Hung parliament provides unique opportunity for voting reform
8th May 2010
The General Election brought more votes for the Green Party in Ipswich than has been seen for more than twenty years. While parliament is hung and the leaders negotiate terms for a way forward, there is a genuine possibility of voting reform to create a fairer system. Tim Glover, Ipswich parliamentary candidate for the Green Party discusses the possibilities:
The General Election has proved once again how undemocratic our system is. The DUP got 168,000 votes and UKIP nearly a million - but DUP have 8 seats and UKIP none. We claim to spread democracy to other countries, but our own system is one of the least democratic in the developed world. Our 'first past the post' method does not deliver democracy; we need to change the voting system.
One simple alternative is the 'single transferable vote'. This means that you put the candidates you support in order of preference. If your top choice doesn't win, your votes are transferred to your next favourite; if they don't win your votes go to the next on your list, and so on. This avoids the problem of the 'split vote'.
However, even with this system, small parties like the Greens still get only one seat, or none at all, even though they have a lot of popular support. All of their votes are transferred to bigger parties. For true democracy we need 'proportional representation', where with, say 20% of the vote, you get 20% of the seats. The smallest parties would need to get a threshold of at least 5% of the vote to have any seats; but this is much less than the 30% or so you need to win a seat under our current system.
One objection is that this would mean that parliament would be 'hung' much more often. But this is not a problem in countries like Germany; politicians just have to learn to negotiate and compromise, which is as it should be.
Another objection is that it would allow parties like the BNP to have seats in parliament. Now you may object to BNP policies but simply shouting them down is not the answer. I objected to IRA tactics too - but peace was achieved by negotiation, and accepting that there was a real grievance. To disarm the BNP we need to accept that immigration has caused real problems for a lot of people, and this needs to be addressed.
The final objection is that under proportional representation, you don't have a local MP; seats in parliament are given to parties, who decide who they want to send to Westminster, and the Green Party strongly believe in local democracy. For this reason we are pushing for the Additional Member system, under which you have two votes and two MPs; one for a party, and one to represent the local constituency. This is the only system that is tried and tested, and that gives both true democracy and local representation.
