I've always been fascinated with parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom, for a variety of reasons. This most recent election has been especially interesting. The U.K. elects Members of Parliament (MPs) from about 650 geographic constituencies (districts). In each district the candidate with the most votes wins and goes to Westminster. This system is known as "first past the post," and it's a common democratic formula.
However, the U.K. has three major parties that are relatively evenly balanced in their share of the national popular vote, and there are also several secondary parties which together hold about 28 seats. In that sort of environment FPTP has some fairly significant disadvantages. In particular, the Liberal Democrats, the third of the three major parties, has agitated for electoral reform for many years. Last week the LibDems increased their vote share by about 1% but they actually lost seats in Parliament. FPTP sometimes yields weird results like that.
Fortunately the U.K. has an excellent alternative voting system to put to voter referendum. In October, 1998, an independent commission chaired by Lord Jenkins issued a report favoring the "Alternative Vote Plus" system. AV+ is a hybrid voting system consisting of two groups of MPs to form the House of Commons. The first group, about 80 to 85 percent of MPs, is elected from individual constituencies (which are slightly larger than today's) but through ranked voting (called "Alternative Vote," known as "Instant Run-Off Voting" in the U.S.) Instead of marking a single "X" on their ballot papers, voters rank all the candidates (or as many as they wish) in their order of preference: 1, 2, 3, etc. When the votes are tabulated, all the ones are counted and assigned to each candidate. If one candidate wins a majority of the votes cast, that candidate is elected. If not, the candidate with the least number of 1s is struck, and then that candidate's voters' second choices (2s) are distributed to the remaining candidates. If one candidate then has a majority of the vote, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the candidate with the least number of votes in the second round is struck, and the process repeats until there's a winner. This run-off/second choice process assures that the final winner commands majority support but also encourages voters to express their preferences most accurately, without so-called tactical voting. The Scottish and Welsh parliaments already use AV.
The second group of MPs, about 15 to 20 percent, is elected nationally from party lists. These are called "top-up" MPs, and they are designed to give some proportionality to parliamentary representation. To simplify a bit, let's assume the Tories get 36% of the vote, the LibDems 30%, and Labour 34%. There'd be a formula that then adds top-up MPs to bring the House of Commons into somewhat closer alignment with those national voting percentages (though not necessarily exact alignment). Voters would choose their favorite top-up MPs from the national party lists. Top-up MPs would be assigned starting with the highest vote getter on a particular party's list, then the second highest, and so on until the required number of top-up MPs from that party is chosen. The top-up MPs also help secondary parties have their voices heard in Westminster, provided they meet a reasonable minimum threshold.
The Tories hate the idea of voting reform because their party has been the primary beneficiary of FPTP. Or, said another way, they've traditionally been the "largest odd man out." Pretty much everybody else likes the idea, and AV+ is a particularly good formulation. Lord Jenkins did some great work. I very much hope in the current post-election inter-party negotiations to form a new government that the Liberal Democrats (in particular) insist on putting AV+ to a binding public referendum by a date certain. It's long past time the U.K. reformed and modernized its electoral system to make it more democratic and more representative.
