Liberals. The result is that we have been promised a referendum on something called the alternative vote system, first proposed by Gordon Brown at last year's Labour conference.

As I understand it, the alternative vote means that instead of simply pacing an X by their candidate of choice, voters in each constituency rank candidantes in order of preference. If no candidate wins the first choice, then second choice preferences are taken into account, and so on until one candidate gains the support of at least 50% of voters. Alternative vote at least ensures each MP has majority support and goes a little way to ensuring fairer representation of society by parliament.

A fairer system yet is proportional representation, PR, in which the proportion of seats in parliament matches the proportion of votes cast for each party.

Given the current climate the British should welcome the opportunity to reform the flawed system with whcih they have been handicapped for ages and to embrace the alternative vote. However, this should not be viewed as an end, but rather as a step along a journey towards true democracy.

Take Back Parliament - Campaign for a fair voting system. This Parliament does not represent us. We demand fair votes now. There must never again be an election under this broken system.

BBC - Q&A: Electoral reform and proportional representation