From the 2001 General Election results, we can deliberately see that through our pluralist electoral system, the system is disproportionate. We can see many examples of this]. The percentage of votes to the percentage of seats is unequal, showing how its ‘seats not votes that count,’ and judging by labour’s “landslide” victory. In fact, we can see that Labour did not even gain a majority from voters but only from seats. Another example is the Liberal Democrats; they received 18.3% of the electorate’s votes, but only received less than half the percentage of seats at 7.9%. Labour also received a mere 9% more votes than the Conservatives, but yet still managed to acquire around 247 more seats. This also shows that some parties, especially Labour in the 2001 elections, are over represented and this can lead eventually lead to a dangerous ‘one party system’, which certainly undermines our ideology of a Democracy. On average 70% of votes are also wasted during a single election. We find that 100.0% of votes are accounted for, only 40.7% actually counted, therefore, votes a drastically wasted.
Other arguments to demonstrate how the electorate are at a disadvantage using our current electoral system is that there is little choice for the average voter to vote for. There are roughly, only about four candidates per constituency and since 1945, it has always been Labour of the Conservatives who have been elected into Government (and they wonder why election turnouts were so low this year!). Bill Coxall and Lynton Robbins seen to agree that another system would be fairer to society, and will certainly be crucial to making elected Government more representative. Agnew also disagrees with this and David Roberts, author of ‘British Politics in Focus,’ seems to agree with Agnew stating that our current system works and has been proved to work over may years, while all other electoral systems are flawed, so is there little point in replacing one flawed system with another?
It can be argued that, yes, the system should be reformed for a number of reasons as follows; It penalises the ‘third’ or smaller parties. It is a disproportion system because it is ‘seats not votes’ that count. It can help foster a two party system, which means that those parties are over represented and leads to a less democratic political system. It can lead to adversarial politics or the domination of one party. It creates a large number of safe seats, which means that many votes are wasted. There is a limited voter choice and voters cannot choose between candidates of the same party. Votes in Constituency’s are not of equal value because it depends on whether it is a safe or marginal seat. Representation is disproportionate because some constituencies are larger than others.
One alternative system of Proportional Representation that the UK can adapt is the Additional Member System (AMS), which is used in the Welsh Assembly. AMS is a combination of our ‘first past the post system’ and party list voting. Each voter has two votes, one for a single MP using the ‘first past the post’ system, and one for a regional or national Party list. Half of the seats, or sometimes more are allocated to single member constituencies and the rest is allocated to the party list. The percentage of votes obtained by the parties in the party list determines the overall number of representatives; the party lists are used to increase the first past the post seats gained by the party to get the required number. For example, if the party has won two seats in the constituencies but in proportion to its votes should have five, therefore the first three candidates on its list are elected in addition to the two.
Another alternative system that the UK can adapt is the Single Transferable Vote (STV), which is used in the Northern Ireland Assemblies. The Electoral Reform Society argues that this system should be used if there was to be a reform as they say that it is more democratic. Each constituency would have between three to fives MP’s depending on the overall size of the constituency. Voters than rank the candidates (i.e. ‘1’ for their favourite, ‘2’ for the next and so on) If the voters first choice candidate does not need their votes because they are elected without it or has too few votes to be elected then the vote is transferred to their second choice and so on.
The effect of the AMS in Wales is that proportional representation is broad as it contains many parties and in addition, there is a directly accountable MP for each constituency and it keeps a number of single member constituencies. Also, there is not really a wasted votes as each voter has at least one effective vote, for example, even if someone saw that the Conservative representative could not win their constituency, the voter could still use their second vote for the Conservatives and still have a say through an additional member. Also looking at the 1999 Welsh Assembly Election, we can see that the votes are more proportionate as Plaid Cymru obtained 28.4% of the Constituency vote and got 28.4% of the total number of seats. The effect of the STV in Northern Ireland is that the voters ‘had the power’ as Parliament was made to reflect the views of the voters. Voters were also able to express opinions effectively. Through looking at the Election results for the Northern Ireland Assembly in June 1998, we ca see that even the minority parties gained seats, such as the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition who gained two seats with 1.61% of the electorate votes. Also, there was no over or under representation that we always see in our electorate system as the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats were similar, for example Sinn Fein received 17.65% of the votes and got 16.7% of the sears in the Assembly. Overall the system was fairer than our pluralist system.
However, before deciding to reform, we must consider political issues, which are crucial regarding electoral reform. For example, the way in which the elections proceed must be fair along with the way in which the seats are decided. To be truly democratic, the electorates’ views should be represented and parties must not be over represented nor under represented. The Government should be strong like our present government and there should be no weak coalitions.
From analysing our current electoral system and analysing others alternative systems, the UK should reform its main electoral system to that of the Single Transferable Vote. This is because the system is remarkably fairer than the first past the post system, and is more democratic. Through reforming to this system, the electorate would have more representation and the UK would be more democratic.
