Guardian Prize Crossword 29577 Saturday...
Crosswords1 min ago
Democracy!
51 Answers
SNP get 4.7% of national vote and get 56 seats. UKIP get 12.6% and get ONE seat. The Labour party get two and a half times the UKIP vote and get over 300 seats! The Conservatives get 36% of the 60% of the total electorate who bothered to go out and vote which means that at the VERY LEAST 64% of the population do not want the Conservatives in power. And this is what they call democracy!!!
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I watched someone on the BBC News channel spending (what felt like) five minutes or more explaining that round 1, round 2 system, verbally. Frankly, I don't think the man/woman in the street would have the patience.
Given that "vox pops" along the lines of showing passers-by photos of MPs which a regular viewer (me) thinks are (or should be) instantly recognisable but frequently get "no, don't recognise them" responses, there are obviously vast swathes of the population who just don't watch much television ("have a life", etc.) and might not be exposed to the 'briefing' on how transferrable voting works. Huge confusion, queuing and hasty Q&A seminars on polling day, no doubt.
Clegg sold his soul in hope of PR and it was mangled into AV, by the Conservatives. I think the public didn't like AV's complexities, or couldn't work out how to vote tactically in an AV environment, so they voted to stick with what they know and feel they can control.
@jj's first post: I've been saying, of late, that not voting is -equivalent to- voting for the eventual winner (by dint of failure to vote against). It is necessarily a non-volitional act to make the winner win but that's what I mean by "failure to disapprove".
Thus, the "apathy party" is whoever the did-botherers voted in.
Given that "vox pops" along the lines of showing passers-by photos of MPs which a regular viewer (me) thinks are (or should be) instantly recognisable but frequently get "no, don't recognise them" responses, there are obviously vast swathes of the population who just don't watch much television ("have a life", etc.) and might not be exposed to the 'briefing' on how transferrable voting works. Huge confusion, queuing and hasty Q&A seminars on polling day, no doubt.
Clegg sold his soul in hope of PR and it was mangled into AV, by the Conservatives. I think the public didn't like AV's complexities, or couldn't work out how to vote tactically in an AV environment, so they voted to stick with what they know and feel they can control.
@jj's first post: I've been saying, of late, that not voting is -equivalent to- voting for the eventual winner (by dint of failure to vote against). It is necessarily a non-volitional act to make the winner win but that's what I mean by "failure to disapprove".
Thus, the "apathy party" is whoever the did-botherers voted in.
> Preferential voting systems provide something of a balance between these two extremes.
But Jim ... it was a preferential voting system that we had a vote on in 2011, and it was rejected 2:1.
If you trawl back through those threads from 2011, you can find many of the arguments against AV. As a nation we considered AV, we found it to be imperfect and we decided we preferred our existing, also imperfect, system.
I could understand why you were going on and on about AV if we hadn't had a referendum only 4 years ago. But bear in mind that it's been ten times longer, 40 years, since the only other UK-wide single issue referendum there's been, which was the 1975 vote about whether to stay in the EEC. Incidentally, the result of that one at the time was about 2:1 too.
But Jim ... it was a preferential voting system that we had a vote on in 2011, and it was rejected 2:1.
If you trawl back through those threads from 2011, you can find many of the arguments against AV. As a nation we considered AV, we found it to be imperfect and we decided we preferred our existing, also imperfect, system.
I could understand why you were going on and on about AV if we hadn't had a referendum only 4 years ago. But bear in mind that it's been ten times longer, 40 years, since the only other UK-wide single issue referendum there's been, which was the 1975 vote about whether to stay in the EEC. Incidentally, the result of that one at the time was about 2:1 too.
"If you trawl back through those threads from 2011, you can find many of the arguments against AV. As a nation we considered AV, we found it to be imperfect and we decided we preferred our existing, also imperfect, system."
I won't bother trawling through 2011 threads to find arguments against AV because I know them all, or at least most of them, having made them myself at the time (not here, obviously). Since then I have changed my mind. Of course AV was rejected in 2011 -- I'm unconvinced that it was a referendum held in the best circumstances, and as I've hinted earlier at least some false arguments against it were put forward -- as well as the distracting issue of its being a proposal from the Lib Dems, who... well, haven't been popular since joining the Coalition. It is possible and not entirely unreasonable to cast at least part of the rejection of AV as a chance to stick two fingers up to Nick Clegg for breaking their promises.
As best as I can tell now, AV while by no means a perfect system is at least as good as FPTP -- this is true almost by default, because AV reduces to FPTP when there are either only two candidates or when voters decide to express no preferences beyond the first one, as many may well do. Since it contains FPTP within it by definition how can it not be at least as good as that system? And then it's "better" because it allows voters to express more nuanced choices than a single cross.
But if the arguments one way or another have been made here before I'll stop there on that one at least. What bothers me is that people are happy to accept the flaws of FPTP or, sometimes, refuse to even recognise them. And then offer up defences such as its being simple (granted, but then it's also too simple, which is the problem -- it's unable to cope with the more complex politics we have these days), or its delivering strong governments, which while true in general seems to overlook the fact that these strong governments are being delivered based on fewer and fewer votes.
It seems to me that, aside from the more technical problems, there are three basic issues with politics at the moment. Low engagement being the main one, seen not only in lower turnouts (a rise from the historic low of 2001, but still very low), but also in a reduction of support for the two main parties. Again, a trend that seems to have reached for now its low point, but a worrying trend all the same. And then this low engagement with the main players isn't turning into much representation for alternative political movements, the SNP aside. And so the third problem is that the main parties don't even have to care about the first two.
Electoral reform can help to fix this, be it PR, or preferential voting, or just constituencies redrawn in such a way as to increase the number of marginal seats; or the second chamber can be made an elected one also, or local politics could be reformed ...
As long, though, as the answer to the question is "Should the make-up of parliament represent the wishes of as much of the electorate as possible?" be "yes", then the current system is never going to be adequate. How you change it is a matter of what you think the next question should be, but change of one form or another has to follow from a positive answer to that question.
Perhaps, in the end, the real problem for electoral reform in general is that most people just don't care. And that in itself is sad.
I won't bother trawling through 2011 threads to find arguments against AV because I know them all, or at least most of them, having made them myself at the time (not here, obviously). Since then I have changed my mind. Of course AV was rejected in 2011 -- I'm unconvinced that it was a referendum held in the best circumstances, and as I've hinted earlier at least some false arguments against it were put forward -- as well as the distracting issue of its being a proposal from the Lib Dems, who... well, haven't been popular since joining the Coalition. It is possible and not entirely unreasonable to cast at least part of the rejection of AV as a chance to stick two fingers up to Nick Clegg for breaking their promises.
As best as I can tell now, AV while by no means a perfect system is at least as good as FPTP -- this is true almost by default, because AV reduces to FPTP when there are either only two candidates or when voters decide to express no preferences beyond the first one, as many may well do. Since it contains FPTP within it by definition how can it not be at least as good as that system? And then it's "better" because it allows voters to express more nuanced choices than a single cross.
But if the arguments one way or another have been made here before I'll stop there on that one at least. What bothers me is that people are happy to accept the flaws of FPTP or, sometimes, refuse to even recognise them. And then offer up defences such as its being simple (granted, but then it's also too simple, which is the problem -- it's unable to cope with the more complex politics we have these days), or its delivering strong governments, which while true in general seems to overlook the fact that these strong governments are being delivered based on fewer and fewer votes.
It seems to me that, aside from the more technical problems, there are three basic issues with politics at the moment. Low engagement being the main one, seen not only in lower turnouts (a rise from the historic low of 2001, but still very low), but also in a reduction of support for the two main parties. Again, a trend that seems to have reached for now its low point, but a worrying trend all the same. And then this low engagement with the main players isn't turning into much representation for alternative political movements, the SNP aside. And so the third problem is that the main parties don't even have to care about the first two.
Electoral reform can help to fix this, be it PR, or preferential voting, or just constituencies redrawn in such a way as to increase the number of marginal seats; or the second chamber can be made an elected one also, or local politics could be reformed ...
As long, though, as the answer to the question is "Should the make-up of parliament represent the wishes of as much of the electorate as possible?" be "yes", then the current system is never going to be adequate. How you change it is a matter of what you think the next question should be, but change of one form or another has to follow from a positive answer to that question.
Perhaps, in the end, the real problem for electoral reform in general is that most people just don't care. And that in itself is sad.
OK, but remember that the point of a government is to govern. You don't mention "legislature", "executive", "Commons" or "Lords" much in your posts, for example. You seem focused on the maths.
In one recent thread I asked "Name a country of 50M+ voters with the best voting system". No response. The countries that spring to mind with a PR-based government - the closest in terms of population and geography to us being Italy, for example - don't really stand up as shining examples of good ways to elect a government.
In one recent thread I asked "Name a country of 50M+ voters with the best voting system". No response. The countries that spring to mind with a PR-based government - the closest in terms of population and geography to us being Italy, for example - don't really stand up as shining examples of good ways to elect a government.
Er ... no?
http://
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The Parliament is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), elected for four-year terms under the additional member system: 73 MSPs represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the plurality ("first past the post") system, while a further 56 are returned from eight additional member regions, each electing seven MSPs.
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That's similar to my proposal of electing the Commons using FPTP and the Lords using PR, from the same election results.
http://
---------------------------------
The Parliament is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs), elected for four-year terms under the additional member system: 73 MSPs represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the plurality ("first past the post") system, while a further 56 are returned from eight additional member regions, each electing seven MSPs.
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That's similar to my proposal of electing the Commons using FPTP and the Lords using PR, from the same election results.
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