Initially it must be conceded that there are many flaws in out current voting system of ‘first past the post’, it enforces a two party system ware and smaller parties have to overcome huge disadvantages when trying to gain any amount of power. For example in the 2005 general election the liberal democrats obtained 22% of the votes; however they were only rewarded with fewer than 10% of the seats in parliament.
Another problem with the current voting system is that many people’s votes don’t actually matter. If you are a labour voter in rural Norfolk or a conservative in much or Birmingham your vote is not likely to have any effect on the election result, since your party has no chance of actually winning that seat. Not only could this be seen as creating wasted votes but it could also be blamed for the increasing amount of voter apathy that is peasant in today’s society.
The current the current electoral system is also can’t be called representative of the opinions of the country. At the 2005 election only 24% of the British public eligible to vote voted for the labour government that we now have, however Tony Blain can still claim to be ruling with a mandate.
Another major problem with the constituency based system we have currently is that many MPs will be more influenced by what there party say than but the people in there constituency who elect them. An elected MP can be dismissed from his party if he refuses to vote with them on a three line whip even if he doesn’t agree with the decision, this leads to some MPs not always having the needs of the people who elected them in the front of there mind.
Another factor that should be taken into account is that electoral reform has been approved by a government body; the Jenkins commission that the labour party set up concluded that reforms should happen in the electoral system, the people in the committee are probably the exerts on the subject of electoral reform as they have devoted such a large amount of time to discussing it.
One of the key supporting points of the current system is that it usually leads to a strong government, this allows the country to prosper as the ruling party will be able to force through the reforms that they needed to. The only exception to this rule is the result of the 1974 election when a hung parliament was produced. However other than that particular extenuation circumstance the system has always performed well so far whereas some other systems that would be considered more ‘fair’ from a neutral standpoint have a habit of producing less conclusive results. For example in the recent elections in Germany, a country with a much more proportional system, a conclusive winner was unable to be declared.
The promise of strong government may not in fact be a good thing however; whilst it is unquestionably beneficial in the case of an emergency during the long run it may in fact allow the government to push through reforms that are unpopular with the public. Some might view this as a good thing since the government are often more educated in the affairs of state than the public and therefore should be able to do things the public don’t like, however others might claim that since the government rules with a mandate form the public the soul priority of the government should be to do what the electorate demand.
In the end however I feel the most convincing argument against electoral reform is the fact that our current system works, and is continuing to put the party who gained the highest proportion of votes into power with a decent majority, and many people would say that until the current system fails we should not seek to sabotage it through passing reforms for the sake of improving the possession of the smaller parties. My personal opinion is that a strong government is better for the country than a ‘fair’ one, electoral reform will be forced to come about when it is necessary and probably not before.
