Political

My letter in today’s Independent on electoral reform

Steve Richards (Opinion, 28 October), writing about the forthcoming AV referendum, remarks that “voters are self-interested” but omits the most powerful point of self-interest – which is that it is in all our interests if the voting system requires candidates to work hard and to face the fear of defeat.

The current electoral system performs abysmally on that score, with nearly half the seats never having changed hands between political parties even once in the past 40 years.

Changing the voting system to AV will reduce the number of such safe seats, forcing politicians to work harder to win our support – and also encouraging less of the narrow minded Punch and Judy style as politicians are forced to appeal across traditional party lines for the lower preferences of voters who give their first preferences to other candidates.

2 responses to “My letter in today’s Independent on electoral reform”

  1. Charlotte: under first past the post, you can win with far less than half the votes. However, under AV in such a situation the bottom candidate is knocked out and votes are transferred, and you carry on doing this until one candidate has more than half of the votes. That means that under first past the post you can win comfortably with much less than half the votes (and think of yourself as safe) but under AV you would still have to work to win support from others.

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