There are many types of democratic system, and some are more democratic than others. One thing that can make a political system more or less democratic than another is the voting system.

The current British system, First Past The Post, is one of the less democratic systems. It encourages “tactical” voting, which means people aren’t voting for who they truly want to. Obviously a voting system which represents voters’ preferences less accurately than another is less democratic.

First Past The Post also has a bad influence on parties’ policies. It encourages a two-party system, reducing political competition and encouraging parties to seek the “middle ground”. By encouraging parties to focus on the small minority of “swing voters” that currently decide elections, FPTP gives voters less choice and less representation.

Instant-Runoff Voting

A simple improvement is to switch to Single Transferable Vote/Alternative Vote/Instant-Runoff Voting (all pretty much the same thing).

Under First Past The Post, a voter may live in a constituency which is expected to be won by party A or maybe party B. The voter really wants to vote for party C, but expects this will be a “wasted” vote. Also, the voter prefers party B to party A, and expects that if he votes for his true preference party C, his least favourite party, party A, will get in. So he votes “tactically” party B, his second choice.

Under Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV), the voters provide more information. They rank the candidates. So our voter ranks C 1, B 2 and A 3. When the votes are counted, party C is found to have the least votes. So it is removed, and our voter’s vote is reallocated to his second choice party. And so on. His least favourite party is less likely to get in, so his vote has had the effect on the outcome that it should have.

There are many different voting systems, and none are perfect, but IRV is undoubtedly an improvement over FPTP.

The change would be cheap and easy. We could even use the same ballot papers! Instead of marking a cross, voters would number the candidates. Another sensible change, however, would be to randomise the order of the candidates on each ballot paper.

If there were not better systems available then we should switch to IRV without hesitation.

But there are better systems.

(We certainly should not use “Supplementary Vote”, as used in Mayoral Elections in the UK. This is IRV where voters are only allowed to make two choices. There is no justification for this whatever and it simply converts a two party system into a three party system.)

Proportional Representation

It is sometimes said that MPs are becoming “little more than glorified social workers”. MPs are expected to deal with the problems of residents in their constituencies, when often this involves just referring them to a local level. Local issues should be sorted out on a local level. The job of MPs should be to make the law, not to campaign for subsidies to their particular area. The law should not favour one part of the country over another. MPs should not be impelled to campaign by promising to subsidise or otherwise support local industries. Therefore constituencies and constituency-specific representation in Parliament should be abolished.

Under Proportional Representation (PR), voters vote for parties, not persons. Seats are allocated to the candidates on an ordered party list in proportion with votes.

Sometimes PR is objected to because it breaks the geographical link, and constituencies are abolished. But that’s the whole point.

A stronger objection is that it gives undue control to parties and whips, allowing them to stifle independent voices. Under simple PR, the ordering of candidates on party lists is determined by the party insiders. The solution to this is to have some form of “open list”, where voters can also determine the order of any party’s list (this would not be compulsory), whether or not they then vote for that list.

Even if this objection were to hold up, it only means that party hierarchies will have more control over their parties. It entrenches party hierarchies, but it does not entrench the parties themselves. PR makes it possible for voters to desert a party overnight.

Another objection to PR is that it would abolish “independent” MPs. This is not necessarily the case. Candidates would certainly have to be a member of a party, which would need a list of more than one candidate in case they got enough votes to have more than one MP. But we should not require all parties to field 650 candidates. What to do if they get more seats than candidates? The solution is to allow voters to rank parties. If that party runs out of candidates, all their candidates are elected and the votes are allocated to the voters’ second choices, etc. If a party didn’t have enough votes to win any seats, those votes should be proportionally reallocated to the voters’ second choices, etc.

An advantage of PR is that abolishing constituencies removes the need for a Boundary Commission, removing another cause of unfairness in the electoral system. It has become a commonplace observation that the Labour Party can win the most seats in Parliament even if it gets fewer votes than the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. It has become so commonplace that the electoral system favours the Labour Party that no one seems to notice the scandalous unfairness of it any more.

The Boundary Commission tries to ameliorate this by redrawing constituency boundaries, but they are always out of date because people move out of Labour constituencies into Tory constituencies (I wonder why?). Abolishing constituencies would get rid of this problem altogether.

How would people communicate with MPs if they no longer had a local MP? http://www.writetothem.com/lords suggests picking one at random (functionally equivalent to the current system), or picking one who has an interest in a particular topic (which could be considered an improvement to the current system).

I am a recent convert to Proportional Representation. The argument that swung it for me concerned “wasted votes”. Under FPTP, it is possible for 25% of the votes to be for a party which does not win any seats. 25% of the voters effectively have no representation in parliament. Their votes are “wasted”.

IRV is an improvement on FPTP, but votes are in fact still “wasted” in the same manner. IRV eliminates tactical voting, but the above scenario is still possible. To get rid of this problem, constituencies must be abolished. Hence PR.

(We should not move to system for elections to the European Parliament, which uses separate party lists per “region”. There is no justification for this.)

Conclusion

If there is a hung parliament in the next election and the Prime Minister does not call another election, the Conservatives should attempt to make an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. The Labour Party is too dangerous to be allowed in government, ever, and we should feel happy to give the Liberal Democrats proportional representation in exchange for their support.