Evaluate strengths and weaknesses of various voting systems regarding voting

An electoral system is a set of rules governing the conduct of elections. Electoral systems level to produce a legislature that is broadly representative of the political wishes of the voters, to produce a government that is symbolic of the majority of voters and to produce strength and stability in the government.

The system of voting for local and general election in Northern Ireland is often regarded as a ‘First-past-the-post’ or ‘simply majority’ system. But both terms are criticized for being slightly inaccurate.

“Britain has a plurality system sometimes called ‘first-past-the-post’. In order to gain constituency, a candidate requires a plurality of the votes; more votes than any other single candidate, but not more votes than all other candidates”.

The advantage claimed for the present British electoral systems are as follows:

Simplicity: Easy to understand and simple to operate. The voter knows which party will form the government, and there is no maneuvering as with coalitions.

Strong government: The system enables a single party to dominate parliament and then form a government. This government in turn can claim a mandate for its policies and avoid damaging pacts or coalitions, which can hinder an executive.

Representatives: Electors have an MP to lobby that comes from a reasonably small, single member constituency. This ensures that MP’s represent the views of all their constituents even if they did not support the MP (Watts 1994).

Functional: It can be argued that the current electoral system could be preserved simply because it works and has been proved to work over many years. All other electoral systems are flawed and so there is little point in replacing one flawed system with another.

George Foulkes, a Labour MP and opponent of electoral reform, concludes that:

‘Our present voting system at least ensures that government decisions are made by the party which has the most votes – admittedly usually the largest minority. However, experience elsewhere has shown that PR often puts crucial government decisions in the hands of very small minorities, possible extremists who hold the balance of power.’

The present system has achieved many criticisms; the disadvantages are as follows:

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The present system has achieved many criticisms; the disadvantages are as follows:

Proportionality: One test of electoral systems is that they should produce MP’s in a legislature roughly proportionate to the vote they receive. This matching does not occur in the British system. In a British constituency the candidates with the most votes is not necessarily the most popular. If there are only two candidates the winner must get a majority (over 50 per cent) but with the more usual situation of three or more, the winner may need just over one third of the vote to get elected. This can mean that more voted against the winner than for – and it certainly means that up to 70 per cent of votes cast in a single constituency are wasted. Those votes that supported other candidates are lost (not counted) and those surplus votes for the winner are also unnecessary.

Because votes are wasted in this way, there is no proportional link between the total votes cast for each party nationally and the final number of seats (MPs) achieved in the House of Commons. Smaller parties therefore suffer a disproportional representation in the allocation of seats, in what is called the electoral system effect. The figures for the 1992 general election illustrate well the problem for the Liberal Democrats who won 3.1 per cent of total seats with 17.9 per cent of the popular vote.

Minority government: Although strictly speaking British government is majoritarian with usually a workable majority in the House of Commons from a national electorate view point, many governments are elected on a minority of the popular vote. Since 1945 no government has in fact won more than 50 per cent of the popular vote and the long run of Conservative governments from 1979 were supported by less than 44 per cent of direct electorate votes.

Over – representation of the Conservative Party: Although the independent Boundary Commission reviews electoral districts every ten to fifteen years to ensure constituencies do not become disproportionate in terms of electors, there is evidence that the electoral map of Britain has produced two nations – a predominantly Conservative South and a Labour North. This has partly resulted from the concentration of Labour votes in the North where votes are wasted in safe seats. Conservative strength in the South is more evenly spread thus producing more southern MP’s disproportionately (Rooker 1992). From a party perspective, therefore, Labour is in danger of being associated as the party of the North that cannot win enough southern seats to dislodge a southern based Conservative government.

Maintenance of adversarial politics: The present electoral systems help to maintain the artificiality of two party politics resting on an adversarial system. Each major party is encouraged by its electoral prize and stranglehold on power, to present politics in an oppositional form. This in turn is encouraged by the existence of safe seats (approximately 70 per cent), which permanently return Labour or Conservative MPs to the House of Commons. Even marginal seats, which have the potential to produce a change of government by small swings, play into the hands of the two party systems because the electoral system gives everything to the winner. The argument for a reformed voting system is even stronger on marginality grounds, for a small group of the electorate have significance out of proportion to their number.

Mainly because of the problems of disproportional and unfairness in the British simple plurality system, since the 1970’s discussion of reform has become almost a permanent feature of the political system increasing as either Labour or Liberal Democratic parties feel more disadvantaged. For example, in 1996 with the Conservative government into its seventeenth year of consecutive administration, pressure for change accelerated , Paradoxically, as the general election approached, there were those within the Labour Party who felt ‘one last push’ would carry them over the electoral threshold into government under the simple plurality system. Equally, there were those who felt that Labour would again become dependent on Liberal Democracy support (as in 1976-1979) in any future hung parliament, suggesting that the price of this support could be a promise to reform the system. The fear was that should the Conservative government win a fifth consecutive term they would not change the simple plurality system and so arguments would continue.

Proportional System (PR)

Systems of proportional representation- do not work on a single- member constituency basis. In fact, the bigger the number of representatives elected in a single constituency the more proportional the result because the election of a large number of representatives means the smaller parties have a greater chance of winning seats. Ideally, (if supporting PR), a whole country should be a single multi-member constituency. The voters can the vote for their favourite party and seats can be allocated to the parties on the basis of the numbers of votes each has secured.

Urwin (1987) argues that PR has two contentious aims:

it attempts to ensure that party representation mirrors as closely as possible the level of support for various parties over the country as a whole.
It aims to provide voters with some degree of choice not only between the parties but also between individual candidates.

There are two main systems of PR – the List system and the Single Transferable Vote system. The list system comes closer to achieving the first aim whilst the STV system is closer to achieving the second aim.

The List system

This system involves multi- member constituencies. In a Closed List system, each party submits a list of candidates for each constituency. Seats are allocated according to the proportion of votes received by each party (a quota is calculated to distinguish how many votes are needed to obtain a seat). Allocated seats are then filled by the requisite number of candidates from that party starting from the top of the list for each candidate. The system is ‘closed’ because voters are unable to express a preference for a particular candidate. In an Open list system voters are able to vote for individual candidates and the party vote is determined by adding together all the votes cast for the different candidates in that party. Seats are then allocated to a party according to the proportion of votes won by that party. If a party wins one or more seats, candidates are elected according to the number of votes they won.

Criticisms of the Closed List system

Critics of the closed List system argue that, since the list of candidates are drawn up by party headquarters, voters have no real choice over individual candidates. In addition, the size of constituencies indicates that the link between a representative and the local community are broken.

MPs do not individually have a constituency and so there is no sense of local MP’s being accountable to their electors.

The Single Transferable Vote system

This is more of a complex system. Larger constituencies are involved with a number of MP’s selected by respective parties. Voters express preference but voters are distributed according to a formula used to calculate the quota.

To be elected, candidates must pass the quota. Surplus votes are then redistributed according to voter preferences 1, 2 , 3, etc. A process of redistribution of votes from those who passed the quota to the less successful continues until all seats are filled. Apart from complexity, the main disadvantage with this system relates to the larger constituencies needed which could mean that MP’s become more remote. This is partially offset by a greater number of MP’s in each constituency and the proportionality of the system. It is used in Australia, the Republic of Ireland and Malta.

Additional member system

This type of system is used for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Greater London Authority. It is designed to maintain the direct link between citizen and Member of Parliament by retaining relatively small constituencies represented by a single member while ensuring that the end result of the election is proportional at the national level. Voters cast two ballots. One is to elect a Member of Parliament for the constituency, usually by the traditional first-past-the-post method. The second is to vote for a party list in the region in order to allocate additional or ‘top up’ members to the Parliament to ensure overall proportionality.