There has been plenty of comment recently deriding Gordon Brown for suddenly discovering electoral reform. The naive part of me allows me to believe that the expenses ‘scandal’ may have influenced his opinion slightly, but the alleged comments by Blair to Ashdown about Brown’s veto of electoral reform does make one wonder…
I have deliberately kept posts light of late because there are plenty of people commenting on these topics, and my lone voice would not normally add too much. In this case, though, I think it’s important to comment because the stakes are so high.
I am delighted that a more proportional system could be in place after the next election and I am delighted that, despite appropriate reservations (like that the proposals are not the best system and don’t go far enough), the Liberal Democrats are in favour of the proposals.
One thing does trouble me though. And it’s nonsense articles like this from the Times. There’s no way people would vote in the same way if there was ATV.
I suspect, for example, that more first votes would go to smaller parties like UKIP and the Cannabis Alliance. I suspect second choices would not follow the patterns that experts expect; as far as I am aware, pollsters do not actually check on second preferences routinely at the moment.
There are many people, I am sure, who do not bother to vote LibDem in Tory/Labour seats. And many people who don’t bother to vote Labour in LibDem/Tory seats. But there are probably a similar number who don’t vote for the smaller party because there’s no hope of them getting in. It is simply wrong to extrapolate from FPTP and add some unsupported assumptions RE: second-choices.
But electoral reform needs to happen before I can be proved right. Which I am 
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#1 by Colin Vane on February 7th, 2010 - 10:57 pm
I’m extremely worried here Gav – I agree with you! Under FPTP, tactical voting can only come into play in marginal seats. But even in the most marginal of seats, the majority of voters not supporting the “favourite” party could not bring themselves to cast their vote in favour of a third party. Alternatively, they just wouldn’t bother to vote at all.
Furthermore, if the research quoted in the Telegraph were correct, why wouldn’t the Labour party have adopted the AV system much sooner?
And while on the subject of electoral reform, can I express my abhorrence of the list system in which the people representing us are actually selected by party apparatchiks. Even in FPTP, a high proportion of people know who their MP is. How many know who their MEP is?
#2 by Gav on February 8th, 2010 - 10:04 pm
The list system is vile… PR as is done in England for EU elections is significantly flawed and the vote-for-a-party-not-a-person aspect of it is the most abhorrent.
As a colleague said to me today: how many people would have voted for the Cannabis Alliance as their first choice and left the Lib Dems, Labour or the Tories to second if they knew their vote wasn’t wasted? I would bet quite a few!
#3 by James Higham on February 13th, 2010 - 7:56 am
There seems to be a move towards a hung parliament in order to usher in the “reforms”.