This week in Parliament I was reminded of an episode of the classic 1980s sitcom Auf Wiedersehen Pet, which provides one of the best explanations of and arguments against the alternative vote system. In order to decide upon a colour to paint their hut, the lads decide to vote expressing a first choice and an alternative preference. There was no clear winner after the first choices were counted, but after the second preferences ‘yellow’ was the winner; even though no-one had put it first. The result, as one of them described it was that ‘everybody gets what nobody wants’.
Over the last few days Parliament has been debating the referendum on whether we should change the voting system for elections to the House of Commons to the alternative vote (AV) system. This is planned for 5th May this year, the Thursday after the Royal Wedding; I know that you may already be planning your AV referendum street parties.
Our current ‘first past the post’ voting system means that, the candidate who receives the most votes wins. It may not be perfect, but as Churchill would have said, it’s the worst system apart from all of the others. The AV system means that no candidate can win until they have secured over 50% of the votes counted. This is achieved by counting the second preferences of people who had voted for the bottom candidates in the poll, until someone gets over the winning line. The second preferences of people who voted for the top candidates in the poll are not considered at all. So for example, a voter who might normally vote UKIP or for the Green Party might get their voting preference counted two or three times until a winner is declared, if their candidates had come low down the list, whereas someone who voted Conservative or Labour might only have their preference counted once. In Australia, one of only three countries in the world that use this system, there have been cases where a candidate who came third after the first votes were counted, ended up winning.
At the heart of our democracy is the principle of one person one vote. Voters have to decide who they think best represents their interests, and MPs are held to account by the constituency they serve. I don’t believe that MPs should be elected based on the second or third preferences of some but not all voters.
I believe that we should retain our current voting system, but it needs to be reformed. We need to make sure that all constituencies are of broadly equal size, where currently there are some with only 50,000 voters and one with over 100,000. The Government has proposed equalising constituencies to within 5% plus or minus of 75,000 voters to correct this. The Folkestone and Hythe constituency currently has around 78,000 voters so we are at about the right size at the moment.
Also, at a time when our priorities are cutting down the country’s debts and creating jobs for people, we can ill afford the confusion and expense of changing the way we elect MPs; we have more important things to be focused on.