The ‘first past the post’ system is idiotic and undemocratic.
The Electoral Reform Society explain that 22 million votes were wasted at the election, and 0.0016% of voters switching their allegiance would have given the Conservatives a majority.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
The problem with our electoral system is the political parties and not ‘first past the post’.
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There are major problems with all the biggest political parties (tory, labour, lib dems), but these are at least partly due to our first past the post system.
In effect we have had a two party system for decades (labour v tory), even though the winning party never receives more than about 40% of votes.
If we had a PR system, smaller parties would gain some influence and the larger parties would have to adapt to what the general population wants or lose influence.
I also believe a PR system would increase voter turn-out, because there would be more incentive to vote. At the moment there is no point in a tory voting in a labour area, or a labourite voting in a tory area, except as some kind of largely ineffective protest.
Lib Dems used to favour an STV system, but they seem to have dropped any efforts to switch Britain to a PR system.
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‘If we had a PR system, smaller parties would gain some influence … ‘
Oh dear, here we go again. I struggle to be polite to proponents of PR, however, this is not my blog and I do not wish to trespass on our host’s tolerance so, yet again, I will make the case against PR.
Yes, smaller parties gain influence. However, they don’t gain ‘some’ influence, they gain considerable influence, too often disproportionately, so we end up with situations like that in Wales following the first elections to what is now called, I believe the WAG, in which the six (that’s 6) Welsh Lib Dems forced the largest political group, comprised of Labour AMs, twenty two (22) if I recall correctly, to make ninety two (92) manifesto concessions before they would agree to form an administration. The Lib Dems then crowed incessantly about what they had done for the people of Wales, yet few in Wales wanted them to do anything, which is why they didn’t vote for them. The same thing happened in Scotland. PR gives us permanent hung parliaments, such as we have now, where a relatively tiny number of voters in Northern Ireland (from a population of just 1.8 million) are in a position to dictate Britain’s EU exit terms and insist on a soft border, which is very definitely not what the fifty five million and more people of England thought they were voting for. I think most reasonable people would agree that assertions that such an outcome is in any sense ‘democratic’ are stretching credibility. All PR really achieves is to enable political minnows to swim in the big pond while absolving the big fish from responsibility for their actions.
PR also destroys the sense of connection between electors and elected.
The way to reform the present system is not to give ultimate power to unrepresentative or fringe minorities but to militate against the power of parties by making all MPs genuinely accountable to their constituents and independent of party whips. Serious and substantial reform of our present arrangements is long overdue but PR is not the way forward.
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I know what you mean William; I struggle to be polite to proponents of PR and of FPP. I’m for AD Actual Democracy, an alien concept to most I know, but stick with me and I’ll explain
how it works, …everyone gets to vote on everything at the national level and everything in their local area where no outsiders are allowed to force national agendas.
The only problem with the system is that the banksters will be forced to bribe over 50% of the population rather than just the few people who constitute the leadership of the two major parties to get their way and of course we will all be very sad if that happens, [snigger] …plus they’ll definitely kick and scream very hard with their MIC bed-fellows to convince everyone that Real Democracy is a bad idea and to shoot proponents of AD dead.
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Oh dear! How did you get to be so condescending?
I understand your arguments. I just do not agree with them.
In a PR system smaller parties do not get “gain considerable influence, too often disproportionately”.
You say 21% of the coalition in Wales (6/28) got 92 manifesto concessions from the 79% of Labour members. So what? Out of how many manifesto promises? Were they minor or major concessions? Labour would not agree to any concessions they were fundamentally opposed to, and if the general public of Wales were strongly opposed to the compromises they would protest. So would the press.
“yet few in Wales wanted them to do anything, which is why they didn’t vote for them”
This is not true – as explained in the electoral reform report. People vote tactically, and use several other strategies to game the system because voting for the party with the most policies they agree with is a wasted effort in a FPP system. (unless you happen to agree with almost everything said by one of the dominant parties, and you live in exactly the right area)
The situation we now have with the DUP/Tory alliance is the result of FPP, not PR. In a PR system the DUP would actually have less influence than they do now.
“PR also destroys the sense of connection between electors and elected.”
That depends on what PR system is used.
“making all MPs genuinely accountable to their constituents and independent of party whips”
That could be a good thing, but how do you make it happen? It could also lead to chaos, and lots of the concessions you do not appear to like. “You vote with me on issue A, and I will vote with you on issue B”, etc…
PR will not solve everything. It is just better than what we have now.
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You said “even though the winning party never receives more than about 40% of votes,” [I would add] …of the 60% or so who we’re told bother to turn up to the farce, so what we’re really talking about here is around 25% of eligible voters required for mandate.
I.e. it way worse than the picture you’ve painted here. I think you are dead right that proportional representation is superior to the current style of bankocracy, …mainly because the banksters would have to bribe more of us to keep up the con and believe me as a person who’s worked at conservative head office, they will continue to rule under PR.
With that in mind wouldn’t real democracy trump both FPP and PR forcing our rulers [the bankster/MIC shag fest] to bribe more than 50% of the entire voting population to keep getting their way?
I recommend AD [Actual Democracy aka every citizen gets to vote on every issue and enough of this middle-persons bullshit] as far superior to either PR or FPP.
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“[I would add] …of the 60% or so who we’re told bother to turn up to the farce, so what we’re really talking about here is around 25% of eligible voters required for mandate.”
True, but as I said, with a PR system I believe more people would vote, because their votes would count for something, regardless of where they live. So that would at least mitigate the problem.
AD is a nice idea, but I don’t think it is practical on the scale of even a small country like the UK.
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Why not? The local area has around 8000 voters per councillor, I don’t
see the difference between that and ancient Athens, except for the fact that
virtually unbreakable codes and computerization allows us far more convenience
and scalability.
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You said. “The problem with our electoral system is the political parties”, [I would add] …have been bought and paid for by very wealthy people who have license to print money i.e. to create wealth out of thin air for free and then charge the rest of us to borrow it, thereby enslaving us.
…Also that the whole political system treats voters like dumb idiots who need help to think and who couldn’t possibly figure out how to vote on issues for themselves without the aid of politicians. If the system had built in respect for the voter, the voter would be voting on the issues not some go-between to vote on his/her behalf. That goes for PR and FPP too.
Only AD Actual Democracy pays proper respect to the voter, the rest treat the voter like an idiot.
I used to call it Open Direct Government ODC 20 years ago as I speculated on a possible ideal, …call it what you want, we have the technology to cut out the insults, if only we could find the gumption to apply it.
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I have invented 2 new voting systems:
~ Alternative Candidate (AC),
~ 1-2-No-No (12NN).
I proposed AC to the ERS AGM in 2015, but they’re all mathematical STV bigots so they just didn’t understand the merits of AC and so voted it down.
1-2-No-No was my rethink to counter all objections.
I think we need an STV referendum with 3 options:
1. Leave as is (FPTP).
2. STV as recommended by the ERS.
3. Alternative Candidate (AC).
4. 1-2-No-No (12NN).
This will provide sufficient public discussion with STV as a real live example of a proportional system to talk about.
STV is mathematically precise and give proportionate voting, but the British people don’t like the complexity, nor the damaging of MP / constituency links.
With AC, each candidate nominates another candidate to get all of his votes in each case of a last place contender being eliminated. ERS bigots say that this give more power to the politicians and less to the people, when the reverse is true.
With AC, politicians having to declare their alliances will really change the nature of the debate from totally rubbishing all opposition to saying why another party is not too bad, which will raise the political awareness of the masses greatly, making decision-making easier and wiser.
It may be hard to understand why AC is the fairest system of them all if we want a representational government, which it IS, but it also preserves constituency links.
With 12NN there’s a first choice, a second choice and 2 negative votes, but only the first choice HAS to be used. The 2 negative votes are there to normalise the tactical negative voting that goes on in all elections anyway. This then frees voters up to choose their TRUE first and second choices.
My hope with 12NN is that saner people will eliminate both the Tories and Labour with their NO votes, creating a level playing field for more representational parties of any size, including micro-parties and independents.
And, 12NN, like AC, results in representational governments, which is even better than what results from proportional voting. And, 12NN also preserves the MP constituency link.
I think J4MB should join the ERM en masse and force through the above proposals, not for the sake of being serious, but also as a publicity stunt !!
PS ~ My ‘share’ button doesn’t work; please fix it !!
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Ah democracy, …invented by my mum’s Athenian side of the family so long ago and bearing absolutely nothing in common, but the name, with the bankocracies that plagiarize the good part of democracy’s name. …I grant that we had twice as many slaves as citizens in ancient Athens, but at least every individual that could claim to be a citizen [aren’t we in the UK still subjects?] had the status of an MP, i.e. every individual person had the right to vote on every issue.
IMO the only part than required reform was the slave aspect; instead we vote for middle-persons who more or less never do what they promised, because banksters and co. pay for all their leafleting. What a load of bollocks. I protest at the use of the word democracy to describe such a con!
Until we pay democracy it’s due respect, until we find the gumption and the energy to do our democratic duty, what we call democracy today in the opinion of this particular Greek, isn’t worth shit. …Shit, I know to at least be good fertilizer, bankocracy on the other hand is an advanced form of mafia, which unlike shit, takes all in payment for the poor carrots we are given as incentive to sell ourselves out.
…Believe it or not the Sicilians were originally a group of defecting Greeks who settled on the island, you know, the more honest second level type Mafiosi. …I think we all [IQ above 85] know who direct our bankocracies now, …don’t we?
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The problem with democracy is basically that groups of people who fundamentally disagree with a state’s policies cannot secede from that state. As well as that, democratically elected politicians have limited incentive for good governance as they know they will not be around forever and so there is always the temptation to spend some of the state’s capital on rewarding their supporters, in other words it encourages bad husbandry and poor governance. In the UK’s case (and in western Europe generally) democracies are in thrall to certain favoured groups such as feminists, LGBTQ, and environmentalists. This phenomenon bears a clear relationship to the collapse of traditional (sexual) morality, and traditional religion in general.
Democracies by their nature encourage collectivist solutions, and are merely a less drastic form of totalitatianism than communism or fascism. One can see this in the massive growth of state spending since 1900. One could say the triumph of democracy in its modern form began in 1918 with Woodrow Wilson’s declaration that he wanted to make the world safe for democracy, and in doing so, broke up the essentially benign Austro-Hungarian Empire, symbolising the death of the monarchical principle. Democracies are now in a demonstrable state of decadence and are coming to their end.
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Vasubandhu, …I like your thinking on this issue. Up vote provisional on the word bankocracy to replace democracy in your statement.
Democracy is one vote for every single citizen that occurred at the point of
democracy’s invention and I’m not convinced that survived at all as a national
thing after that anywhere on the planet. There is not one single democracy in the
world today.
I believe that some of the tribes under Gadhafi’s rule [I wholeheartedly recommend his ‘Little Green Book’] actually practiced internal democracy after
his encouragement, but the bankocracies soon conspired to put a stop to that.
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1st past the post treats voters as too dumb to make a choice between more than two. .
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Very well said Martin, I completely agree. …and it follows on nicely that I think both FPP and PR Proportional Representation treat voters as too dumb to decide and vote directly on all issues by and for themselves.
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Wasted votes? In what sense are they wasted?
At the end of the day at some stage under any system a government must be selected and that will disappoint many people who would like something different.
First past the post has the huge advantage that political parties must aim to be capable of achieving a majority and must therefore have a reasonably broad appeal. The inevitable trade offs and compromises are therefore visible and parties can be held to accoun tof they deviate significantly from what their position.
The ‘proportional systems’ to a lesser or greater extent encourage fragmentation of political parties and a move towards atomisation into single issue campaigns. The trade offs and compromises are behind closed doors and often give power to quite monor parties with quite a small numbe rof votes who happen to be in a strategic position.
The idea that proportional representation is a fairer system is nonsense. If having a strong influence with a small proportion of the votes is the criteria for a system to be ‘unfair’ then proportional systems are usually worse than first pass the post .
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In seats which always (or almost always) return a candidate of one given party, votes for other parties have no impact. Supporters of those other parties are, in effect, disenfranchised. Plus the FPTP system annihilates the smallest parties.
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Mike,
As leader of a small party it would seem to be an advantage if small parties had more influence. Society as a whole including politics is gynocentrically biased so issues that affect men are ignored, Men and perhaps more importantly boys are disadvantaged in order to advantage women. The ‘minority’ voice of men is seldom heard.
However a proportional system would make things much worse. Small single issue or very narrow parties that can get 5% of the vote would have high leverage especially if their ideology allows cooperation with the leading party/coalition. In other countries I have worked within I have seen this sort of vote share translated into senior positions in government and nakedly partial and sectarian policies which directly advanatage the small parties supporters while disadvantaging the overwhelming majority.
Currently all major partes pay lip service to feminism and this ideology undoubtedly has a large influence. With proportional representation we would have this but in addition may well have a radical or at least nakedly sexist womens party which is part of government is perhaps put in charge of equality policy or law inforcement.
It may seem impossible for things to be worse but they can be.
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In the context of issues affecting men and boys, all the political parties are in favour of female privileging, and by extension male disadvantaging. J4MB remains the only political party in the world campaigning for the human rights of men and boys, and the mainstream media give us the tiniest fraction of the exposure that is merited, given the scale of the state’s assaults on men’s and boys’ human rights.
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Hi Mike, Perhaps then you can appreciate the elegance of my proposal that we ditch both PR and FPP [too few people required to be bribed for total control] in favour of AD Actual Democracy, i.e. everyone gets to vote on everything at the national level and everything in their local area where no outsiders are allowed to force national agendas. At least then we might strive to create some local enclaves for men and avoid the national agendas of women seeking to extend their privileges. No?
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Well as I recall the first ill fated plebiscite where the “modernisers” (aka Blair clones) got a bloody nose was on this very issue in 2011. Following the second grander bloody nose last year I suspect the voting system will only get tinkered with for some time yet.
“The campaign was described in retrospect by political scientist Iain McLean as a “bad-tempered and ill-informed public debate””. seems the same line for 2011 got recycled about the EU vote.
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PR can bring about as many problems it solves, an important reform is to allow everyone who is unhappy with the choices on the ballot a voice, let there be a robust ‘None of the Above’ option and if 50%+1 choose that option, then have a re-run.
However its most important function is to provide a valid measure of discontent that cannot be ignored, and political parties will be forced to compete for these votes instead of ignoring them.
It can be used as a politically neutral option for anyone, especially those who oppose the incumbent in ‘safe seats’ to use, so their opposition is not broken up into a number of factions.
The will of plurality system we have can lead to ever worsening conditions for the majority and make it very difficult for them to do anything about it.
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OK, I’ll buy that …as long as there is a provision that when a winner is selected, when [notice I didn’t write if] the winners backtrack on any of their campaign promises, every party candidate then immediately goes to jail without the need for a trial for 5 years and a day without the possibility of early parole.
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That is one of the problems a NOTA option solves, as if politicians break their promise voters can go to the NOTA option which is politically neutral, currently they can only stop voting, or vote for another party that has no hope of winning or one the like even less. The addition of NOTA not a reform that caters for how political parties divide power, but one that provides more power to voters.
When we vote, we endorse the candidate, the party (usually) and the full policy platform with a single tick of the box. There has to be a way of expressing discontent, otherwise we all get sucked down a rabbit hole that very few actually voted for wholeheartedly. Its also good way of getting rid of the obnoxious politicians who are only interested in their own boutique obsessions, as people will not accept them, even if they are nominated by the party establishment.
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Of course AD Actual Democracy where everyone votes on every issue would be superior. I have faith in the humanity of a truly fair and equal society. As long as the law books are all relegatred to the dark comedy section and replaced by only 2 laws. 1] Protect the individual. 2] Protect the individual’s ‘fair’ property. 😉
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Uruguay and Switzerland have direct democracy, both are very successful.
The will of the majority is the principle that allows democracy to be a success in the long run. People won’t for things that makes their life worse.
Unfortunately in the UK we practice the will of the plurality which will lead to entirely different results.
The right to reject is a necessity to achieve the will of the majority.
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I approve of the way Switzerland’s democracy works, …thanks for expanding my knowledge base, Uruguay was in my blind spot. Very interesting, I have much reading to do today. 🙂
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In my view, the value of democracy lies less in being able to choose the government than in being able to get rid of an existing government. The threat of total expulsion from power prevents corruption from getting out of hand and is a Sword of Damocles hanging over any government’s head. It is nothing short of constitutional revolution. Only a first-past-the-post system can deliver this. Only this system can also deliver clear-cut decisions – either it is the government or it isn’t – which is in accordance with the English legal system’s similar approach to law. These considerations should be weighed against the flattery of feeling that one’s personal input has been represented in the make-up of a government elected through some form of PR, and in the endless fudge that invariably results.
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