On November 9th millions of those who had faith in the predictions of mainstream media outlets and polls were left astounded by the US appointing Donald Trump, as the next Commander in Chief of the USA. Whether you are in support of Trump or not there is a glaring problem with this result, namely, Donald Trump won….with less votes. This is of course an outrage to many but let us not forget that Bush junior was elected under similar circumstances in 2000, and before we go pointing the finger at the US for a system so outdated and ludicrous it could allow for such a thing to happen, we must first, to quote our standing PM back at her establishment “sort [our] own house out first”.

There is of course a myriad of interesting issues surrounding this topic; use of internet voting, the accessibility vs vulnerability debate. The influence of a hegemonic media narrative and their ability to create passionate but erroneous divisions within society, and the way in which public campaigns are constructed, moderated and financed in both political arenas (also the duration of US elections!). The focus of this article however will be on the shared flaw of disproportionality in election results.

The election of Trump with fewer votes than Clinton can be easily explained to a UK audience, Trump received more votes from the Electoral College, this is basically the same as having the most constituencies in the UK, in both systems you don’t need the most votes to beat your opposition; just enough constituencies or Electoral College votes. Each state in the US is assigned a number of Electoral College votes based roughly on the size of that state’s population, and it is these votes, not the public’s, which contribute to the end result.

The main features shared by these two systems are, their outdated construction and their ability to derail the democratic wishes of their people. In the last UK general election we saw the SNP take 56 seats in the House of Commons with only 4.7% of the vote, while UKIP took only one seat with 12.6% of the vote. Regardless of your feelings towards these parties, if we truly live in a representative democracy there is something very wrong with this system.

Although the people of the UK were given an opportunity to vote on electoral reform in 2011, the proposal to switch to alternative voting was strongly rejected, however many believe that this was simply due to the fact that the proposed alternative was simply not good enough, as it did not provide the change people felt the system needed. This meant that support and interest round the issue was low to non-existent, and the status quo was able to endure.

With the election of a new US president who lacks the popular vote as a glaring reminder of the inadequacies of our current systems, is it not about time we took another look at reforming the way we elect people to some of the most important positions on the planet? We do not need to look far to find a more democratic voting system. Europe is home to a host of alternative ways to vote such as STV (single transferable vote), in which people rank candidates in terms of preference so that even if their first choice does not win, their opinion will still be taken into account. Another example which is more often associated with majoritarian systems like the UK is the Two round System. Here, a candidate must have more than 50% approval to be elected in the first round, if not, those with the least votes are removed from the ballot and another round of voting is held in an attempt to gain 50% support for at least one candidate.

New ways to vote are all well and good, but do they really fix the problem? While there are still constituencies in the UK and Electoral College votes in the USA, disproportionality will find a way to creep in regardless of voting systems, so what can be done? A major overhaul of any system so entrenched in history and entwined with the country’s workings is, of course, a logistical nightmare, but this alone should not be enough to dissuade us from taking action. A clear valence issue here is that whoever gets the most votes should win, right? Is that not the point of an election? This would no doubt be easier to achieve in the USA then the UK, simply remove the Electoral College votes. This would instantly remove the problem of loosely allocating a number based on population, and would mean that all votes counted in a more significant way, whether a state is historically blue or red would not weaken any single vote. There are people on both sides of the debate in every location and adding up the individual votes will give you a more proportional vote for the whole nation.

In the UK, due to constituencies being tied directly to the appointment of MP’s to Parliament, there are a few more issues to overcome. One way of doing this is to allow each constituency to appoint more than one MP, for example each party which received 25% of the vote or more is able to pick a representative for that constituency. “But how will they all fit into the House of Commons?” I hear you ask; as the HOC is currently due to undertake major maintenance, there has already been talk of moving parliament to a new location, why not a bigger one also? This would of course mean that more people felt represented in their local area, although one of the major problems with systems like these is a lack of cooperation between the parties which, could lead to greater inefficiency, as is the criticism levelled towards many of the more consensus based democracies in Europe. If a system like this was implemented then we would also have to change the way in which we form a government. Currently any party needs to win half of the available seats in parliament to form a government independently (326). In 2010, no party was able to reach this number and a rare (for the UK) coalition government was formed. In order to have a proportional nationwide result, the number of constituencies needs to be disregarded in favour of the popular vote so that the percentage of votes, rather than number of seats, becomes the way our government is elected. The effect of this would be that many more coalitions would be forced into existence, as 50% of the seats does not mean 50% of the vote. In fact, our government is usually elected and given the monopoly on the legitimate use of force among other powers, based on around 35% of the votes from 61.6% of the population, hardly what can be called overwhelming support, and definitely not representative of the public’s view.

To move forward as a global community we need to replace outdated and obsolete elective processes to avoid a global stagnation; voter turnout after many a long fight for suffrage has been on a steady downward curve across the western world, (with the exception of the 2016 US election and UK Brexit referendum). This is not because people do not have political opinions but because they do not feel their views will be noticed even if they participate. To turn this around it is imperative that new systems are more inclusive, easy to access and provide proportionally representative results.

For a breakdown of UK general election results click here . For an interesting breakdown of voter demographics in the 2016 US election click here.