Since I last rose the question if we vote for faces and cultural background these days more than political programmes, I asked my PA tutor Dr.Stephen Meredith to explain what the system of proportional representation contains. This system is used for elections in the European Parliament. It stands in contrast to the first past the post system which is currently used in Britain.
In the First-past-the-post system 614 constituencies all over the country elect their local MP and he only needs a simple majority to enter parliament and get one of the 614 representative seats. The party that has the most votes of these local MPs will form a government.
The positive part of this is that, because one of the two major parties - Labour or Tory - are most likely to get the most votes, and only a simple majority is needed, a strong government with a big majority of seats is formed, which doesn't need to enter a coalition with another party.
On the other hand there are Parties that literally suffer from this system always becoming the ungrateful fourth. Here is a nice example how this injustice can be explained comically
The Liberal Democrats for instance as you can see through this examples from 2005 do get a fair share of votes, but don't get any seats in Parliament for this.
Because of this it is relevant to question oneself whether the First-past-the-post system is really representative, since it represents the 42 per cent that voted for the Labour candidate but not the 58 per cent that voted for other parties.
Proportional Representation is a system that makes exactly this possible.
Depending if it is used with an open list or a closed list you are still be able to vote for characters that you trust.
With Proportional Representation the constituencies would be larger. Then you would vote for the party (with a closed list) and their programme and for every ten per cent of votes this party gets 1 seat in Parliament. This means that the unrepresented 20 per cent of the Liberal Democrats in the above given example would get two seats.
However since you vote for a party only with a closed list system you would have to read or inform yourself about the parties’ programmes rather than just voting a character.
And isn't it worth to invest this time since a face doesn't solve an economical crisis but a strong budget plan?
I do understand the need of people to vote for more than promises and plans and that they need a person to identify, just to make sure they have people in the government that are strong enough to hold on to their point.
With an open list system rather than letting the party set up the ranking list for their candidates, who will go to parliament depending on how many votes they get, people would be able to vote for a candidate of the party and this vote would count for the party itself as well as move the particular candidate up in the ranking list.
With an open list system character voting wouldn't disappear but I do think that with a system like this more people might end up informing themselves about the actual political programmes of the various parties.
The Westminster or First-past-the-post system might form a strong government but if this government is only partially representative the question is whether we really want this or if it is time to rethink and change.
The Problem is that this system would have to pass through the House of Commons and House of Lords and with Labour and Tory snuggly and warm in their positions it is questionable whether this is possible.
It is estonishing how many videos, either of experts comments or citzen comments can be found on www.youtube.com
This map shows all the countries that use PR in the EU
Größere Kartenansicht
To see what people all over the world think I raised the question on www.askfivehundredpeople.com
To find out more about election systems used in Europe click here
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3 comments:
You said, "The positive part of this is that, because one of the two major parties - Labour or Tory - are most likely to get the most votes, and only a simple majority is needed, a strong government with a big majority of seats is formed, which doesn't need to enter a coalition with another party."
This is not "the positive part". It is the problem that needs to be solved. First-past-the-post typically gives a party with 40% of the votes 60% of the seats and 100% of the power. So one political party gets absolute power, even though most people voted against them.
That's why we are all so pissed off at the government. Government policy doesn't follow the will of the people because we don't get the government we voted for.
If you had read on you would have read that I didn't say it was a good thing that only the Tory Party and the Labour party are able to form a government, but that I used this point only to illustrate that a government with a lot of seats is a stronger government and therefore doe not have to enter a colation. That is a positive part, for everyone who voted for this party because they only voted for them and not a colation. Please read on and you will find how many points there are that show what is on the other hand of this argument, proportional representation.
My point was not about parties. Apologists for the current system claim it is an advantage that fptp gives us strong, stable single-party governments. But this is in fact a weakness of the current system. Coalition governments are better. When they lose popular support, they fall apart and go away.
The stability of fptp is illusory. Winner-take-all actually generates arrogance and inflexibility. It gives us, not stability, but stagnation — governments we can't get rid of even after they fall into the basement of the opinion polls.
Our problems do not stem from the lack of a strong Government, but rather from the lack of a strong Opposition. Government should be accountable to Parliament. When one party has a phony majority, there is no accountability.
I'm quibbling with a small point here, but I agree with almost everything in your article, and thank you for posting it.
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