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Posts: 15,009
May 27, 2021
With so many elections held on May 6th, it was dubbed ‘Super Thursday’. But not all voters will be feeling so super about the results, especially where First Past the Post (FPTP) was in play.
How votes translated into representation has varied widely but where Proportional Representation (PR) has played its part, voters can be super confident of a vote that matters.
The Scottish Parliament, Welsh Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly and London Assembly all already use forms of PR - as do local councils in Scotland and Northern Ireland. From 2022 onwards, Welsh councils will have the option to choose the Single Transferable Vote for their elections too. It is only English local elections and Westminster that are well and truly stuck in the 19th century, stubbornly clinging on to FPTP to decide who gets elected.
Although the voting systems in place in the UK are not perfectly proportional, thanks to PR, Scotland is much more fairly represented. The Scottish Parliament uses the Additional Member System (AMS), so each voter casts two votes: one for a constituency member, and another for a regional ballot. So if it weren't for the proportional element of the voting system in Scotland, the SNP would have won a huge majority on a minority of the vote.
AMS is also used to elect the Welsh Parliament and the London Assembly.
But it’s a stark contrast in England, where local council elections use the undemocratic FPTP, also used in the Hartlepool by-election contest. This system skews the results wherever it is used because seats don’t end up matching votes. It leaves voters without a real voice in local matters and councils end up looking nothing like the way people voted.
Take Nuneaton and Bedworth for example, the Conservatives got 58 per cent of the vote but ended up with 88 per cent of the seats. Labour and the Greens gained a combined 40 per cent of the vote share but won just 12 per cent of the seats. This can’t be described as real democracy.
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Votes for mayors and police and crime commissioners were counted using the Supplementary Vote, where people choose their first and second choice candidates. If no candidate gets 50 per cent of the first choice votes, the top two candidates go head-to-head in a second round and all other candidates are eliminated.
This threw up some interesting results on May 6th, where the second preference candidate scooped the win. So in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Labour took the metro mayor from the Conservatives when the second preference votes were totted up. The same happened in North Wales, with Labour winning the Police and Crime Commissioner election over the Conservatives. And Plaid Cymru also won the Dyfed-Powys Police and Crime Commissioner election over the Conservatives.
This preferential system has its flaws but it would be far worse for voters if FPTP was used. Yet Home Secretary Priti Patel announced proposals in March for precisely this, making it easier in future elections for unpopular and highly divisive candidates to get into city and town halls on low levels of voter support.
So as the new session of Parliament got underway, Make Votes Matter launched a petition against this blatant attack on our democracy. We need less First Past the Post in the UK, not more.
We’ve seen evidence in the devolved nations that proportional voting systems work, so why not extend it to British general elections and English council elections?
Make Votes Matter brokered the cross-party Good Systems Agreement which sets out the principles any new voting systems must deliver. And we believe the final decision would be best made by a deliberative democratic process such as a citizens’ assembly. It’s the only way forward.
The big takeaway from ‘Super Thursday’ is that when PR is applied, you get even representation. And when FPTP is applied, voters are left out in the cold, without a real say on the big issues affecting their local communities. It’s time to ditch the broken FPTP system and give voters a real choice at the ballot box.
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/petition-less-fptp-not-more?utm_source=actionnetwork&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Maynewsletter&link_id=9&can_id=7912b55e72d6174409e36b7a8226a78d&email_referrer=email_1188731&email_subject=equal-votes-update-may
Posts: 15,009
Under England and Wales’ one-party takes all local electoral system!
Spread out over a whole council area, one party can get near 100% representation with less than half of the vote. When councils handle billions in contracts and public services, this poses major risks of dodgy contracts and lobbying going unscrutinised.
While Westminster’s lobbying scandal continues to grow, we need to have a closer look, closer to home.
In 2015 we found that councils dominated by single parties could be wasting as much as £2.6bn a year through a lack of scrutiny of their procurement processes.
The study, The Cost of One Party Councils, looked at thousands of public sector contracts, and found that one-party dominated councils are around 50% more at risk of corruption than politically competitive councils, paying far over the odds to lobbyist contractors.
Scotland and Northern Ireland already use a fair, proportional system for electing councillors – making local one-party states a thing of the past. Wales is letting local areas scrap First Past the Post and switch to the same system as Scotland and NI – the Single Transferable Vote.
Local one-party fiefdoms plague local government in England – with growing powers often wielded with shrinking oversight. It is a potential gift for lobbyists and shady contractors.
We often see the absurdity of ‘scrutiny committees’ – reviewing millions of pounds in contracts – being dominated by the same party in office.
The risks of winner-takes-all politics – of sloppy decision-making and dodgy dealings – are clear. One party councils could be wasting billions of pounds a year through a lack of proper oversight, according to the research. The warped voting system is actively raising the risks of corruption in England.
Voters deserve fair representation, not unjust domination by one party. Across England, voters want real choice and a clear voice – but they’re unable to break through the one-party ceiling.
A shift to proportional representation is vital to provide the effective scrutiny that voters need and deserve, and to open up the town hall cliques at last.
Instead, the Home Secretary is planning to make things worse by imposing First Past the Post on Mayors and PCC elections, a move that will hinder independents and deprive voters of real choice.
Nobody saved money by not checking things properly. If we want efficient local government, we need an effective local democracy, and then means councils that properly reflect their local areas
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/local-one-party-states-are-a-gift-for-cronies-and-lobbyists/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ers-email&utm_campaign=blog-roundup&utm_content=ERS+News:+30+April+A