Posted on May 4th, 2010 in
UK Politics
With a hung parliament looming and the most likely out come being a coalition government with the Lib Dems being the king makers, what will the Lib Dems expect for their support?
Gordon Brown has already offered the Alternative Vote System, which isn’t a proportional representation form of voting system and is unlikely to be enough to secure the Liberal Democrats support if they find themselves in a position of power (maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity for the Lib Dems).
What the Liberal Democrats really want is true proportional representation in the form of the single transferable vote system.
What is the Single Transferable Vote?
The single transferable vote system is quite complicated, so I’ll try to simplify the description!
The current parliamentary constituencies would be changed to allow for multiple candidates to run an area, similar to what we see in local elections and the EU elections where we might see a mix of candidates running a constituency rather than just 1 MP.
Each voter ranks the list of candidates on their ballot paper in order of preference. For example if there are 5 candidates in an area:
Candidate A – 2
Candidate B – 1
Candidate C – 4
Candidate D – 3
Candidate E – 5
In the above example the voter wants Candidate B as their preferred candidate.
A formula is used to determine how many votes is needed for each candidate that will be elected for an area. The most commonly used formula is the Droop quota:
Valid Votes Cast (divided by) Seats to Fill + 1 = Votes Needed To Win 1 Seat
Example for a constituency with 80,000 votes cast and 3 seats available.
80,000 votes cast / 4 = 20,000 votes to gain 1 seat.
Candidates with the required 20,000 votes (in the example above) are immediately elected.
An elected candidate with more than the 20,000 votes has their extra votes transferred to their second choice on the ballot paper.
If no candidate has 20,000 votes, the candidate with the least votes is removed and their votes are redistributed to the other candidates (to the 2nd choice on the ballot paper)
This continues until 3 candidates have their 20,000 votes or there are only three candidates left in the count.
There are variations on the single transferable vote system, but the above is the basic idea.
What Would STV do to British Politics?
The single transferable vote system would transform parliament, we’d be highly unlikely to ever see another majority government.
With current polls showing the popular vote almost split 3 way we might expect to see the share of seats shared almost equally between the three main parties with the smaller parties gaining the odd seat.
My only real concern about this voting system is it would almost certainly result in BNP MPs, how many I don’t know. On the face of it having one BNP MP is bad, but 1 MP has no power in parliament and with the BNP only gaining 0.7% of the popular vote in 2005, I find it highly unlikely to see the BNP number of MPs being significant.
Have a few extremist MPs would be worth having a new system that resulted in a truly representative parliament. I don’t like the Green party or UKIP, but they hold views many in our society hold and it’s wrong not to have someone representing them in politics.
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45 responses to Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
Most PR systems, apart from the compensatory mixed ones, distribute representation to individuaks by using territorially defined districts, just like the ones presently used under “first-past-the post” rules.The only difference is that they have two or more seats attached to them [the number assigned is known as the "district magnitude".] The threshold for winning a seat in such a district is determined locally and depends on its district magnitude: the higher the magnitude, the lower the threshold an extremist or fringe candidate, like the BNP ones, would have to surpass in order to win a seat. A rule of thumb is: Threshold % = 1 / number of seats in the district plus 1. So, with nine seats assigned to a district such a candidate would need 10% or more of the vote cast in the district. By keeping the district magnitude relatively low, one can create local district thresholds that in most suituations effectively prevent the election of truly extremist candidates.
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
This is no “PR, it reads like Prof. Gerry Mander’s diary!!!
Why, oh why, do you want “proportionality”, but only to benefit a party the strength of the LibDems?
What a way to engineer an electoral system – bring on the referendum on AV, STV or SUV, whatever; IT WILL NOT PASS!!!
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
We don’t want extremist people in power.
Lets imagine the BNP had a uniform share of the popular vote across the country, so every area had 5% of people voting BNP.
If there’s 650 MPs and you think 5% (or 32 MPs) should be BNP because countrywide they have 5% support, which 32 parliamentary constituencies where only 5% of the people in those areas voted BNP should have a BNP MP?
Do you not think it’s completely undemocratic to force an MP on a particular area when only 5% of the people in that area voted BNP?
If you agree with me and feel it’s not fair, how do you propose having 32 BNP MPs in a fair way to all the electorate?
This is why there are a minimum number of votes needed before a candidate can gain a seat in the good PR systems used around the world.
David
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
This viewpoint smacks of arrogance.
Who decides who an extremist is?
If people vote for a candidate, they get to be represented by that candidate by a variety of mechanisms. One is First (or Furthest) Past The Post. Beat everyone else running in a smallish area, & represent them.
To call every alternative to this “PR” is actually misleading, since the moral argument is made on the grounds of proportionality, whereas only an altered majoritarian outcome is guaranteed. I could go further to highlight the contradictions in the logic of the Electoral Reform Society argument, but that’s for another post.
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
You didn’t answer the failings of what you want, how do we get a representative number of each parties candidates under PR without undemocratically forcing the smaller parties candidates on areas where the electorate only gave them under 5% (or even 10%) of the vote?
You can argue all you like that 5% of the popular vote should give a party 5% of the MPs and in principle I’d agree. Now you turn that into a working voting system that’s democratic?
If the BNP gained 5% (actually it was 1.9% or ~3.8% if they fielded 650 candidates and they gained similar support as the 317 candidates that they fielded in 2010) of the vote share where do the 30ish BNP MPs represent? I sure as hell don’t want one where I live!
David
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
David,
As I am completely against all that the BNP stand for, I would deeply regret them ever assuming a significant role in British politics or government.
It is in fact, one reason why I prefer FPTP to tinkering with the electoral system.
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I suspect the British liking for a single MP to represent both their community and individual interests is too greatly valued to accept either the Labour suggestion or the Liberal system as presented here. Equally we know there are many VERY good politicians in each party who are too good to loose but may not easily appeal to voters – look at the attempts of some of the best Labour politicians in this election. They tend to get put into ‘safe’ seats but remain at risk even in multi-member constituencies, perhaps greater risk.
Nevertheless there is case for PR but with say 550 first past the post constituencies, and 100 MPs chosen by parties and listed in order of the party’s preference to achieve PR on a National basis. BUT which nation? The Conservatives have a substantial overall majority in England, and if given this opportunity the Liberals fail to use it wisely England could more often than not have a Conservative majority even with PR. A Lib-Lab pact now would I suggest be unacceptable to the English people unless only English MPs can approve the equivalent of the Scottish Government’s powers in England.
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
As I understand it, the Libdems only want proportional representation for parties which get 15% or more of the national vote. In other words, they want it for themselves, but they don’t want it for anybody else! A typical half-measure! What would you expect of them? Half-hearted, wishy-washy, compromising, dithering, wavering, scared-to-go-all-the-way spineless liberalism.
For most of my lifetime the Liberals have been a tiny party, with less than 10% of the vote. When they were small, they advocated true proportional representation.
Now they are acting jumped-up and have watered down their policy to suit their rise in votes.
But how would the public really vote if we had genuine proportional representation, a system in which every vote counted and even 1% resulted in 6 MPs?
That is very uncertain. The Libdems will never take that risk.
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
Where is my reply on this site?
If you want to see a really good and fair system of Proportional representation, go and look at the UKIP manifesto.
We’ve got the best, and it really is thought out. It would combine local representation with a fair number of MPs from right across the political spectrum.
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
All your recent comments were marked as SPAM by WordPress. Maybe you’ve had some comments on another WordPress site marked as SPAM by the owner and Akismet (the WordPress plugin that automates SPAM removal) now recognises your email address as a SPAMMER.
Not saying you are a SPAMMER, I didn’t see anything wrong with your comments so pulled them out the SPAM folder and approved them. Akismet can also make mistakes.
If you find this happens a lot on other WordPress sites I’d change the email address you use for commenting. The email address isn’t used on a site like this anyway, it’s only important if you have to register to comment (fake email addresses work here :-)).
If your comments don’t show up right away as long as they aren’t SPAM I’ll recover them as I check the SPAM folder several times a day.
David
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
At the moment al the big “mioan” parties are widely despised, aren’t they?
They all showed up shamefully in the expenses scandal. They took massive amounts of illegal fuinding from non-doms, criminals and tax exiles to fund their election campaigns. They are all lying about the financial mess they have got us into, weighed down with debt and with the EU bleeding our economy dry.
It’s time to let some of those unorthodox non-conformist parties in to power and provide some meaningful choice for the electorate. Without it, the whole election is a sham.
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
The only reason why UKIP and the BNP and other smaller parties didn’t get caught out in the expenses scandal is they don’t have any MPs to be caught out. UKIP and BNP MEPs and councillors have been caught out on similar things though, so they are no less selfish as the other parties.
The whole expenses system was bound to fail in this way since the whole premise was MPs can claim for anything they want as the expenses are a replacement for MPs wage increases because the British people already think MPs are paid too much.
Rather than giving MPs a wage like £80K plus a year they gave them £64K a year plus £20K+ expenses which the vast majority of MPs took in full (or very close to full).
It really makes me laugh that multimillionaires like David Cameron complained at the expenses scandal when if you asked a person in the street if you were a multi-millionaire MP (like David Cameron) would you take a £64K (£120K if a minister) wage packet and claim £20K expenses on your mansion of a home and then argue for changes to the expenses system that you didn’t really need in the first place, but took full advantage of because you could, would that be the actions of a fair/honest person?
I think most people who have lived modest lives wouldn’t act that way. I certainly wouldn’t claim expenses as an MP if I was a multi-millionaire, it sends the wrong message.
David
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
PR is NOT the way forward. I have been reading up about it and it seems to be so complicated “God Knows Where my vote will go”. At least with first past the post I know where my vote went and If the candidate that I voted for Won or Lost.
LEAVE WELL ALONE!
First past the post is easy to understand.Also I understand that with PR there is more likelyhood of a Hung Parliament. Look at this Fiasco. Do we really want this every election?. I Think Not!
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Proportional Representation : The Single Transferable Vote
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