By Jack Ballinger
Nearly ten years ago, the British people were asked if they would like to change the voting system that we’ve used since roughly 1884. It was the reigning champ: ‘First Past The Post’, versus the scrappy ‘Alternative Vote’. Surely this would be a contest for the ages. Well, in the end, only 42% of people bothered to cast a vote.
Looking back at the campaign, it’s easy to see why many were not electrified by the debate on electoral reform (despite it being incredibly important after the first hung parliament in 36 years). Before the election Nick Clegg, then Leader of the Liberal Democrats, had referred to the Alternative Vote as a “miserable little compromise”; he now had to go out and sell it as a reasonable alternative to the current electoral system. Not only was this system unattractive to the people who most wanted to change the voting system, it was also successfully portrayed as being overly academic and confusing.
While some of these charges may well have been unfair, and the degree of confusion and disruption caused by changing the voting system exaggerated; there is one crucial flaw with AV: it’s used by only a small handful of countries. The idea that the system was “obscure” (Prime Minister David Cameron’s words at the launch of the Conservative campaign) and not widely used, was key to the argument that First Past the Post couldn’t be replaced.
The Referendum in 2011 should serve as a cautionary tale for those making the case for electoral reform; the alternative system proposed must be in use in a major country that is seen by the British public as successful (no offense to Papua New Guinea and its use of the Alternative Vote).
How Might We Elect Differently?
Firstly, there’s Germany. It might not go over well with some hardcore brexiteers; ironically if the UK had an electoral system more like Germany’s, UKIP might have gotten their way sooner (in 2015 UKIP had over 12% of the vote, but 0.2% of the seats). Germans get to cast two votes. Their first is much the same as Britain’s: a direct vote for a single representative for their constituency. However, their second vote is for a party. Parties are then allocated seats based on the percentage of second votes they received. This instantly makes election results more representative.
If this system were to be introduced in the UK it would allow us to keep one of the benefits of First Past the Post – where we have an individual linked to our constituency, who may be popular independently of their party – while also not punishing citizens for voting for smaller parties and encouraging tactical voting, as currently happens under First Past the Post.
To put that in context of the 2019 General Election: overrepresented parties like the Conservatives (43% of the vote to 56% of the seats), and underrepresented parties like the Lib Dems (11% of the vote to only 1.6% of the seats) really don’t exist in the same way in the German system.
But if one representative isn’t enough for you, or perhaps you’re a little more anti-EU, how about Norway’s system? Much like in the UK, their national elections are really simultaneous smaller local elections. There are 150 seats up for grabs in 19 counties; the seats are allocated based on the size and population of the county. Each county elects multiple representatives (sometimes as many as 19) and seats are awarded to parties based on their share of the vote. Each county also has an additional seat which is granted to parties that secured over 4% of the vote nationally but didn’t win any seats to ensure maximum representation.
This system could actually be very appropriate for the UK. Norway has a cultural divide between ‘rural’ and ‘city’ areas that is not dissimilar to the faultlines in our own country exposed by Brexit. Giving people more than one representative to talk to, and giving parliamentary representation to parties that achieve a significant share of the vote even if they didn’t win a specific race, are functions that are built into the Norwegian system in order to address the concerns of citizens who might otherwise feel that the distant metropolitan politicians aren’t representing them.
Finally, there are the systems that we already use. UK local Elections, mayoral elections, and the elections for the devolved assemblies all use systems that are more proportional than First Past the Post. There are a range of viable systems operating within our borders but still we persist with a system that produces disproportionate results.
So What’s The Problem?
Perhaps in focusing on the practicality and suitability of a new voting system one misses a harsher truth: while the choice of alternative system is important, the bigger challenge is the political establishment who benefit from and defend this system. It is hard to imagine any of the major parties seriously coming out in favour of changing this system. Even the SNP (now the third biggest party at Westminster) aren’t likely to come out against the current system, in spite of the fact that Scottish assembly elections use a more proportional system; they’re overrepresented in UK wide elections thanks to First Past the Post.
If you think the percentage of seats a party wins should be roughly equal to the percentage of citizens that voted for them, then we are surrounded by preferable alternatives to First Past the Post. It’s disheartening to even consider that almost all of our national leaders might choose job security and the status quo over the health of our democracy. But those campaigning for electoral reform will have to make a majority of the electorate aware of the flaws of First Past the Post, when we use much fairer systems for ‘smaller-scale’ elections, and convince voters to prioritise electoral reform when they vote. I don’t envy them.
Jack Ballinger is a contributing writer to The International. You can find more great writing from Jack on his Medium page.