An Idea For A New Voting System
The voting system needs a change. First Past the Post (FPTP) only works when you are electing one candidate because you are voting for them alone; your vote is not split three ways (PM, party, candidate). In proposing a new system, I think a fairer system will be better, it can be argued that in the current electoral system there is no relation between votes cast and seats gained. Nick Clegg has constantly been referring to Labour getting a majority of seats when only 1/3 of people voted for them. I am no expert but I think something along my proposal will be fairer, but it will make the system more complicated.
Separate National and Local Issues
The first thing I would change is to separate national and local issues. These two are related to each other; however, in a general election these two are sometimes indistinguishable. In a General Election, there would be two separate rounds of voting. In the first round, you vote on National issues and which party you want to form a government; the party with the majority of first choice votes wins that seat. In Round Two, local issues take prominence and you decide your MP from the party that has won a majority preference.
Already some people would argue that this will fail because it’s too complicated, makes the election longer and in this day and age any talk of a hung parliament is seen as dangerous. The reason I propose two rounds is to separate National and local issues, this is done to retain and strengthen the link between the MP and their constituent. For example, a candidate may only be elected because the people of a constituently like the party they represent. What happens if a constituent likes a perfectly good candidate, but the constituent would never vote for that party? This needs to be changed, especially in the light of the MPs expenses scandal and the low trust people have in politics.
The System in Practice
So how would this new system work? It’s essentially the alterative vote but with a slight difference. You still rank each candidate in order of preference e.g. 1-5, 1 being the candidate you most prefer to vote for and 5, the least preferable. However, the difference is that each number will be given points dependent on the number of candidates. For example, here is a sample ballot paper for choosing your party at a General Election (no way indicative of the author’s preference)
| Liberal Democrats | 3 |
| Labour | 2 |
| The Conservative Party | 1 |
| The Green Party | 5 |
| The UK Independence Party | 4 |
| The British National Party | 6 |
When this ballot paper has been collected, the Conservatives would have 6 points, Labour 5, Liberal Democrats 4 and so on. The winner would be the party who gets the most points.
Arguments Against This System
There are two arguments against this approach:
- It makes politics into an X-Factor type popularity contest
- It makes it more difficult to know how many votes a party/candidate received and there could be errors in counting.
In respect to the first, politics is already like a popularity contest because each party tries to appeal to you for your vote and may come up with populist policies. In response to the second argument, this difficulty is acknowledged and encouraged because the party/candidate hopefully will not take its support for granted, and it also lessens to an extent some of the complacency of certain MPs who are in safe seats with a large majority.
Potential Problems
A potential problem arises out of this points based system, what happens if two parties/candidates get the same number of points? How do we decide who has won? The first thing to do would look at each party/candidate and see which has received the highest number of 1s as a preference vote; this is similar to goal difference in the Premier League being a deciding factor in a team’s position.
Another problem is that it seems that this system does not allow room for independent MPs/parties in a general election, there is a problem here and this would have to be addressed. I can’t think of a real solution to this, especially given the large amount of non party based candidates. One way could be for an independent to state that they are part of an independent party e.g. they are standing for the “Independent Party of Bristol”, and then people can decide if they want that party to represent them. However, this would not apply to a by-election because it would be unfair for the ruling party to just place another candidate in place of someone who has died or resigned. In a by-election the people will be voting for an MP only, regardless of party.
Final Thoughts
This is just an idea, and I know that some people will be very resistant to the idea of changing the present electoral system due to its simplicity. However, with electoral reform finally being discussed (and a great length), it’s time to look at alternatives. Of course, changing any voting system is no easy task.
(Photo courtesy secretlondon123 @Flickr)
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