Representation and Constituency Link

At the 2019 general election by First Past The Post (FPTP), 45.3% of voters (nearly half) voted AGAINST the candidate who became their MP.

In Sheffield Hallam, 65.3% (very nearly 2/3) voted AGAINST the Labour candidate who became their MP. Only 34.7% voted for the “winner”.

In Ynys Mon, 64.5% (nearly 2/3) voted AGAINST the Tory who became their MP. Only 35.5% voted for the “winner”.

In Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross, 62.8% (more than 3 out of 5) voted AGAINST the Lib Dem who became their MP. Only 37.2% voted for the “winner”.

So much for the constituency link under FPTP!

With Single Transferable Vote (STV) in 5-member constituencies, at least 83% (5 out of 6) of voters would vote for their MPs and no more than 17% (one in six) would vote against them.

Now that would be a constituency link!

Change of STV Action Oficers

We are very sorry that Peter Morley, who has been a loyal and helpful Officer for many years, has had to resign because of bad health. We are very grateful to him for all his past help and work.

We are delighted to announce that Keith Underhill has accepted our invitation to become an Officer. Keith is a former member of the Electoral Reform Society’s Council and is an experienced Returning Officer for STV elections.

Disproportional London

The next London Borough Council elections will be in May this year. The disproportionate results of the 2018 elections by F3PTP will give pause for thought and ammunition if you are writing to your MP or the press.  Without change, this year’s elections are unlikely to be any more democratic.

If you live in London, you can use this table to check how democratic your Council is.

In particular, consider 

• Kingston where the Lib Dems have 81% of the seats for only 49% of the votes;
• Kensington/Chelsea where the Conservatives have 72% of the seats for only 48% of the votes; and
• Tower Hamlets where Labour has 93% of the seats for only 42% of the votes.

These boroughs were established in 1964 so the four Councils, where the same party has been in power since 1964, have always been controlled by the same party.  That is even worse than the experience of national government.

Summary of London Borough Council Election Results in 2018

Council	Winning Party…	… which has been in power since	Vote %	Seats%
Barking/Dagenham	Labour	1964	74	100
Barnet	Tory	2002	44	60
Bexley	Tories	2006	50	75
Brent	Labour	2010	57	95
Bromley	Tories	2002	44	83
Camden	Labour	2010	47	80
Croydon	Labour	2014	44	58
Ealing	Labour	2010	51	83
Enfield	Labour	2010	49	73
Greenwich	Labour	1971	52	82
Hackney	Labour	2002	61	91
Hamm’smith/Fulham	Labour	2014	53	76
Haringey	Labour	1971	56	74
Harrow	Labour	2014	44	55
Havering	Tories	Hung	34	46
Hillingdon	Tories	2006	52	68
Hounslow	Labour	2010	52	85
Islington	Labour	2010	57	98
Kensington/Chelsea	Tories	1964	48	72
Kingston ‘on Thames	LibDems	2018	49	81
Lambeth	Labour	2006	51	90
Lewisham	Labour	2010	52	100
Merton	Labour	2014	44	57
Newham	Labour	1964	67	100
Redbridge	Labour	2014	55	81
Richmond ‘ Thames	LibDems	2018	45	72
Southwark	Labour	2010	52	78
Sutton	LibDems	1990	38	61
Tower Hamlets	Labour	2018	42	93
Waltham Forest	Labour	2010	51	77
Wandsworth	Tories	1978	38	55
Westminster	Tories	1964	42	68

David Green (a Council member of the Electoral Reform Society but acting personally) compiled this table from data extracted from Andrew Teale’s Local Elections Archive Project.

Communications Officer

STV Action is delighted to announce it has appointed Gareth Lewis, a maths tutor from Milton Keynes, as Communications Officer.

Gareth’s first task will be to review the STV Action website so, please message us if you have any suggestions to improve it.

Gareth set up the Facebook group, Make Seats Match Votes – www.facebook.com/groups/213803319205218 – and we hope that his appointment as an Officer of STV Action will lead to closer co-operation between the two.

Covid-19 and electoral reform

What can we learn for electoral reform from the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis?

Comments praising or criticising the Government on its handling of the crisis will be deleted.

Naturally, most Conservative MPs support the Government on this as they do on other issues.  If you are a Conservative voter who thinks the Government is mishandling the epidemic and you feel strongly about it at the next election but your MP supports the Government on this, you will have a dilemma with FPTP.  You won’t be able to vote against your MP without also voting against the Conservative Party, even though you may support it on other issues.

Some Conservative MPs have openly criticized the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.  If you are a Conservative voter who thinks the Government is handling the epidemic well but your MP is critical of the Government on this, and you feel strongly about it at the next election, you will have a dilemma with FPTP.  You won’t be able to vote against your MP without also voting against the Conservative Party.

Preferential voting, in the form of the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies, would solve the problem for both types of voter.  They would have a choice of Conservative candidates in the multi-member constituency and, without being disloyal to their party, they could give preference in their voting for the candidates whose views were closest to their own.

Does it matter which PR system we have?

There is a school of thought among some electoral reformers that any PR system would be better than FPTP, and so it would so far as party proportionality is concerned, but not necessarily in other ways.

In fact, party list and hybrid PR systems are worse than FPTP in terms of voter choice and safe seats for MPs. In effect, parties choose the MPs by putting the “yes” candidates at the top of the lists. Only multi-member STV avoids that.

Party list and hybrid PR systems are also worse than FPTP in terms of the constituency link.   There is no constituency link in pure list systems and, although there is one in hybrid systems, it is even weaker than the present FPTP link because there would still be only one MP per constituency and each constituency would be bigger.  With STV in multi-member constituencies, the proportion of MPs to constituents would remain as it is now, but there would be about five MPs for each multi-member constituency, so constituents would have a choice of MPs to approach and nearly every voter would have voted for at least one of them.

So far as non-party proportionality is concerned (e.g. on brexit or HS2), party list and hybrid PR systems are as disproportionate as FPTP.  STV in multi-member constituencies is the only system invented so far that can provide non-party proportionality in addition to party proportionality.

Constituency link and Effective Votes

In most FPTP constituencies, more people will have voted against, than for, the MP, so not much link for constituents there!  Even in a very safe seat, about 40% of the votes will have been against the MP.

With STV in two member constituencies (STV2), which is a little proportional, at least 67% of the final votes will elect an MP, so at least 67% of the voters can identify, and feel a link, with an MP.

With STV3, which is more proportional than STV2, at least 75% of the final votes will elect an MP.

With STV4, which is more proportional than STV3, at least 80% of the final votes will elect an MP.

With STV5, which is more proportional than STV4, at least 83% of the final votes will elect an MP.

With STV6, which is more proportional than STV5, at least 86% of the final votes will elect an MP.

With STV7, which is more proportional than STV6, at least 88% of the final votes will elect an MP.

With STV8, which is more proportional than STV7, at least 89% of the final votes will elect an MP.

The more MPs per STV constituency, the more proportional the result will be, the more people will feel a link with an MP they have helped to elect and the fewer wasted votes there will be, but the figures above show that the  law of diminishing returns applies to the proportion of effective votes, and very many MPs per constituency may lead to complaints about the number of candidates and the length of the ballot paper.

Conventional wisdom is that STV5 is about the right balance, and I think STV7 should be regarded as the maximum.

The Great Vote Robbery 2019

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Just look at these charts if you think First Past The Post voting is fair, democratic or efficient. It is unfair to parties but, more importantly, it is unfair to voters. It is self-evidently undemocratic. It is inefficient, because it does not produce the Parliament or Government, for which the people voted.

The charts are reproduced by kind permission of Professor Denis Mollison of Herriot-Watt University who created them from the BBC’s statistics.

The Speaker’s Seat

As the Speaker doesn’t participate in debates or ask questions in the House, his constituents sometimes feel unrepresented although he may raise their problems privately with Ministers. Because it is conventional for the main parties not to oppose the Speaker in elections, his constituents sometimes feel disenfranchised.

As is often the case, STV in multi-member constituencies offers a solution.

Ten points for PR

1. In 2011, voters preferred disproportionate FPTP to disproportionate AV, but they were not offered PR.

2. It is undemocratic for a party to govern the country with as few as 40% (sometimes fewer) of the votes.

3. FPTP is unfair on voters, because they don’t get the Parliament or Government they voted for.