UK should vote to reform its voting

The UK government has set a date for a demanding test of the coalition parties’ mutual civility. Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister and Liberal Democrat leader, confirmed that Britain would hold a referendum on voting reform next May. The process could be politically toxic. Lib Dems will agitate for voters to ditch the “first past the post” system currently used for electing MPs. Their Conservative coalition partners will try to persuade voters to keep it.

Under FPTP, electors have one ballot, and whoever gets the most votes wins. The proposed system, the alternative vote, allows citizens to rank their choices and requires that candidates get half the votes to win. If no one crosses that threshold, the last-placed candidate is eliminated and their supporters’ votes pass to the next choices. The process is repeated until someone has a majority.

FPTP is a winner-takes-all system. There are no prizes for bravely coming in second in a constituency. So voters who do not think their favourite candidate has a chance of winning often cast ballots for other representatives with stronger hopes of success. FPTP tends to drive voters towards two big parties and under-rewards smaller blocs for the votes they win.

This is not necessarily bad. FPTP fits countries that would, in any case, naturally split into two big political teams. It was suitable for Britain for much of the 20th century. At the 1955 election, the Conservative and Labour blocs won 96 per cent of the vote. But UK politics is no longer bipolar. At the recent election, the two main parties won only 65 per cent of the vote. Britain needs a system that is more sympathetic to little parties.

AV would allow voters to register their support for their first-choice party, however slim its hopes of success appear. Smaller parties should have their true levels of popular support recognised at the ballot box. The results should be less unfair to the Lib Dems, in particular. But AV is still an extremely long way from ideal.

Many parliamentary seats will remain uncompetitive. Parties with concentrated support in a few seats will still do better than parties with shallow national support. Britain should seek an electoral system that contains mechanisms to guarantee some degree of proportionality for widely dispersed parties. Even so, AV is better than what Britain has now, and would be a way to refresh and renew its political life. The UK should vote Yes to electoral reform.