Your Voice, Your Choice, Your Vote
You only get one vote for your MP every four or five years, but even then, your choice is limited because each party only offers you one of its candidates.
Thanks to the oddities of our First-Past-the-Post system, approximately two-thirds of the seats are 'safe' because one party has a huge majority and always wins, so your vote is unlikely to make a real difference.
This leaves many areas of the country as 'electoral deserts' where a party has no hope of winning a seat despite having lots of supporters.
Perhaps it is no wonder that fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote, or even to register.
Frustrating, isn't it? But there is a better way...
For more information about specific voting systems, click here.
Background
- First-Past-the-Post is not the only voting system. In fact, different systems were used to elect MPs
right up until 1950. In recent years we have seen different, often fairer, voting
systems being used for elections to the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales,
London Assembly, European Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly.
- The way in which we vote is important and will determine the style of government and the
service that voters can expect from their representatives.
Constituencies
- First-Past-the-Post relies on single member constituencies. Each of the 646 MPs in the UK is the sole
representative for his or her area. Some systems use larger constituencies, each
electing more than one MP.
- With this type of system, there is likely to be more than
one party with MPs in each area. Other systems do not have constituencies as we
understand them, just large regions or even a single electoral area for the whole country.
Voter Choice
- First-Past-the-Post allows voters only to place an X against a single candidate. Some voting systems
allow voters to rank candidates 1,2,3 and so on. This is known as preference voting.
It gives voters more choice and means there is more chance that their vote will
count. If their first preference vote does not count, then their vote is transferred
to their second choice or even further until it counts.
- A simple form of preference voting, using single member constituencies, is called the
Alternative Vote (AV). AV gives voters more choice than First-Past-the-Post but does
not necessarily produce a result which is more proportional overall.
- First-Past-the-Post means that each party only has one candidate, chosen by that party rather than by the electorate. so a person who wants to vote for their favourite party has no choice of candidate.
Proportionality
- Because First-Past-the-Post is a 'winner takes all' type of voting system, it often leads to very disproportionate results. A
party can get a much larger or smaller share of the seats than it gets share of the
votes. Many people think that this is wrong and that the number of seats each party
gets should be roughly the same as its share of the votes.
Different voting systems combine voter choice, proportionality and a constituency link in different amounts |
For more information, click on one of the links below:
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