No idea who he is, but Steven Skelton has an excellent article at Make My Vote Count about electoral reform and the rise of the BNP. It’s nothing I haven’t said before, but it’s very well put together and all in one place.
I get confused following US elections, especially for the House. Mostly because of the weird borders they’ve gerrymandered in order to ensure as many safe seats as possible. Lovely. Also, they don’t seem to do a ’swingometer’ style analysis, at all. It’s all about current polling data, very little public psephology. Fortunately, blogging allows all of us to exhibit our random obsessions, and Iain Weaver has prepared a fairly good swingometer analysis for the US 2006 elections. Definately a handy resource to refer to on results night.
And yes, I keep forgetting to post stuff. Sorry about that, I seem to have lost my anger recently, which is weird given the amount of stupidity around out there at the moment. I have however been in contact with a few potential contributors, so when I get things sorted out we might actually see the site moving again. Also? I hate rich text editors, no idea how I managed to turnt eh damned thing on. Ah well.
The Boundary Commission has almost completed their review of constituency boundaries. Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report has run an analysis of the new seats and completed a very excellent guide to the next election, with target seat list for the three main parties and a breakdown of the notional 2005 results and swings needed for each seat in the country. Scary amount of work there, but very impressive. There’s a comment box for every seat, and he welcomes contribution from anyone with local knowledge or facts he may have missed. An excelent resource that I suspect will get a lot of use over the next few years. As for Tooting?
From the 214 seats the Conservatives notionally hold on the new boundaries they would need to win an extra 112 to get the 326 seats necessary for a majority. In order of marginality, the 112th most winnable seat for the Tories is Tooting.
Information, as they say, is power.
There are a large number of oft-repeated tropes about electoral systems and the impact of any change away from the Simple Majority system we use for Westminster. Most of them are either lies, fallacies or half-truths. I’ve written about electoral systems a lot over the last year, but I can’t cover anything. Fortunately, Paul Davies is paid to write about electoral systems, and he’s pretty good at it as well. He’s written a series of articles over the last week debunking the main myths, and they’re definately well worth a read.
A lot of these myths are based on examples from systems that no sane people are advocating for the various UK governments, and thus should be still-born. Unfortunately, they’re not, and it seems that there will always be people that think that shouting ‘look at Israel’, ‘look at Italy’ or ‘PR gave us Hitler’ are valid arguments against electoral reform.
Just briefly, in the comments tot he Tactical post, the topic has drifted to how preferential systems, especially STV are better and negate the need for tactical votes. I thought I’d bring the discussion to the top again. Dave asks:
From the limited amount I know of STV it sounds really good.I know its probably been writen else where, but could you briefly say roughly how you think STV would work in the UK?
I assume you would need much bigger constituencies? or would you suggest similar size with a lot more MP’s?
If the constituencies were too big then the politics wouldn’t seem as local surely?
When you vote, do you vote Expressively, or Rationally? Most party activists and committed partizans will vote expressively, and assume that voters do likewise. However, many voters will vote rationally, seeking to maximise the impact their vote will have on the result. It is this tendency, that most activists find hard to relate to, that leads to the phenomena referred to as “tactical voting”. Still with me? Good, let me explain…
Robert Philpot has an excellent analysis of the need for the Conservative party to adopt electoral reform as a platform (via):
Must pay more attention. James, who I read regularly, also it seems writes at the New Politics Network blog, which I must have missed despite looking at the site a few times. Got there via Make my Vote Count (which I read at least once a week), and find this excellent article on the merits of multi-member constituencies:
Scottish electoral mechanics are always interesting to watch. South of the border, most seats are either safe or two-way marginals. Three-way marginals are rare, and tend to disappear over the course of a few elections, the third party squeeze / ratchet effect caused by Duverger’s Law means that it becomes “irrational” as the economists put it to vote for the third place or below candidate. Yet in Scotland? They not only still have three way marginals, they also have some 4 way marginals.
Ultimately, the best way to ensure greater participation in politics is for politicians to remember that it is they who have an obligation to the public rather than the other way round. They should remember in these scandal-ridden times that theirs is a mandatory requirement to serve us with honesty and integrity. Ours is a voluntary act to give them our vote. Any decision not to is a logical response to the options available. The problem lies with the politicians, not the voters.
Like I said, until very recently, I favoured the idea of compulsory voting. The more I’ve thought about it, the more convinced I am that the system needs fixing, and enforced voting will lead to even more dissilutioned and alienated voters. Power to the People!
In an ideal world (ie one where I wasn’t skint), I’d have been in London yesterday for the Power Commission conference. Fortunately, Davide has written an excellent report from which I warm (a little) to Dave (again):
The problem with saying that all politicians are crooks … is that it is a self-fullfilling prophecy.I spent ten years involved in local politics … I didn’t expect thanks for this, or even respect. But I didn’t expect to be treated like a piece of shit.
I’d be spending, say, my Saturday morning delivering leaflets (that I’d donated the money to print) and people would be looking at me like I was some piece of crap that crawled out of the gutter. They were convinced that they were morally superior to me (and made it pretty clear) on account of the fact that they weren’t spending their Saturday morning delivering leaflets. (They were going shopping, or to the football or something else I guess).
So eventually, it ground me down, and I thought “fuck this!” and give it up. I earn a good living, and I should pay more taxes as a result. I’ll ask people nicely to vote that I should pay more taxes, but I’m not going to fucking beg. So I basically decided, screw you all, I’m okay, so I’m just going to start living my life. I still give money to the party and a variety of charities, but I get to spend my weekends looking after me.
Several times since then, I’ve been involved in conversations about politics where people first slag off everyone involved, and then say something like: “You should be a councillor! You make a good councillor!”
At which point my reply is generally something along the lines of, “Why should I give up a shitload of my own time to do a load of really stressful work, which doesn’t pay anything like enough to make it monetarily worthwhile, just so that people like you can tell everyone I’m scum?”
The point is that if you believe that everyone involved in politics is corrupt and power-serving, pretty soon the only people involved will be corrupt and power-serving. I believe this is already happening. Certainly, it happened with me.
That’s a comment in a post on reforming voting. One of the things I like about blogging? It forces you to really think through your ideas. I’ve changed my mind about compulsory voting, it is, as I should have always known, a stupid idea. Chris has more at qwghlm:
To first punish poor people by betraying the ideals that were meant to defend them, then to bully them into voting with the threat of a fine, in order to make election results ostensibly “legitmate”, is totally reprehensible.What’s the solution? Ideally, provide poor people with a Labour party worth voting for; one that is in their interest, not that of supermarket owners, billionaire media magnates and piss-poor IT contractors. Since that won’t happen, then the very least they could do is reform the electoral system, abolish first-past-the-post and replace it with a more proportional system that allows a political spectrum that contains more than the two-and-a-half parties we have at the moment. Either that will allow a genuinely left-wing party into the political arena, or it will give Labour a bloody good incentive to reclaim the ground and people it has abandoned.
I, ultimately, believe that electoral reform will lead to a complete realignment of the existing party structures. I’ve never done partizan, just issues.
I might end up in a party with like-minded people. Although I suspect this bunch of hippie reformers would find it hard to agree on a single policy.
OK, it came into force. As Garry observes, that means it’s now illegal to say nice things about, for example, this guy. In addition, Peter Hain will now have problems writing his memoirs (if/when he finally leaves office), as he’s also guilty of acts now defined as terrorist under laws he voted for.
Of course, Hain’s an arse anyway, his current wheeze is an attack on the idea of Regional top-up AMs in Wales. Well, yes Peter, we know they’re a crap idea. We told you that at the time. We said use a system that kept a constituency link, but oh no, NuLab had to adopt a system that (supposedly) gave it the advantage. Create a system, then decide it’s not working, so blame those that were forced to work within it instead of the system itself. Useless terrorist fool. Peter Black has more; he doesn’t like how he was elected, but you do what’s needed, right?
On the subject of Governments changing electoral systems in an attempt to give their own party an advantage, isn’t Italy watching fun? At least, it would be, if the media were actually covering the story properly. The best coverage I’ve found hasn’t been the BBC, nor any boradsheets, but blogs. The media is simply regurgitating cliches, and lying (or, to be charitable, simply not understanding) the way Italians vote. There’s an excellent description, including regional breakdown, here. Silvio tried to rig the system, owns most of the broadcast media, controlled a lot of the rest via the Govt, and still they voted him out (just).
The Italian electoral system, now I’ve read about it, is even more crazy than the Israeli system. It says something when two countries have system that are actually as bad, if not worse, than ours. Or, are they?
I’d have said yes, but look at those turnout numbers in Italy. Everyone voted, everyone took it seriously, it mattered. More parties than I can count, but everyone gets to vote for what they care about. You most certainly can’t say that all Italian politicians are the same. It’s still a daft system, but it does show how the “western malaise” supposedly affectig democracy doesn’t, necessarily, apply. Friend of mine was at a big trade fair show in Bologna over the weekend. Major stall holders were shutting up and leaving early, from their biggest annual event, in order to get home and vote.
Would us Brits bother doing that? The Italian electoral system (especially the new one that Berlusconi created) is unstable, and no one is seriously suggesting it for the UK. Instead, we want a reformed constituency system. I’ve gone on about it before, plenty of times, but Peter Blacks post above gives another good series of reasons why list systems are wrong.
Life is busy, I’m busy, and light blogging mode is on. New project in the works, we’ll be moving soon, details to follow when I’ve got everything sorted out. In the meantime, on the subject of revamped blogs, take a good look at the new Liberal Review. I’ve been asked to write a bit onconstitutional refor (sorry Rob, swamped), in the meantime, it’s taken onboard the Apollo Project team, and taking guest columns, including a pretty good one from Tim.
Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling asks Do we need parties? and gives a list of reasons why parties damage politics. Given that I’m something of a fan of representative democracy, and believe that some sort of party system is a useful tool within a functioning parliamentary system, I thought I’d do a brief analysis.
In the last two days, I’ve read two rather good articles on electoral reform. I have a few issues with them, and dispute a few points, but overall, they’re very good. Both on the same blog.
Normally, this would be great, right? I just link and get on to writing something substantial. OK, I’ll link. Here and here. There, I’ve done it. I’ve linked to Neil Harding without taking the piss.
I think it’s pretty much established amongst the informed bunch that read this blog that something is rotten in the state of Britain. Liberty Central is a good project aimed at working out a new way of governing the country. Hopefully, it can be used to build pressure to sort the whole mess out.
The big problem is that for many, reformers are a series of disparate, single issue campaigners. We have:
My issue with this; all of the problems are interlinked. Each feeds of each other, it’s a systemic problem within the British polity.
It has come about because a government that was initially radical and prepared to decentralise heavily has acquired cold feet and isn’t prepared to address the real issues and concerns of those that haven’t (yet) had power devolved from Westminster. Yet, ultimately, very few if any are genuinely calling for the complete break up of Britain, the Scots Nats appear to be losing, not gaining, ground in Scotland and the CEP is adament that they want parity for England within the UK (or Britain, depending on whether the person in question wants to keep the 1800 Act).
Virtually every other country of significance that has a bicameral Parliament draws its second chamber members as representatives of the next highest administrative level. US and Australian Senators are elected directly, the German Bundesrat members are sent as representatives of the Lander assemblies, etc.
I favour this approach, in part, for the Lords (or whatever we call the replacement). So, in order to solve the increasingly urgent issue that is the make up of the second chamber, we also need to figure out what level below Westminster we want as well.
It specifically encourages a two-party system, yet increasingly a market orientated society wants genuine choice at election time as well, two-party politics doesn’t cut it any more. So we have a government elected with a fairly substantial majority with much less than 40% of the vote; compare this to 1992, when John Major got the highest number of votes cast since 1945, and a higher vote share than either Maggie or Blair ever acheived, yet had a wafer thin majority.
This leads to a worried government, that plays to a perceived gallery for headline grabbing initiatives, yet one that knows, deep down, that while it has a ‘legitimate’ mandate, it does not have a popular mandate; protesters are limited and arrested as never before, yet are increasingly likely as what are viewed as traditional liberties are encroached upon as never before.
Part of the recommendations of the Power commission is a new Concordat. Essentially, they are right. As Nosemonkey points out in comments here, the Bill of Rights is effectively irrelevent. Yet any constitutional historian worth their salt can confirm that the Bill of Rights is the founding principle of the modern parliamentary system. If it’s no longer relevent, what is?
A study of the US shows that such exercises in aspic setting can, in later years, come back to bite you; the veneration of their outdated document the Americans show is worrying, let alone damaging. We need a new Bill of Rights, new Acts of Settlement. We need a British solution.
We, all of us, who are concerned with the constitution, who want to address these issues, need to work together to pressure our rulers to call a new convention. This may be a good place to start.
So, Finland’s going into run-off mode for their Presidential elections? (via Nosemonkey)
OK, that makes two countries that should know better saddled with a system of election that’s almost as bad, and much more expensive than, Simple Majority (ie the UK/US system, First Past The Post/FPTP). Why do they do it?
Via Samizdata and Tim, by way of the Torygraph, I get to The Register and then on to the Govts consultancy documents, about which El Reg says:
The Government is moving ahead with plans to establish a centralised national register of voters, together with central checking and verification of the data held on electoral registers.
So, we’re to get a compulsory ID system, linked to a National Identity Register, upon which the Electoral Register will be cross referenced to?
Great. As one who signed up to the first Refuse pledge (Refuse 2 is currently still open to signatories until the end of today), they now want to deny all of us who do not wish to be registered and categorised the right to vote as well? Wonderful. If you’re not in favour of ID cards, if they get them through, you won’t be able to vote against them either.
NB; unlike many, I was never completely opposed to some kind of ID scheme, as long as it wasn’t using huge biometrics and wasn’t linked to a national database. The National Identity Register is what scares me. Germany issues a passport and a card version of the ID page. Useful, and you can use it as a passport most of the time. But Tony Blair and Charles Clarke don’t want a simple bit of card that’s voluntary and possibly useful. They want to know who we are, where we live, what we look like and where we vote.
Let’s work together and get them out. After all, don’t you think Blair looks tired?
The real problem with the Lib Dems is not Charles Kennedy, it’s not the drink problem, the slightly clumsy image or even the ginger hair. It’s the direction of the party itself and the electoral system that it finds itself in. The real truth is that in the last few years have seen Britain plunged into political situations which should be gold dust for the Lib Dems - a deaf, blind, one-legged monkey should be creating gains for the Lib Dems in the current poltiical climate.
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