Posts Tagged ‘Electoral reform’
Electoral reform
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on July 2nd, 2010
“At no point in the last X years has anyone approached me and said: ‘We must have electoral reform’”.
This was a near verbatim quote on BBC Radio 4 this morning. Unfortunately, while it is a good way of suggesting that those of us who are in favour of electoral reform (replacement of our current voting system with one that reflects the people’s choices) are out of touch, it is a little dishonest.
For in that same period, he must have had people approach him and ask “Why did Labour get such a large majority of seats in government if they only received thirty-something percent of the votes?” Because if he hasn’t he must also be unique!
Electoral reform is a phrase that will miss most voters, so instead we must refer to next year’s referendum as an election on Fairer Votes. And who would like to cast a ballot against fairer votes?
I am pleased, incidentally, that Nick Clegg is about to announce the referendum date. It would have been easy for this to have been done later in the term, leaving insufficient time to implement the changes before the next general election. And if that were to happen, one could imagine the momentum being lost. Once more, a win for the coalition.
Electoral reform
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on February 7th, 2010
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 
