I don't usually do politics on this blog, but I've decided to start doing so when I feel like doing so. The reason being that faith and politics shouldn't be separated in the Christian's life. The one should flow out of the other.
In May 2011 the people of the United Kingdom will vote in a referendum on whether to keep the present First-Past-The-Post voting system or to change to a system called "The Alternative Vote" which is a form of proportional representation.
Many people will no doubt be in favour of the change on the basis that the current system is unfair and many people's votes "don't count" under the present system as there are so many "safe" seats.
There are a number of points that could be made in response to this. The first thing is that it's simply not true that many people's votes don't count. Essentially that is the argument of the losers in any election. Fact is that more people wanted another candidate. All votes count. But not everyone wins. Secondly, there's a skewed way of looking at things going around as if so-called "safe seats" are predetermined to go to one party or another. That is not true either. A seat is only safe because a large number of real people exercise their democratic right to vote for the party that usually wins that particular seat. But there is nothing predetermined about who will win in a "safe seat". There is no reason a new political party could not make an impact under the first-past-the-post system. In 1900 there were hundreds of "safe" Conservative and Liberal seats and there were only two Labour MPs elected. By 1929 Labour were largest party in the Commons with 287 seats.
There's a lot of pro-PR propaganda around. To counter that, here's three good reasons why we should not vote for PR in this country, shown by three countries that have PR (all beginning with "I" as it happens):
1. Italy - It is almost inevitable under a PR system that we will have permanent coalition government. Italy has had over 60 governments in the 65 years since the end of the Second World War. PR has a tendency to produce unstable governments because they are always coalitions. By contrast, first-past-the-post tends to produce clear election results and a government with a clear mandate to implement its programme. A hung parliament under FPTP like happened in 2010 happens once in a generation; under PR it would be the result of EVERY election.
2. Israel - PR gives seats in parliament to small, extremist parties. Under PR we have already seen extreme left wing parties such as the Scottish Socialist Party elected to the Scottish Parliament. At the other extreme, PR for the House of Commons would almost certainly see a few BNP MPs elected. That's not all. Under PR, small parties thus elected achieve an unproportional amount of power. There are some countries where the third party (in the UK that would be the Liberal Democrats) with maybe 15-20% of the vote are permanently in government, alternately supporting whichever of the big two parties come first in an election.
3. Ireland - PR systems can be incredibly complicated. In Ireland they use the Single Transferable Vote. Most people cannot understand the intricate mathematical formulas that are required to work out exactly how votes are distributed and who is elected. The election result takes days to work out under STV. FPTP is easy to understand and usually delivers a clear result on election night itself.
I'll be voting "No" in the referedum next year.
Your objections to PR are answerable, but in the interest of time & space, I'll restrict myself to observing that AV is not, in fact, PR in any way, shape or form. It's simply a way of seeking a voter majority when the FPTP winner comes up short of a majority.
ReplyDeleteYou're right of course, AV isn't fully proportional. But then if it's no better, then presumably it isn't worth changing to it either?
ReplyDeleteAV is aimed at a different problem (it's no more proportional than FPTP).
ReplyDeleteThe idea is to let each voter rank their sincere favorite first, without having to make the strategic decision whether their favorite is really in the running. Any outright majority winner will still win, just as with FPTP, but when no candidate has a majority of first choices, AV will tend to find a majority by looking at contingent choices. (It can't guarantee a majority, of course, since there might not be a candidate that a majority vote for.)
I prefer PR myself; there are plenty of examples of countries where PR works just fine, and I think you might agree that Italy and Israel would not be very likely to solve their problems by moving to FPTP (look at the US!).
Ireland's STV system is overcomplicated, largely because it was established long enough ago that the counting logistics were the big problem to solve. By contrast, the STV rules used in Scotland are quite straightforward.
Hi 5SC,
ReplyDeleteRe Italy - Italian voters supported a referendum in 1993 that drastically reduced the proportionality of the results. Noiw they have Silvio Berlusconi as PM for life. You need a more recent example.
Re Israel - I'm not sure that any electoral system is going to help when 15-20% of the population are an ethnic and religious minority who consider themselves utterly alienated from the state and it's majority. I wouldn't say that FPTP performed much better in Northern Ireland under roughly analogous circumstances.
Re Ireland - as an Australian I must say I find this frequent British objection "But you have to count preferences and don't know the result on election night!" rather incongruous given that you chaps seem happy with 5-year terms (and with no extra deadline for postal votes). Australians usually know who the PM will be by the next working day (elections here are on a Saturday) and that's just for a 3-year term. Putting up with split votes, majority-detested MPs, and 43%-supported governments seems to me a high price to pay in return for knowing the PM's name for 1,826 days out of 1,826 in the maximum parliamentary term, when AV or even (going from Irish and Tasmanian experience) STV would reduce this to a minuscule 1,820 days out of 1,826...