I awoke at 9am on my birthday, May 8th, after dozing off to the voices of politicians at 4am. Having turned 21 years of age just hours before I checked the results and discovered that I had been given a Conservative Majority government for my birthday. (We’ll try and brush over the part where I decided to celebrate the anniversary of my birth by watching the election results.) While statistics have never been my favourite part of my degree, I do find 36% to be quite an odd majority. In fact, the Green Party MPs I had been hoping for were nowhere to be found. We gained over a million votes equating to 3.8% of the vote share, but somehow this was converted to 1 seat in parliament. This is such a small amount of power in government that when most new sites report as a percentage it gets rounded down to a 0%. Perhaps a good numerical metaphor for my feelings on my representation at this point.

I don’t pretend to know everything – rather, I profess to know very little. So I have since tried to educate myself on the important points and information that I must surely have missed. I’ve discovered that it’s all down to the voting system we use in the UK. We use a FPTP or First Past the Post system (is anyone else being reminded of the primary school game?). It’s quite an easy system – one of the main reasons it’s used – so I shall quickly summarise it here. The country is broken up into different areas (constituencies), and each area elects a Member of Parliament to represent them in government. The party with a majority of MPs gets to form a government. Makes sense so far. Last week, only 63% of the population voted against the Tories so they got a majority with 51% of the constituencies. Wait. Did you see it? That’s the thing with good magic tricks: they always happen right in front of you, but you always miss the sleight of hand.

But I’m sure there’s a good reason for this, working out who should run the country can be quite complicated so maybe all the other voting systems are much worse? I delved deeper into the literature on voting systems and found something called proportional representation or it’s acronym which is much less of a mouthful, PR. According to Google, PR is “an electoral system in which parties gain seats in proportion to the number of votes cast for them”. Strange… that’s awfully democratic… why aren’t we using this? I quickly discover there are several different versions of PR thinking. Below is a handy table comparing the different voting systems:

One voting system stands out to me above all others, it seems to have nothing but positives across the board. Direct Party and Representative Voting (helpfully assigned the acronym DPR). I like to think I’m a good scientist, despite the odd exam result, so won’t take this on face value – this requires further research!

DPR is a mixture of two types of PR, the Additional Member System, used in Scotland, and the Mixed Member Proportional System, used in Germany. To save time we’ll continue the acronym trend and refer to them as AMS and MMP, respectively. I’d like to quickly point out that when Scotland was devolved powers in 1999, the FPTP system was considered so outdated and unfair that they used PR. With DPR, voters cast two votes – a Party vote and a Representative vote. The party vote will be aggregated across the whole nation to assign power to the party and the representative vote will be used to assign the constituency with a member of parliament.

I’ll use the last election result as an example:

The Greens

They got 3.8% of the vote and 1 Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas.

Which in terms of political power with FPTP = 1/650 = 0.153% (to 3dp)

Under DPR the Green party would keep its one MP, however she would be given the governmental power proportional to the country’s vote.

3.8% of 650 seats = 24.7 seats

Giving Caroline Lucas these 24.7 seats would mean that everyone’s vote actually matters. Much more democratic than the current archaic system.

Now, there are supporters of the FPTP system so I feel I should address the apparent advantages.

1) FPTP is easier for voters to understand.

It seems that politicians assume all the British people are complete idiots. Yes, FPTP could be considered easier than DPR. With DPR you have to put two X’s rather than one. The maths is no more complicated than working out percentages, something which I feel does not stretch the average voter’s mind to much. This is not a difficult system to grasp, DPR even shows a much greater advantage than most other PR voting systems because all it asks from the voter is a little more ink.

2) It provides a clear-cut choice between two main parties.

I struggle to see how this is an advantage, but it has been put forward as one. Perhaps the voter would be scared by too much choice? With many seats the choice is only ever between two parties, and in many others known as safe seats there is usually no choice at all. I don’t believe that the whole of the UK can be split into two main ideologies, people are much more complicated than that. In fact, due to the British population not being able to be categorised simply into camp A or B this last election was essentially know as choosing between the lesser of two evils. It was the basis of Labour’s whole campaign “Well, at least we’re not the Tories”. Better power for multiple parties would ensure that the policies that have the greatest support win.

3) It gives rise to single-party governments.

It’s true that coalition governments are usually the exception rather than the rule. FPTP stops governments with the largest proportion of the votes having to work together with a minority party to get in power. God forbid that parties would have to actually work together? To have to actually compromise through discussion and debate. What kind of dystopian world would DPR create when a disproportionately large party couldn’t just force through policies that the majority of the country did not believe in?

4) It prevents radical parties getting power.

I find this argument weak. It is true that assigning power in government by a proportion of the nations vote will give a small voice to more radical Parties in the UK. I’d like to point out the obvious here. The party being radical by its very nature means it is not a popular choice. Everyone should have the opportunity to share their opinions, and to judge for themselves whether a political party is being led by a psychopath. Furthermore, a more radical voice is occasionally needed in government. Women’s Suffrage, anti-discriminatory policies and the abolishment of slavery. These in their time were all considered radical. It was only due to the power of the people’s voice crying for proper representation that enabled the change.

5) It gives rise to a coherent opposition in the legislature.

In theory it gives a mirrored opposition. Where there is one majority in power it gives enough seats to an opposition to oppose and debate. In ethnically diverse areas FPTP has been commended for being “broad churches” looking to find the middle ground. However, this gives more disadvantages than it actually solves. It prevents proper representation for minorities in government. Parties just aiming for a slightly higher vote than anyone else in key areas need only pander to the majority. For example, no one would dare put forward policies that help financially struggling ethnic communities for fear of alienating a rich white majority.

These are the advantages of the FPTP system. Full disclosure: there are a couple more, but these are shared with DPR.

Now to the advantages of DPR…

1) It faithfully contrasts votes made into seats won.

Under DPR literally every vote matters. It really does – right down to the percentage of power in government. Every vote directly equates to an increase in party power giving an increased share of the seats.

2) It prevents the huge amount of wasted votes which occurs under the current system.

In FPTP the electorate only represents the highest number of each constituency. For instance, in my hometown a Tory candidate, Ben Howlett, was elected with 37.8% of the vote which means that 62.2% of Bath’s vote was pointless as it added nothing towards the parties they represented. Ridiculous. How can we be asked to vote when so many of us will make no difference?

3) It gives representative power to minority parties.

The current system ignores many of the minority parties in the UK. If you don’t have enough voters in a constituency to win a seat, then your voice is ignored nationally. This adds up to a huge amount of the UK being underrepresented in government. DPR will give those votes a voice in parliament.

4) It will lead to greater continuity and stability of policy.

The basis behind this is that in a PR system there is a lot less huge swings to the left or right. One party will get into power, impose a series of economic plans; then, before these plans are allowed a decent amount of time to work, the governing party are ousted by the opposition who quickly work to implement their own policies. A Broad PR coalition results in stability, with a more representative government able to stay in government longer leading to long-term government plans actually being given time to work. Change doesn’t happen in a day.

5) It will encourage parties to campaign beyond the close seats.

When a party isn’t going to win enough of the vote in an area it is not uncommon that they won’t bother trying. This means that areas will get an unbalanced view of political parties in safe seats. It may even appear that there is no other real choice of party knowing it will be essentially impossible for a meaningful difference to be made. Under DPR so many different choices will be heard and this will greatly increase the chance of you hearing a voice that represents you.

6) It will restrict the growth of ‘regional fiefdoms’.

As minority parties are given minority seats in a PR system this stops the all too common occurrence in FPTP where an area is controlled solely by one party. For instance, the South West of England is currently Tory dominated, but I assure you this does not give a balanced view of the actual beliefs. FPTP has neatly assigned us a party that the majority does not support.

7) The system works with the existing constituencies.

Another great thing about DPR is that it isn’t actually a massive upheaval of our electoral system. In terms of representation it would be a massive positive change, but it requires no change in framework. All that is asked is that the constituents put an extra X down on their ballot paper. Even if they want to remove the DPR system after it’s put in place this can be done easily.

8) It prevents electoral corruption.

Gerrymandering is essentially the moving the boundary lines of constituencies to encompass a different group of people. It is a serious problem in our current system. It means a government can change the boundaries to ensure that it always has enough seats to form a majority without gaining any more actual votes on a national level. Under DPR, gerrymandering is impossible: you can move the boundary lines wherever you like but the national vote will still be heard in Parliament.

There are many more advantages, but not only is there is easily enough evidence here to support a change; I should really be working on my dissertation.

So to conclude, I’m asking for Direct Party and Representative Voting to be put in place across the UK or in lieu of that at least a more proportional system. I ask you to truly consider what you’ve read, despite your political preference. Trust me as a Green supporter I understand this could lead to UKIP receiving more representation in government – something which ideally I wouldn’t want. However, the whole idea of living in democracy is that I shouldn’t be able to silence a massive proportion of the nation simply because I do not agree with them. No more should an out-dated system be used when it makes a mockery of democracy. Without a new Proportional Representation system it is quite likely that I will live out my life in this country without actually voting in a democratic system, despite putting my mark down on the Ballot every five years.

References:

Election Results Accessed on: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2015/may/07/live-uk-election-results-in-full (09/05/2015)

Voting systems Accessed on: http://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/es/esd/esd02/esd02a (09/05/2015)

Direct Comparison of Voting systems Accessed on: http://www.dprvoting.org/System_Comparison.htm (09/05/2015)

Scottish government voting system Accessed on: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/visitandlearn/Education/16285.aspx (09/05/15)

Baths election results Accessed on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000547 (09/05/15)

PR on Youtube Accessed on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOcVA0D4Gkg (09/05/2015)