Jack Straw kneels before Queen Elizabeth with the Duke of Edinburgh next to her in the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament
Voting reform: Brown's timid window dressing
by Andrew Weir - 14th June 2009
In the wake of the political scandals of the last few weeks, Gordon Brown has just announced a "reform" of the British constitution.
It certainly needs reforming.
Most of the British constitution is an archaic mess, full of feudal holdovers,
arcane customs, and of course literally crowned with the unelected
monarch at the top of the pile.
One element of the proposed reform has attracted particular attention: reform of the system of election of MPs.
Almost any reform would be better than the current system, first-past-the-post: put a cross in a box, candidate with the most votes (but not necessarily more than half the votes) wins.
This is the system that allowed the Labour Party 55% of the seats in parliament on 35% of the popular vote at the last Westminster election and inflicted 18 years of the Thatcher government on Scotland.
But the reform that has been widely suggested - the "alternative
vote" system - is perhaps the weakest change that could
be made.
Far from being proportional and reflecting the views of the voters, it
actually benefits and entrenches the position of the two big parties.
Under the form most often proposed - "supplementary vote", the system used to elect mayors in England including the London mayor - the voter gets two votes, a first preference and a second preference.
The first preferences are counted, and if no candidate gets a majority of the votes, all candidates except the top two vote-getters are eliminated. Any second preferences that were cast for those top two are then added to the totals, and the candidate with the most votes at this stage wins.
This system requires the voter to guess who's going to be in the top two in order not to waste their vote.
Things are improved a bit if the voter is allowed to express as many preferences as they wish, rather than just two; but even then the number of representatives a party gets in a parliament can be wildly out of sync with the votes it gets.
What democracy needs is a proportional system; one where the number of votes parties, lists, or individuals get is reflected in the number of seats they gain in the bodies they're elected to.
There are several systems of proportional representation already in
use throughout the UK. There are party-list systems, like the additional
member system in use for the devolved legislatures in Scotland and Wales.
In addition to members elected in individual constituencies, additional
members are elected from party lists on a regional basis to "top
up" the numbers of underrepresented parties.
A better system is the Single Transferable Vote, used in Scottish local
elections and in most elections in the north of Ireland, as well as in
many other bodies such as student unions (and in elections for the executive
committee of the SSP).
Under this system larger constituencies elect more than one representative;
the more representatives elected, the more proportional the result.
The voter receives a ballot listing all the hopeful candidates, and ranks
them 1, 2, 3... according to preference.
To be elected, a candidate has to reach a quota of
votes, calculated as the number of votes divided by one more that the
number of seats, plus one. (So, if a constituency elects seven MPs, an
MP needs to receive at least one-eighth of the votes cast, plus one.)
Candidates who reach the quota are declared elected; any votes surplus to the quota are redistributed to the next preference, and the votes are counted again. If at any point no candidate has reached the quota, then the lowest-placed candidate is eliminated, and all their votes are redistributed to the next preference.
The upshot of this system is that a constituency will elect members in a way that represents the spread of political opinion. Majority and minority viewpoints can all be expressed.
Socialists fight for democratic, republican reforms, such as proportional
representation, but also for representatives to only take the average
workers' wage, the abolition of the unelected House of Lords and the
abolition of the monarchy.
We do this because socialism, if it is anything, is rule by the people;
the fight for socialism is the fight for true democracy.