Politics

[thewhitespider]

This morning showed me the clearest indication I've yet seen that there's something wrong with the electoral system in the UK. On the morning that the Conservatives regained power after thirteen years, and after what the media seemed to think was a very strong Liberal Democrat campaign, the numbers currently look as follows

Comments

[littlesnowy]

Theres an interesting system in place somewhere (can't remember where in the world), where the representatives of each constiutency are directly elected and then an extra load of representatives are added on based on the popular vote, as it would happen in proportional representation.

Badly explained by me, example in case it helps.

Out of 150 MPs there would be 100 that got their places based on first past the post in the election, then the total votes for the country would be used to assign 50 more MPs that didn't have constituencies.

[bunting]

I believe your referring to the D'Hondt system, used by a fair number of PR countries, including some of the devolved UK ones

[littlesnowy]

Hmmm, I'm not sure if thats the one or not - I got taught about it by Radio 4 one night while stuck in a traffic jam.

The situation you talk about with local parties not being able to get elected wouldn't happen (I think) as they would likely win their local constituency vote, as they do now, but they wouldn't gain any/many seats in the second part of the process allotted on total vote share.

Will have a look at the link later when I have some time and see.

[424850]

It happens in London, so not so far away. That's the funny thing - PR is good enough for other elections in this country (GLA, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, and also European Parliament, with a variety of different models being tried and tested now), and yet somehow it's still not 'good enough' for Westminster - becase it would break the two party stranglehold on national politics.

[glenatron]

One of the ideas that was being pushed around a while ago for constitutional reform was that the upper house should be elected proportionally based on the vote from the election for the lower house.

Of course, the problem with that is that the upper house would then be enormously more legitimate than the lower...

[littlesnowy]

But the lower would represent individual constitencies...

It's an interesting idea. I'd really like to see more specialists in Parliament - economists in charge of (or advising on) the economy etc etc.