The two biggest political parties in the UK by a country mile will loose power if PR is introduced. So I can't see it happen as they will never back it.
Tories managed to successfully seem to offer the people the pretend choice with the complete FUD that was the AV referendum, which means any other referendum is not likely for many years.
This begs the question: if a two party system is entrenched via FPTP/WTA plurality voting system and unlikely to ever relinquish such power, what recourse is there to change the political system? Elections won't do it because election results are shepparded by the voting system. That poses as a fundamental flaw in such democracies. The architechts of the US constitution viewed simple elections as the only vector needed to institutionalize peaceful revolution on a routine basis. When that recourse is denied, what options are left?
Its worth drawing a parallel to the Scottish Independence referendum, where David Cameron veto'd the obvious and sensible choice that 85% supported (Devo Max) and gambled the union on a direct in-out choice, which he thought would settle the matter decisively. If Scotland does leave, history will blame him personally.
Similarly, he's in charge of coming up with the EU options, when he wants us to stay in. Hopefully he won't muck that one up too badly.
In short, referendusm are political tools, not necessarily the voice of the nation.
To be fair, the SNP would have used a vote for Devo Max (and a decisive vote against the status quo) as a rallying point to call for a straight yes-no ballot afterwards anyway: as you said, referendums are political tools.
If Scotland does leave, Cameron will deserve the blame for the "don't let the Scots have any influence" strategy that won him this week's Westminster election, but the independence question seemed fair enough, especially with oblique hints that more devolution would be forthcoming anyway.
I have a horrible feeling the EU options will hinge more on the "no" campaigners being far more motivated to vote than those satisfied with the status quo, particularly on the assumption that the "pro EU" side will appear to have enough of a lead in telephone polls and goodwill from major political parties to be just fine.
The ballot would have had yes and no on it, if 85% voted for a third option in between then it would take some serious political wizardry to parlay that into a an immediate follow-on yes-no referendum.
It's straightforward enough: you point out that the Scots have "almost unanimously rejected the status quo" and announce that following such a "clear mandate for change", supporters of independence, whose loyalties may have been swayed by the need to ensure at least some more political representation, must now be given a simple yes-no question. That's a rather easier trick to pull off than turning a referendum defeat into an unprecedented boost in Westminster seats months later. Pulling off a Yes vote might still be tricky, but just imagine a campaign for a "Yes" vote if it were happening, off the back of a resounding Devo Max win rather than a "No" win, maybe against the backdrop of a Conservative Westminster government pushing through Trident renewal and threatening to drag Scotland out of the EU with English referendum votes...
The only real difference is that a Labour party which opted to weight behind the Devo Max campaign rather being backed into sharing a "No" platform with the "Westminster parties" might not have lost so many votes to the SNP. That might have entered Cameron's political calculus too.
The biggest hope in that respect is probably that the rumours of Tory attempts at redrawing boundaries to keep Labour out goes through. They attempted it this period, but where stopped by the Lib Dems. If that happens it may align Labour with the smaller parties in this question.
Couple that with continued huge over-representation of the SNP, which certainly will rub many English voters the wrong way, and maybe.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression redrawing the boundaries wasn't some diabolical plot but rather the boundaries were set independently and intended to equal up consituency sizes? The fact that this doesn't favour Labour should be beside the point?
Correct - the Boundary Commissions (there's one for each nation) are independent and come up with the new boundaries, based on simple mathematical principles. Parliament then votes them through.
In 2012/2013 Labour managed to defeat the government in the vote. The boundary changes would undoubtedly have favoured the Tories, but that's because the Tories are more popular, not because of some nefarious plan.
There is basically no way of redrawing those boundaries that is apolitical. It may not be a "diabolical plot" but constituency size is not all of it. How you alter that inherently alters vote distribution in a FPTP system, and as such it is a major problem.
Even if you supposedly makes it fairer by evening out constituency sizes, and even if the people doing it are trying to be fair, the net effect due to the electoral system can very easily be to disenfranchise the voters even more.
You need to boundaries to be created by a well-known, impartial algorithm rather than a person. And you pay a committee of academic programmers from other countries, with no political ties to the country where it's intended to be used, to design the algorithm. And you use the same algorithm forever rather than changing it from year to year.
That solves the gerrymandering problem. Of course, it doesn't solve the problem of getting whichever party currently benefits from gerrymandering to agree to switch to the neutral algorithm.
I think any attempt to "fix" the boundaries in Scotland to attempt to reduce the number of SNP MPs would create a very strong backlash that would almost certainly lead to a new drive to independence.
I didn't imply they'd try that in Scotland. Scotland is basically irrelevant for the Tories today - they won't ever win many seats there any more. In that scenario a strong SNP is good for the Tories, because if it prevents Labour from getting an overall majority on occasion, it puts Labour in the uneasy position of having to consider a coalition with SNP.
But the over-representation of SNP - a party they've vilified, and that actively fights Tory policies, and that drags up the whole "Scottish MP's voting on English issues" deal may very well make more Tory voters sympathetic to a system that'd reduce the SNP influence.
I live in Tasmania (state of Australia) where we have 5 seats with 5 members each (used to be 7 members per seat). It works pretty well for such a small legislature, because the members of the legislature represent the overall vote fairly well. It has particularly helped the Greens, who in any other system would probably struggle to get a seat at all (indeed in the Australian house of Reps around 10% of the vote gets them 1 out of 150 seats), to have a number of seats in the parliament roughly proportional to their actual support in the electorate. If the UK adopted something similar to Tasmania, they'd end up with perhaps 50 or a hundred electorates electing 6 to 12 members.
Ideally in Tasmania we probably should also be thinking about abolishing our upper house (Legislative Council) and adding more members into the House of Assembly. The LC has ended up with around 70-80% independent members, incumbents almost always win their elections if someone even bothers to challenge them, and public engagement is almost non-existent. The Legislative Council won't be abolished anytime soon however, because the Legislative Council has to vote to change the state constitution and they wouldn't abolish themselves anytime soon.
That seems to be a fairly common problem for Green parties around the world, popular in the global vote but not popular enough to be elected in the more local votes (for generel elections anyway local goverment is another matter).
What the graph actually illustrates is that, leaving aside the number of voting decisions that were tactical[1], we'd have the same party leading the government, in a majority coalition with the more right-wing UKIP that would leave those who had voted for the other parties even more upset by the outcome. PR is certainly not a panacea for high proportions of voters getting a vastly different government from the one they wanted.
(personally I'd love to see used in an elected House of Lords replacement with a lot less vote trading but a lot more teeth to veto unpopular legislation, but that's a different matter)
[1]Whilst many individuals' tactical decisions would look different in a PR election, it's difficult to see the pattern of vote shares being hugely dissimilar; with there still being a media-fed late frenzy of English voters backing the right as an alternative to "being held" to ransom by coalitions involving the nationalists
You're assuming the Tories would opt for UKIP over Labour for a coalition, which is not at all obvious. The Tory right wing certainly would prefer that, but the Tory left wing certainly would not. The question would be which wing of the party would hold the most influence. Cameron certainly is far from the most right wing part of the conservative party.
And that consideration is also a reason why I don't think you can assume the pattern of votes would be all that similar: You would not get rid of tactical voting - you would get tactical voting in different ways where e.g. parts of the uncertain Tory voters on the left wing would be more likely to vote Lib Dem or Labour out of fear of a Tory/UKIP coalition.
I'm Norwegian, living in the UK, and in Norway coalitions are the norm these days, and voting patterns certainly are strongly influenced based on perceptions about whether or not you're enabling a coalition you might not lead. Currently we do have the equivalent of a Tory/UKIP coalition, and it has lead to a massive resurgence for our Labour party, and the centrist parties that enabled the coalition have largely collapsed in polls as it's clear a lot of their voters don't want to help prop up such a coalition again (the parties does not have a majority but negotiated a supply agreement with our liberal party and christian democrats).
Cameron is far from the most right wing of the Conservative Party, and I still don't think he'd find it possible to work with anyone to the left of Tony Blair (i.e. Miliband and the vast majority of the Labour Party), and I think the reverse is even more true. It would be difficult enough to imagine them collaborating on more than a single vote at a time, and basically impossible to imagine Cameron preferring such a fractious arrangement to a deal with UKIP, whose sole price of support is a referendum Cameron had already promised, and whose views on other matters closely match factions within his own party. Sure, the other cost of that coalition would be the risk of losing the political centre ground to a Labour campaign, but that's still less likely to be electorally damaging than the minefield of trying to work with his arch rivals.
We didn't have PR in this week's election, but we did have near-universal expectations that future governments would be enabling some form of coalition or supply agreement. Ultimately the Labour campaign foundered precisely because voters anticipated the Scottish nationalists and other minority parties extracting a heavy price for coalition. By contrast, the Conservatives had shown themselves as able to dominate a coalition agenda, and the only UKIP agenda that centrist or tactical Tory voters might have actually feared as opposed to finding distasteful was promised to be decided by referendum anyway; that wouldn't have changed if UKIP had been expected to win a sizeable chunk of seats.
I'm not saying that votes wouldn't change at all, but I am saying that unless the parties also radically altered their campaigns or more lefties turned out to vote, a right-leaning, Conservative lead coalition would have been an even more likely victor under PR
I'm of the opinion that majority governments are a problem. I would actually go even further than PR in evening out the seats. That is, as a party wins seats, each new seat should require more votes to win. Capturing more than, say, 40% of the seats should be impossible, and the biggest party has to form a minority government.
Sounds like a recipe for even more gridlock. Seems like the party with the most votes couldn't pass anything (i.e. satisfy voter mandates), even though they won.
No, remember that the opposition is similarly divided. The governing party just have to shop around for votes, with a variety of smaller parties to bargain with.
Promises to voters (which I think is what you mean with voter mandates) are just the worst. They tend towards the unrealistic and assume party control over a majority of seats without defectors. Everything about them is dumb. Good riddance.
I agree promises to voters end up being silly. Interesting ideas though, I'm sure given enough thought (I certainly don't have the experience in these theings) it could work.
Would you prefer China's model more then? Just one party. No gridlock, ever.
Having more parties is a good thing. It implies negotiation between them and it leads to more rational laws. When you have just one or two parties it's much easier for them to abuse their power and pass crazy laws.
No, but maybe something like Canada's. If the majority loses favor with the public, (simplifying a bit here) they just schedule an election and vote them out .
I'm not sure you realise how the Canadian government works then. Once you have a majority in the House, you are effectively in power until your term is up and you ask the Governor General to dissolve the house and hold an election.
Now if a party holds a minority government (the way parliamentary systems are meant to be), there can be a vote of non-confidence to oust the governing party. At that point, the governor general has to choose between allowing a coalition (if that is indeed what the other parties want) or hold another election.
Public opinion does not hold sway in these matters. Our current majority government (now branded The Harper Government) was elected with ~24% of eligible voters (40% of those who actually showed up to vote). Take a look at some of the Ekos [1] polls, our governing party does not have the majority of Canadian support. There is also no way to do a MP recall campaign at the federal level, some provinces provide this though, such as BC.
We very much need electoral reform in Canada. Our senate is too partisan (not to mention, appointed at the whims of the governing party) and first-past-the-post is a broken electoral system. My hopes are for Mixed Member Proportional Representation similar to Germany and New Zealand.
But you can buy votes here and it's designed by economists... The field of economics generally assume wildly improbably things about the distribution of money. Look, there's already too much money in politics, and I'm just going to dismiss any idea that advocates more money in politics.
I guess that in lieu of money, you could portion out votes. 1000 votes per person, for example. And then they can be spent in the same way that money is spent in quadratic voting.
It's basically what you often get in PR systems anyway. New parties form, or split off to fill perceived voids to the left or right of one of the big parties and eat into their voting base.
Many countries with PR systems rarely if ever have single party majorities. In Norway the current two party coalition is a minority government that needed a supply agreement with two further parties (technically one of them would be sufficient) to secure a majority. In the recent past we've had coalitions with up to four parties, several of the coalitions being minority governments. Our last single party majority government was in the 60's I think.
Also leads to a two party effect because of the elimination property. You should still strategically vote for Gorilla as #1 because otherwise you could have Owl first eliminate Gorilla and then lose to Tiger, for example.
So if you prefer Owl > Gorilla, you still have to go with Gorilla as #1 because Owl might not have enough to beat Tiger. This means it still leads to Tiger vs. Gorilla two party system.
It's already implemented in Australia and they still have a two party government.
With IRV Obama would've crushed all of his competitors when he got elected for the 2nd term. IRV seems to favor incumbents greatly, which is probably why things haven't changed so much in Australia either - so not much better than FPTP in the US. People still very much vote strategically with IRV.
With approval voting on the other hand, Stein (Green Party candidate) would've had a huge chance in the election. Maybe she would've still lost, like the chart predicts, but we would've had much better kind of debates than Obama vs Romney.
Romney would've been crushed because he was so disliked. In fact many other "fringe" candidates that were liked in that election would've done much better under approval voting than under FPTP or IRV.
A proportional system means that most (if not all) choices are made AFTER the vote by horse-trading between the parties. With decades of experience with proportional systems in Italy, I warmly advise against it.
This is why AV (preferential voting) is so much better. You vote for the candidates in the order you like and the candidate the majority prefer wins. You get to vote for minor parties without ending up with chaos.
You dislike PR since it'd allow small parties to actually get representation and thus "cause chaos". If you think AV doesn't have this problem, it must be because you think AV would keep the small parties out just like FPTP. But if that's case, why bother switching to a system that changes nothing?
Because it stops you having to tactically vote. With AV you can vote for a minor party you support without this vote helping the candidate you hate most. You don't need to vote for some candidate you don't like just because you hate another candidate more who might win. You just number tha candidates from 1 to x in your personal preference.
The end result is the consensus candidate is elected while allowing everyone to vote for who they want. It is simple and it works well in practice.
Tactical voting is still a thing in AV. If I think A > B > C, I might still want to vote A > C > B in an effort to drop B out first (hopefully giving A an easy win in a showdown with C).
This is not the way AV voting works. The second votes of the last candidate are distributed to the remaining candidates and the process repeated until their is a winner. There is no need to vote tactically because your vote never passes to your last placed candidate. Even in the worst case scenario where all the candidates other than your two least favourites remain then your votes goes to your second least favourite candidate without ever benefiting your most disliked candidate.
Consider that the "horse trading" involves actually ensuring that more opinions are represented. If you support one of the larger parties, that means more compromises, yes. But for all of the people who supports smaller parties, it means their vote actually matters a bit too, and that they're not consistently railroaded by supporters of the biggest parties.
That's a fair argument, but it's a matter of trade-offs. All that bartering means that no-one's program will be actually enacted, and when things don't go well there is nobody to take the actual responsibility - including voters, because everybody can always say "well but this wasn't what the party I voted for was proposing" - even if that party got a relative majority.
Personally, I favor a system where there is a clear winner chosen by the majority of popular vote, but where minorities have a "right to representation" where they can make their voices heard in the political debate. Not easy, but possible.
This system probably also helps corruption, but by horse trading I wasn't talking about corruption. I was talking about the fact that it's almost impossible to enact clear reforms because you always need to barter this norm for that norm, etc. etc.
In PR, how does the electorate vote out an individual candidate that you don't like? It seems weird that support for a party implies support for all candidates fielded by that party.
Depends on the system. In Norway, parties fields lists, but you can strike out the names of candidates you don't like, or add additional names.
The list you vote for determined how many seats that list (party) get in each region, but striking names or adding names of people on other lists alters the order in which seats will get allocated to the people on the lists.
It is not very often used, but when particularly controversial candidates are fielded it sometimes does affect who gets in.
Assuming the party-list system. It depends on how high the party has placed him on the list. If you vote for a candidate so low on the list that he probably wouldn't be elected, he might get enough preferential votes to oust out the last person on the list that would normally get a seat through the top-down assignment, but that only really works for getting someone in, not to get someone out.
Better vote for another party instead.
With the party-list system, you generally vote for parties and not for persons.
Right now, in the UK, we have no say in candidates other than our local constituency. I can't vote out Ed Balls. I don't get a say in the Prime Minister. I can't vote for Julian Huppert. So I don't really see how this is much of an difference in practice.
Depends on the model of PR you go for, in NZ we have MMP and on the party vote side of things you can't say I vote for this party but not Joe Bloggs.
If you look at the Australian model, you actually can do this. You can either vote above or below the line (forget which is which), with one you vote for the list the party derived, the other you select the party and then rank all of their candidates. In practice thou the majority don't rank and it is sort of irrelevent that you can.
IMHO, even with individual candidates it is more or less the party they represent that decides the winner anyway.
In Australia the 'above or below the line' voting system is used for the upper house (senate), which is state-based representation (and you can only select a single party, or number 40+ boxes below the line).
For the lower house, we have optional preferential voting. So you number from 1 to something, and stop when you want. Then a slightly complex counting system occurs where votes for least-voted candidates are redistributed to the next preference, and repeated until you get a result.
The upper house voting system does have some issues though. Most people consider voting below the line complex, and you can only mark one party above the line. Then independent senators only appear below the line, since they are in no party (which has caused an independent senator to make a party, just to appear above the line).
Why do you believe that you can do that in FPTP? We just had an election the day before yesterday when various party bigwigs getting voted out was acclaimed as an astonishing, once in a century upset, and even then it was fairly localised.
Much better in the second case, even if the two biggest winners are the same, but 1) they have less power and 2) it gives the others a chance to keep growing at the next election and replace the 2 biggest ones in 1 or 2 terms. And 3) the power is more distributed among 5 or 6 bigger parties - much better than just having only 2 or 3 parties.
That said, approval voting would've worked even better:
I can't believe you poms voted this down. Why wasn't it called preferential voting (like here in Australia) on the referendum?
I love preferential voting. You get to vote for a minor party or candidate while also ensuring the candidate you hate most does not benefit from you doing this. There is basically no need to vote strategically and back candidates you don't like purely because you hate them less than someone else. You just list all the candidates in your personal preference from 1 to x.
The Yes campaign was somewhat naive and the No campaign played dirty. The new system was apparently going to cost £50m more per election, so they put up loads of posters showing children in incubators and soldiers wearing body armour, saying effectively 'these people will die if AV is introduced':
I am surprised that the Yes campaign didn't suggest saving 10x as much by getting rid of all elections and asking the Queen to come back as an absolute monarch.
I guess we Australian can't be too smug as we voted no in a referendum in 1988 asking if we wanted freedom of religion. Apparently the FUD then was over funding for religious schools.
There was a lot of FUD put out against it. Since most people don't really understand voting systems, nor their pros and cons, I guess they voted for the devil they knew.
I think this is the key point. Proportional representation is very simple to understand, and likewise first-past-the-post (in its essence, at least; the actual implementation we have in the UK perhaps less so). Alternative vote is plainly more complex - first something happens, then perhaps something else happens, then... etc; it's not complex for smart HN readers, but even trying to explain it in a few words shows it's more involved than the other two systems.
I am fundamentally uncertain that a majority of the electorate understood AV when they were voting - and this was certainly supported by my own conversations at the time with moderately intelligent people who plainly did not understand it. And, in fact, the majority of the electorate did not even vote at all on the issue.
Proportional representation is undeniably more democratic than either FPTP or AV, but it does mean you end up having to live with the fact that a rather alarmingly large proportion of people have views that the majority find unsavoury (eg. the BNP managed nearly 2% of the votes in the 2010 election).
>it does mean you end up having to live with the fact that a rather alarmingly large proportion of people have views that the majority find unsavoury
That's democracy for you.
Besides, the BNP arose from a climate of austerity and declining real incomes. If you have a functioning political system that doesn't do that to the majority, you deprive the unsavory minority of political oxygen.
They ran the message "it's too complicated for you to understand", and most accepted that at face and spent no more thought on the matter.
Same phenomenon as "math/computer is hard" being acceptable and an excuse not to try, or even listen. You can see the roller shutter come down in their eyes.
The whole thing made me really angry to be honest. The LibDems gambled their entire future electability on the referendum, and it was so plagued by FUD that it never had a chance.
Yeah, what about a man who simply decides everything. No need to worry about anything. He'll probably promise everyone a job and will improve the road network. And some people can go on a free vacation by train which will last until the end of their life.
The ad is quite horrible though, a cheap way to manipulate the viewer by appealing to his emotions.
Voters in Britain do not elect a parliament or a party. They vote locally for a member of parliament - namely - someone to represent all people in the constituency no matter what their party allegiance is, in the House of Commons. Everyone knows who they are and can communicate with that person. Fairness means that the person who gets the most votes, gains that privilege. Example: 3.9 million people voted in this British election to gain one single UK Independence Party (UKIP) MP. Unfair? No - given that, at this election, voters did not give majority votes to a UKIP candidate except in that one instance.
Occasionally people vote for an outstanding personality who does not belong to a party they generally support. This is as it should be.
> Fairness means that the person who gets the most votes, gains that privilege.
In your opinion this is what fairness means. In my opinion, this system leaves millions without a say in the direction of the country proportional to the support their opinions have in the populace.
Not only do I find it unfair, I find it offensive and undemocratic, and as a result I don't see a government elected under such a system as having any legitimacy.
It's worth pointing this out: It is not up to you to define what is fair. Nor is it up to a majority. It is up to everyone. When a system leaves a substantial number of people finding it unfair and feeling robbed of any opportunity to be represented, it is unfair, whether or not the majority thinks it's the most awesome system ever.
If you care about fairness, you need to care about gaining consensus, not about whether or not you're above or below 50%.
> Unfair? No - given that, at this election, voters did not give majority votes to a UKIP candidate except in that one instance.
First of all, it is not majority of a constituency but a plurality. This is a big deal. My seat was won with 43%: The majority of his constituents wanted to be represented by other people. We won't ever know who would have been preferred by a majority of constituents under one of the many systems intended to actually get to a majority choice.
Secondly, that the results matches the rules does not mean they're not unfair.
When peoples votes carry different value based on where they live, then that to me by definition is unfair.
Voters in Britain (specifically Scotland and Wales) use the AMS system that takes this into account and balances both desires while also avoiding the stupidity of unpopular candidates winning because two similar candidates compete for votes, as demonstrated in the fear that UKIP votes would weaken Conservative candidates, leading to front page headlines telling you not to vote for who you wanted to vite for, but for someone else instead.
...But aren't campaigns fought on a party-by-party basis? Who gets to choose which politicians get the secure constituencies? If all the candidates were truly independent I might see your point, but as long as they belong to parties I don't.
What you're essentially saying is, "the rules of FPTP were followed, therefore the outcome is just", which is a red herring when it's the system itself that's being questioned.
"Voters in Britain do not elect a parliament", but shouldn't they?
And even if the majority had been against PR in general, that would not make it moot: The current voting system is not democratic. It is actively disenfranchising a large proportion of voters. I will never have representation under the current voting system, because my views are not mainstream enough to get a majority in a single seat constituency.
The fiction that someone who gets the majority of a seat will represent all their constituents is just that. And blatantly offensive to many of us who consistently sees our representatives acting against our interests and not care the slightest about the portion of their constituents who are not likely to be possible to sway to vote for them.
Your representative is not supposed to represent individuals, but communities. By definition this is going to be the majority opionion of everyone in your community. I don't expect my representative to share my views, but I do expect that they will reflect those of my community. If I want to change something I lobby my community not my representative.
To me, that makes matters worse, not better. You are telling me that disenfranchising people like me that hold non-mainstream political views is by design. That's outright offensive to me.
You are also wrong: It is not by definition going to be the majority opinion of everyone in my "community".
For starters, the person who won the seat I live in got 43% of the vote. The majority of my community wanted other people to represent them.
The current system the worst of both worlds: Single seat constituencies without even the pretence of trying to find a candidate a majority would stand behind.
Secondly, lets disabuse ourselves of the notion that the electoral boundaries matches a "community". They do not.
My seat includes uppper class areas in Shirley, with million pound mansions, as well as council estates like New Addington - the latter is one of the places in the UK with the lowest average life expectancy. The electoral seat encompasses perhaps a dozen separate communities that rarely mixes other than superficially. We can see clearly how divided this seat is - as many others - by looking at council election results, where various wards go very, very firmly on way or the other, while the seat as a whole is a very marginal seat (this election the Tory incumbent held onto his seat with a 165 vote plurality).
In reality, if one were to draw up geographically based communities based on how people actually live and work and interact together, there'd be maybe a dozen separate areas.
Apart from the flaw of thinking that areas as large as a parliamentary seat - even in London where the population density means the physical areas are fairly small - will be homogenous enough or closely enough linked to represent a single community, when you look at the overall electoral results you see pretty clearly that "community" does no longer - if it ever did - match geographical boundaries. Communities are split between parties that stands so far apart that pretending that community is geographical is a joke.
But in the end whether or not you believe that the representative should represent a community, or that the point is to represent the voices of the people, the fact is that this system leaves millions upon millions of users without a voice where it matters, and without the ability to influence decisions in parliament if they vote their conscience.
You may think that's acceptable. I don't. I find it an affront to the very idea of democracy.
You are not disenfranchised. Every single person has opinions that are not supported by their community and hence their representative does not (should not) support these minority views. If you want to change things you need to convince the people around you that things need to change.
I should say I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but the solution is to change the mind of those in your community and the politics will follow.
While I may not technically be disenfranchised, the effect is the same: My vote does not matter. My opinions will not be represented.
From my point of view, having the right to vote or not is worthless in this system, as it does not provide any influence (I accept that it matters to many others - if your views are close enough to one of the big parties, then things are different).
Democracy is about legitimacy first and foremost: If those who take part does not see the system as legitimate, it isn't legitimate. And that is not down to a majority to decide. That is down to society as a whole. And this is a lesson many "democracies" still have yet to learn. Yes, we can't get everyone to agree on what makes a legitimate system, but a system that actively shuts out millions is not legitimate whether or not a majority thinks it is.
> If you want to change things you need to convince the people around you that things need to change.
This is just pure nonsense unless you happen to live in an area that is politically homogenous and populated with people are politically relatively close to you.
We have a problem where the system is geared for a century ago when communities where geographically close. I have more in common with people politically close to me on the other side of the globe than I have with my next door neighbour (who'd like me deported since I'm not born here).
I should not need to convince a plurality of a local "community" (that doesn't exist) of my views to get a single voice in parliament if far higher number of people across the country holds the same views.
So to me, this government has no legitimate authority. I abide by laws because of the consequences of not doing so, not because I accept the legitimacy of this government.
A single voice in parliament unless it shared by many other is worthless. To effect change you need convince the majority that change is needed. Take marriage equality (gay marriage) as an example. This is most definitely a policy of importantace to a small minority that the majority did not once support. Over time a small core of strong supporters have been able to convince their communities of the need for change. Once the greater community is onside the political will follows.
Anyone with minority political views is always going to frustrated in a democracy. Even if every issue was voted on directly by all citizens then without the support of the majority any proposal you support will be rejected. To effect change you need to change the minds of your neighbours. The good thing about modern society is improved communication allows an individual to influence others far away and effect change on a national and international basis where once they were confined to those physically around them.
I'd argue that it's moot because people voting behaviour will change under a different voting system. You can't just extend these results to a world where PR is the prevailing system.
That is true, I don't like when people dire fly translate votes from one system to another since the systems distort the type of parties that even exist, never mind who votes for them.
On the other hand, I think this generally underestimates the improvements possible by shifting to a more proportional system.
I'm interested to see how the conservatives manage to introduce some kind of English devolution while at the same time retaining their inbuilt electoral advantages.
Also any article on reform of the UK electoral system should end with "We have an unelected House of Lords that people have a birthright to sit in, and has Bishops. End this embarrassment now".
True, but there's every reason to believe that it would trigger a shift further away from the large parties, making the difference even more staggering.
A proportional system, I suspect, would be extraordinarily damaging to the UK. It's true that the current system is unfair, but it does have one critical redeeming quality: it tends to reduce the race to a two-party system. Two-party systems are stable and generally moderate, as the winning party will be the one which successfully captures the center. Much of the historical success of the US government can be attributed to the stability afforded by its two-party system. On the other hand, consider the proportional system parliaments in other countries which are outright disasters, unable to form stable coalitions and thus unable to govern successfully for any significant length of time. Italy is the canonical example.
Coalition governments, often still minority governments, have been the norm for half a century.
All of Scandinavia for that matter.
For my part, I see reducing the race to a two-party system as exactly what should be avoided. It leaves the opinions of a large proportion - often a majority - of society unrepresented or overruled.
As an example: The Tories now has a majority in parliament despite gaining only 36.9% of the vote. The majority of British voters does not want Tory policy. Yet it's what Britain will get. Yes, the rest disagree on what the differences should be. But a proportional system forces the parties to negotiate and find solutions that actually has majority support - the least bad solutions.
I would take that over stability any day, if that was the choice. But it isn't. Unless you're going to claim that the Scandinavian countries are unstable.
The episode is called "A Victory for Democracy".