Is the British Electoral System in Need of Reform?
Nathan Fry
The UK is a democracy and, arguably, the cornerstone of any democracy is the electoral system: the effective ability to allow the people of a democracy to have their voices heard. Britain’s current electoral system, established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , is the ‘First-Past-the-Post’ (FPTP) or Single Member Simple Plurality (SMSP) system, in which a seat in Parliament is awarded to the candidate who gets the most votes within a given constituency. However, despite its long usage, it still bears flaws.
One of the more glaring issues is that the party with the majority of seats in Parliament doesn’t need the majority of votes: in the 2005 elections Labour won the most seats with just 35.3pc of the vote - the smallest percentage of the vote a majority government in Britain has received - therefore two-thirds of the electorate did not want Labour in power. In England Labour won 92 more seats than the leading contender (The Conservative Party) yet had 72,544 votes less . This illustrates well the importance of geography in the results. The Liberal-Democrats, for example, will gain fewer seats than Labour as their support is evenly spread across the country whereas Labour’s support is more concentrated.
Another problem with the FPTP voting system is that not everybody’s vote counts. “Under the present system, that [everybody’s vote counting] simply isn’t the case, either because they’re in a seat that’s very safe for one particular party [so voting for any other would have no effect on the outcome] or they’re adding to the surplus of votes that the winning party already has .” In the 2005 election over 70pc of votes cast were ‘wasted votes’, which amounts to more than 19 million . This means that just 30pc of the votes contributed to forming the government.
The decreasing voting turnout may also be attributed to the style of politics that FPTP requires. Because it is imperative to persuade ‘floating voters’ - eligible voters with no preference for a particular party – to vote for them, candidates must make similar promises, thus leading to the ethos that “the political parties all say the same thing ” when this is not the case. This leads to a) low turnout due to the belief that nothing will really change and b) interesting ideas, such as the legalisation of drugs, being beyond the bounds of serious political discourse as they are met with disapproval by the ‘floating voters’: the politicians must remain moderate to catch more votes. In 2005 this small group of voters was estimated at 800,000 out of 45 million – just under 2pc.
The FPTP system is also subject to Duverger’s Law: the tendency for but two political parties to emerge in an FPTP system. “Let us assume an election district in which 100,000 voters with moderate views are opposed by 80,000 communist voters. If the moderates are divided into two parties, the communist candidate may well win the election; should one of his opponents receive more than 20,000 votes, the other will be left with less than 80,000, thereby insuring the election of the communist. In the following election, the two parties with moderate views will naturally tend to unite. Should they fail to do so, the weaker party would gradually be eliminated as a dual consequence of ‘under-representation’ and ‘polarization’ .”
If the FPTP system is inadequate another, fairer, system must be implemented to replace it. The Electoral Reform Society recommends the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system and is also triumphed by the National Union of Students as the fairest voting system. STV uses a ‘preferential’ voting; instead of voting with a single <X> candidates are numbered by order of preference: most preferred candidate receives <1>, second-most preferred candidate receives <2> , third receives <3> and so on and so forth. Candidates do not need a majority but a certain share of the votes, worked out by dividing the total number of valid ballot papers by the number of candidate ‘vacancies’ plus one. So, in an election with 10,000 valid ballot papers and three ‘vacancies’ the quote required for a seat would be 2,500.
Because of this ‘preferential’ voting system, fewer votes then in the FPTP system are wasted. If your favoured candidate has no chance of being elected or already has enough of the votes to be elected, then your vote is transferred to your second-favoured candidate. This also eliminates ‘tactical voting’ which occurs in FPTP (when a voter votes for a candidate other than their favoured candidate, to prevent an undesirable outcome) as if your vote doesn’t count towards your preferred candidate, it will count towards your second, or third etc.
This system also means that “you’re more likely to be represented by a candidate that you actually voted for…in [the local elections in Scotland, which uses STV] two thirds of the people are represented by their first choice candidate. ” Under STV, each party puts up numerous candidates, which means that they are being voted for on their own merits and personal views rather than the party’s policies represented by the party’s favourite candidate. Similarly, because candidates stand on their own merits, independent candidates have a much higher chance of being elected and as such, minority points of view will be represented.
However, it has been argued that STV creates internal disputes within parties by way of fighting between candidates (of the same party) for the same seat hoping that all will be elected, but with the possibility that just one – or none – will be elected there nonetheless. There is also the problem that parties will lose representatives if they are disciplined by the party as it is now easier to fight as an independent. But this is not necessarily a bad thing: this means that representatives are more dependent on their constituency’s support at a local level rather than being under control from the party’s higher echelons. This also means that candidates are much less likely, if elected, to ignore the consensus of their voters and pursue policies contrary to their views.
In conclusion, FPTP is a much flawed system, not designed for the modern age – an age with universal suffrage, high levels of literacy and higher instances of contested parliaments. The facts that no party since 1950 has had more than 50pc of the vote yet still gained the majority of seats in parliament and won the election, that about two-thirds of all votes are were ‘wasted’ in the last election, the increasing banality of politics due to the politicians’ desire to catch the minority ‘swing voters’ consequentially causing an ever-decreasing voting turnout in the belief that ‘nothing changes’ and Duverger’s Law – not yet come to a head in the UK; the elections are dominated by Labour, Conservatives and Lib-Dems - are effective evidence that a reform of the electoral system is needed.
For a country that prides itself on it’s democratic system of government, it has an outdated and unfair system of voting. I agree that FPTP is extremely flawed, but in spite of this the British people voted overwhelmingly against a change to the alternative vote last year. Pure STV does not seem to be the answer either but perhaps some form of it will provide one in the future.