Chip

Just seen that if Labour get 35% of all UK votes it will end up with 58% of available parliamentary seats wheras if the Lib dems win 22% of the vote then theyll end up with only 58 seats or just 9%. Hardly fair is it.

Surely in our so called democratic society there should be a fairer way of distributing the parliamentary seats than this.

Chip

Freak

yes- been saying this for years.

Its a stupid system

MattW

God no, rather have Lab than the Lib Dems

GC8

No of course we shouldnt! You vote for YOUR local representitive who represents YOUR constituency. The government is formed by the party who has a clear majority.

Proportional representation is always championed by parties with few seats who realise that theyd have more influence under this system.

Simon

Steve vRS

I voted yes. It ensures that the Government is made up of a mix of people who reflect the views of the nation rather than a minority.

The only down side is that is gives power to the loony fringe parties like the BNP, Greens and Torys

Steve

unclebuck

Labour were all for electoral reform....




...until they took power of course.

Chip

Simon,
Surely its not a fair system now though is it.

Take the last election,

Labour won 40.7% of the vote yet got 63% of the seats.

Chip

GC8

I see your point Chip; it depends how you look at it. When you consider that a Member of Parliament is elected to represent the people in their local constituency, then I dont see that we can use any other system. Advocates of PR always say that the 'first past the post' system is unfair, and then quote national figures similar to yours; but we dont actually have a national election do we? We have a series of local elections and the overall figures are used to decide which polital party is invited to form a government.

Simon

Reffro

If we ever adopted PR, we would always have a Lab/Lib coalition government. Its simply wouldn't be possible for one party to win a majority under PR, and the Tories will never have a coalition partner with enough seats to form a majority. I'd rather have a government that governs than one that tries to rule by consensus and is for ever changing direction. Leave all the bollox coalition govenrments to the rest of Europe.

Brendan Hughes

If I don't win by voting Yes to this poll, will you then count my vote towards the No camp?

OllyK

Unless you live in Michael Martin's (the speaker's) constituency, in which case his seat is not contested by the 3 main parties.

paulr

Not necessarily.Germany had a right wing coalition for years.Also they are the 3rd strongest economy in the world,make great cars etc,etc.

Leslie

Germany's economy is in a parlous state!

Les

Buckrogers

Not as bad as I and you thought?

GDP - 2004
1. USA
2. China
3. Japan
4. India
5. Germany
6. UK

Vegescoob

Yes, because it might be the only chance we have of some new parties emerging.
Imho, the current parties are not up to the challenge of the future.

borat52

The problem is if you have proportional representation you will end up with a hung parliament, then no one has overall power. None of the three main parties can agree on anything and as such nothing would get done at all. Doing the 'wrong' thing with conviction always leads to more progress than doing nothing. At least when you do the 'wrong' thing you make a mistake to learn from, or better put you learn what does not work.

mart360

read littlejohns column today..

nl have tried every system possible to swing the vote there way.

what i really pi*ses me off is no matter how much billy lies, spins of shafts the population, they think he,s wonderful

when will people wake up and tell him what they think..

all you get is "there better than the tories", "or isnt he wondurful, i,m so beter off"

SHeep sheep sheep,

have the ***** to say i dont care whther the torys or the libs are worse..

you have fecked us over for too long, and your not going to do it again..


M

Lum

Sadly it's not that simple. Take a look at the last but one US election.

You only have two parties there, but then this Ralph Nader bloke crops up with policies similar to Al Gore. Some Gore voters switch to Nader with the result that bush just scrapes in* despite more people voting for "someone with policies a bit like Gore"

With proportional representation, all the things that Gore and Nader agreed on (which is likely a lot of things) would carry more weight than Bush, even though Bush had the majority. This reflects what people voted for more accurately IMO.

It also means that no vote is a wasted vote, which should increase turnout somewhat. Pointless voting for a party that wont win, and not going to vote for the lesser of three evils.

* lets leave the debate as to whether he actually won or not for another thread please.