BBC (Tuesday): Election result raises PR demands

[Jack Rabbit]

From the BBC Online
Dated

Election result raises PR demands

Labour's election victory on the lowest share of the vote has fuelled fresh calls from campaigners for proportional representation to be brought in.

Tony Blair won a Commons majority of 67 despite Labour winning little more than a third of votes nationwide.

The Conservatives won the biggest share of votes in England but secured nearly 100 fewer English seats than Labour.

PR campaigners say the system is a "travesty" but its supporters argue it ensures stable government.

Read more.

[bennywhale]

1. Its about time

the two party politics that this type of sysem used to accomodate so well for the twentieth century is over.

I would consider putting my vote with a vatiety of parties if there was PR. It also encourages new parties and ensures if you want to get involved in party politics you don't have to sell your soul to one of the big two.

Its about time we saw the green in parliament. This isn't going to happen with the present system. Also, i may start a party. The anyone but Blair or the Tories party

[Jack Rabbit]

3. There are actually two election reforms that should be proposed

EDITED for clarity

The first is proportional representation (PR). This would set aside a number of seats in the legislative body to be allocated at large to different parties recieving over a certain perntage of the vote proportionally to the percentage of votes received. In the recent British elections, if there were an additional 200 at large seats over the 646 constituent seats, then Labour would have won about 80 of them, the Tories 74 and the Liberal Democrats 46.

The other reform is preferential voting, sometimes called instant runoff voting (IRV). In this method, the voter doesn't vote for just one candidate, but ranks a number of candidates by preference. Let's say in the British election the voter is asked to rank his first three choices. One could choose Liberal Democrats first, Labour second and Green third. The Liberal Democrats would tally three points, Labour two and the Greens one (the Tories are shut out). The candidate with the most points in this method wins.

IRV would have made a big difference in the French presidential election several years ago. LePen might have been the first choice of enough voters to get him into a runoff with Chirac, but he was the second choice of almost no one. In an IRV system, LePen would have finished well down in the running.

[bennywhale]

4. They use that

in the Welsh assembly don't they?

It would be enough to see off the BNP dickheads then.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Parties like the BNP would do poorly in an IRV system

It's a very good defense against extremist demagogues.

However, if proportional representation were based only on the number of first-choice votes, they might win an at large seat in a local election. Still, they would not be able to slip in because more sensible candidate (and that would include Tories, wouldn't it?) were splitting the vote, putting them "first past the post" with about 25%.

ON EDIT

I don't know anything about Welsh elections.

[tjwmason]

2. Whatever the result was they would raise P.R. demands

It doesn't mean that it's going to happen.