Proportional Representation

[miss_s_b]

While I welcome the fact that PR has suddenly become sexy again, I think people need to be more precise when they are talking about it. There are many forms of PR, and not all of them will have the desired effects. As Mark Reckons's famouse graph shows, the correlation is between safe seats and corruption. A system that doesn't remove safe seats is therefore in the interests of the two main parties, who will do anything to preserve the status quo, where they retain as much of the power as possible, and not in the interests of the electorate.

Resist the siren call of party list systems, which are used in the London Assembly, and simply embed the power of the parties. Nothing but STV in multi-member constituencies will do. STV abolishes safe seats, maintains the constituency link, and means that you can vote for one candidate from a party, but not another from the same party. Like constitutional monarchy, it's the worst system, apart from all the others.

And lest anyone think I am saying this out of mere partisanship: thanks to Chris Rennard, our party is actually best geared up to fighting FPTP elections, and would likely LOSE seats if STV came in. But as Liberals, we put principles over self interest. Yes, I know, it sounds unbelievable, doesn't it? But it's true.

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Comments

[andrewducker]

Why would you want to "maintain" it?

Me? I don't. But a fair chunk of people I've talked to about voting systems _do_.

Multi-member constituencies strengthen the constituency link
At the cost of a much bigger constituency - which some people don't like. They want a local MP, for local people.

This may not be important to you, but it's important to some people - and it's as valid a design decision as any other. Hence the original comment about "the desired effects" varying from person to person, and not being something you can assume are shared values.

[matgb]

A lot of people, including a lot of Conservatives, seem to think that the current link is perpetual and has always been there.

When you point out that constituencies used to be based on natural community boundaries like counties, cities and boroughs and that this worked well for 500ish years, they frequently rethink it.

I don't ever assume shared values on the whole thing—my 'desired effect' is a HoC that is broadly representative of the nation, witha mixture of types of politician, ranging from careerists through to change-of-career short termists and a few other types in between, it also needs more women, more minorities, more geeks, more younger people, and less over-educated people whose parents were upper-middle class.

I'd also like to always know one of my MPs at least got my vote, mutli member seats do that; I tend to point to Cornwall as the example, all the MPs are Lib Dems, but they don't get even half the vote last time I looked.

And trust me on this one, if you live in an area like Calder Valley, your MP is covering a big area already, you can only get a really local MP in larger cities. Plus, half of South Devon would like Adrian as their MP, most of them think he already is anyway.

The reason I spend time talking through the constituency link issue is to improve the way I answer the point, it is most peoples biggest objection (and was specifically written into the terms of reference for Jenkins hence the mess that was produces), so it's worth talkng through.