- In September 1997 the Scottish people voted in a referendum to back the setting up of a devolved Scottish Parliament, with a new voting system, of the Additional member system. Using this system the country was divided into single member constituencies and into regions. The same number of representatives is elected by each. Voters have two votes – one for a constituency candidate and one for a party. In each constituency, a candidate is elected by a simple majority. The remaining seats are then allocated from regional party lists of candidates on a proportional basis. The share of the seats won by a party in the constituency election is compared to the proportion of the vote won by the party overall. In the 1999 election, as shown by source C, the Conservatives won 16% of the constituency vote and would not have achieved any seats, but by the process of AMS the Conservatives gained 18 extra regional seats meaning that the overall achievement was a proportional 18% of the total Parliamentary seats. However, according to AMS to qualify for this redistribution parties need to cross a threshold of votes, the must either win three constituency seats or 5% of the total party vote. It is in this way that the new Scottish Parliament remains democratic, representative and keeps the idea of constituency representation.
By contrast, the current system for electing MPs to the House of Commons is called First-Past-The-Post (FPTP). There are 659 separate constituencies across the UK each electing one single member of Parliament. The candidate who gets the most votes wins, regardless of whether he or she has more than 50% support. Once members have been individually selected the party with the most seats in Parliament, regardless of whether or not it has a majority across the country will become the next Government. In the last British election in 2001, Labour won 64.3% of seats with only 42% of the votes with half of the MPs in Britain being elected despite the fact that a majority of voters in their constituency voted for opposing candidates. Indeed, it is in this way that many small parties including the Liberal Democrats are seriously under represented.
In this case it is clear that the differences between the systems are due to the number of votes a party achieves and how the votes are distributed. The main drawback with the FPTP system is that the winning party rarely wins an outright majority of the total votes cast. In fact there have only been two occasions when, nationally, a single party has won more than 50% of the vote in a general election. The fact that the government is normally formed by a party which has only won a minority of the total vote means that more people voted against for it than for it. This is certainly the case in the 2001 British election when Labour were elected to Parliament with 40.7% of the vote, but is this just when the majority of the population (59.3%) voted against them? By the process of the AMS the Scottish system was very different as a Labour government was elected with a fair and representative 56 seats out of 129.
A second drawback to the FPTP is that the current electoral system has resulted in regional imbalance. For example, in the 1997 election not a single Conservative MP was elected in Scotland or Wales despite the fact that the party attracted 17.5% and 19.6% of the vote in these regions. Britains electoral geography means that some parties gain an electoral advantage while others do not. This is especially hard on third parties such as the Liberal democrats. However, once again this would have been different with AMS as proportionality would ensure that any third parties would get a fair percentage of the vote and any seats that they would otherwise have won.
- Critics of electoral reform have argued many points against electoral reform from both an ideological and pragmatic approach. Ideologically it is of course the Conservatives that oppose reform the most as they are against any constitutional amendment that might affect their traditional approach to politics and the system of government that served them so well over the 17 times that they have held power. In contrast, Labour are ideologically keen on reform as they believe in the need for constitutional reform to promote rights and democracy. Theoretically, Labour have the open view that electoral reform should be introduced based only on the results of a referendum.
However, these attitudes can radically change when a pragmatic approach is taken to electoral reform. Practically, as shown by source D there are many parties that stand to gain from reform as they would obtain a larger share of seats in government than with the plurality system of FPTP. For example, if Britain was to introduce the proportional ‘List System’ the British Nationalist party would stand to gain 46 seats, an increase of 36 votes compared with the FPTP general election results of ’97. Parties that stand to lose from proportionality, such as the Tories would find that according to STV they would lose their place in opposition as the Liberal Democrats would gain 15 more votes according to the ’97 results. It is perhaps for this exact reason that William Hague, argued that a proportional system would undermine the fundamental principle of democratic accountability taking “power away from the electorate and giving it to smaller political parties”. Indeed, it must be noted that the Conservatives have only objected to reform as it would contribute further to the demise of the party.
Finally, it must also be pointed out that very few proportional systems lead to majority governments and so coalitions are set up. These are often imbalanced as governments are set up by friendly parties that may not have the largest proportion of votes. For example, the 2002 German election led to a coalition between the German Social democrats (41%) and the Green Party (6.7%) even though the CDU won 35% of votes, more than a 19% difference between them. Indeed even though governments appear friendly, it may not be beneficial to have a government coalition that conflict over many ideas. Indeed, it might be the prospect of coalition governments that have stopped Labour from implementing electoral reform earlier than they have.