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.
October 13th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
STV, admin, electoral systems, Proportional Representation |
no comments
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?
Right, without sourcing too much, you’re looking at
September 24th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
electoral reform, STV, New Politics Network |
8 comments
Robert Philpot has an excellent analysis of the need for the Conservative party to adopt electoral reform as a platform (via):
June 5th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, Parties, Conservatives, PR, electoral reform, STV, Cameron |
2 comments
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:
May 24th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
electoral reform, STV, New Politics Network, FPTP |
4 comments
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):
May 7th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, POWER, Constitution, Conservatives, STV, Cameron, Power Commision |
no comments
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.
March 21st, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
POWER, Parties, electoral reform, STV, Power Commision, representative democracy |
no comments
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.
OK, the problems with his analysis.
March 19th, 2006
Posted by
MatGB |
Reform, Constitution, PR, electoral reform, STV |
3 comments
