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.

The parties could enfranchise the constituents by putting up candidates without opposing the Speaker. Each party would recommend its supporters to give their first preferences to the Speaker and their next preferences to the party’s candidates. Constituents would have a chance to vote, the Speaker would win overwhelmingly and the remaining seats would be distributed proportionally.

The constituents would also be represented in the House by active MPs who could represent them more openly than the Speaker could.

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.

Pros and Cons of PR

All PR systems have the pro that they are self-evidently fairer and better than FPTP in terms of proportionality between political parties, but

Ten faults with FPTP

I’ve posted ten faults of First Past The Post (Winner takes all) voting to the link below. Please tell me if you think of more faults.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/votingreformteam/?fb_dtsg_ag=AdzXVMjDjqGY3ffTNNeVTtfjPdnX8u0HL6CgvApoLNpziw%3AAdxe3-tBj3cyDRfFZoIlDBuOwn6ANB_x24SO76H2nf3AKg

The original is also in the Make Seats Match Votes facebook group, which I recommend to you.

Represent or Representative

Someone recently wrote on Facebook, “If you think, for example, that a rich white male can represent underprivileged women from ethnic minorities just as well as one of those women’s peers could, then you are very sadly mistaken.”

There would have been a tremendous outcry if she had reversed that and said an underprivileged woman from an ethnic minority could not represent rich white males. A well-paid, highly educated female barrister can represent an unemployed, badly educated man in court and parents can represent their children in many ways.

There seems to be confusion between

STV Technical

STV Action recommends you to join the new electoral reform Facebook group, STV Technical, if you are interested in the technicalities of STV, such as calculating quotas: http://www.facebook.com/groups/174665706660004/about. There’s no subscription.

STV Technical as an ally of, not a rival to, STV Action and other PR groups but a very dedicated one, focussing on the technicalities of STV and leaving the groups free to concentrate on campaigning.

Make Seats Match Votes

STV Action recommends you to join the new electoral reform Facebook group, Make Seats Match Votes (MSMV): http://www.facebook.com/groups/213803319205218. There’s no subscription.

Systems Recommendations

This post is based on information kindly supplied by Richard Lung.

The reports, where the politicians are their own referees – Hansard Society MPs, Labour Party Plant Commission; Jenkins Report (under secret Blair tutelage) – generally favour an Additional Member system.

The reports by independent referees generally favour STV: Kilbrandon, Kerley, Sunderland, Richard, McAllister, and the Councillors’ Commission. Also, the independent Citizens’ Assembly in British Columbia, Canada, recommended STV overwhelmingly.

Further, STV is slightly favoured by Arbuthnott (for Scottish Euro-elections), Helena Kennedy Power report, Tylor report (for House of Lords).

Systems comparison

Click on https://stvact.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/comparison-of-fptp-and-its-two-main-uk-challengers-2.pdf to see a comparison of FPTP and its two main UK challengers against a number of features. Decide for yourself which of the features listed are important to you, and see how the different systems compare.

Party proportionality isn’t everything

Lack of party proportionality is only one of the many defects of First Past The Post voting.

It has many more defects and most types of proportional presentation (PR) will not cure them but PR by Single Transferable Vote (STV) will cure them; e.g., lack of genuine voter choice at elections, safe seats leading to jobs for life, split votes, tactical voting, inability to vote against a candidate without voting against the party, lack of proportionality on non-party grounds.