VOTING FOR CHANGE?

On Thursday the British will hold a referendum, the first since 1975 (on whether to leave the E.U.), in which voters will be asked whether they wish to change the system under which they vote in Parliamentary elections. Although theoretically eligible, I am no longer on the electoral roll, and so won't be voting. But I have a view nevertheless.

Most of the United Kingdom (but not Northern Ireland) uses the First Past The Post system. Candidates stand in single-member constituencies, often with historical boundaries tied to cities and counties, and the candidate that obtains the most votes is elected; everyone else goes home. Its advantages are that it is easy to understand, particularly for those who are not good at maths, provides a strong link between the M.P. and the local electorate, and tends to produce a two-party system in which the parties alternate in forming strong Governments with overall majorities. Tories and Whigs in the 18th century, Conservatives and Liberals in the 19th, Conservatives and Labour in the 20th. Or Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., another country that uses it.

There are, however, disadvantages as well. The downside of a strong one-party Government is the "tyranny of the executive", since the opposition is, by definition, in a minority, while backbench M.P.'s from the governing party tend not to rock the boat on legislative proposals, lest they miss out on the possibility of becoming a Minister. Moreover, because of regional concentrations, very few seats are genuinely competitive; in the 650-member House of Commons, the Conservatives always get 250 seats without trying, as do Labour. While at the local level, M.P.'s can be elected with only a minority of votes; in the 2005 election, for instance, only three (yes, three) M.P.'s secured the votes of more than 40% of their constituents, after taking non-voters into account. Which means in turn that massive amounts of votes are wasted, either because they are not needed in order for the winning candidate to get elected, or because they are cast for losing candidates. In 2005, 70% of votes, or some 19 million ballots, were in this category.

Worst of all, in the eyes of many, it squeezes third parties, if their support is evenly spread across the country. Under FPTP, a party can in theory win 49.99% of the vote nationwide and be the most supported party, yet not win any seats, if in each constituency some other party's candidate gets 50.01% of the vote. For the past few elections, the squeezed third party has been the Liberal Democrats, who have accordingly long campaigned for a change to Proportional Representation. Although there are various forms of PR, the basic idea is that provided a party gets over a minimum threshold (2%, 4% or whatever), it is guaranteed representation in Parliament, with the number of seats being roughly proportional to the party's share of the national vote. When the U.K. election in 2010 surprisingly failed to give either Labour or the Conservatives an overall majority, the LibDems seized their chance. As part of the deal that led to the Conservative-LibDem coalition, it was agreed to hold this referendum.

Which immediately raises the first question. Because the referendum gives voters the chance to switch from FPTP not to PR but to the Alternative Vote system, and AV is not a form of PR. AV is, in essence, a form of FPTP, that deals with the problem outlined above, whereby the constituency M.P. may well be elected by a minority of voters. Constituencies are still single-member; but instead of voting for one candidate and only one, voters rate the various candidates in order. If a candidate gets 50% of the first-preference votes, then they win; if they don't (which is likely), then the candidate in last place drops out and his or her second-preference votes are distributed amongst the others. This goes on until one candidate reaches the magic 50% threshold.

This is the system used in Australia (and the party leadership contests for both Labour and the LibDems). Its advantages are that there is no need to change the constituency boundaries, and that it makes candidates chase second- and third-preference voters, and thereby generate a "broad church" locally (so the chances of negative campaigning are reduced). Furthermore, there is no need to vote tactically, since first preferences always count.   

But, but, but. In Australia, voting is compulsory, in the U.K. it is not. Furthermore, in Australia, voters have to rank every candidate, so that you get true AV; under the U.K. proposal, voters can rank their first-preference candidate, and stop there. If that happens, either because people don't understand what they are supposed to do, or don't care, then the end result will be somewhere between FPTP and AV. Secondly, and more fundamentally, although AV doesn't require it, the constituency boundaries are being changed, as the House of Commons is reduced from 650 to 600 seats. The general population trend, whereby people have moved from the inner cities to the suburbs, means that for some time, it has required fewer voters to elect a Labour M.P. than a Conservative M.P. Redrawing the constituency boundaries, so that they are nearly all exactly the same size, was the Conservative quid pro quo for the LibDems getting their cherished referendum.

Which raises the second question. Not only have the LibDems accepted a referendum which would lead to a system they don't really like very much (their leader Nick Clegg once called it a "miserable little compromise"), but the Conservative side of the grand bargain has already been passed into law by M.P.'s bound by party whipping, while the LibDem side has to be approved by an electorate suspicious of change, confused that PR is not on the agenda, and who will quite possibly say no to AV.

The short answer is that in the pre-coalition haggling, AV was the best deal on offer, what the LibDems now call a "baby step" on the way to full PR. One disadvantage of AV is that it may attract lots of first-preferences for extremist parties (the anti-E.U. UK Independence Party, for instance), whose candidates nevertheless do not get elected, since they don't pick up any second-, third- or fourth-preferences. Howls of protest from those disappointed first-preference voters (and their candidates) would then lead to demands for moving to full PR. This is a thin argument, in my view. The British are notoriously conservative (with a small c) when it comes to politics, and chopping and changing electoral systems on a regular basis is highly unlikely (indeed, it is not clear that this referendum will produce any change). The LibDems would have been better served by holding out a year ago for full PR, on an everything or bust strategy. One big argument for doing so is that PR is the system used in most other E.U. countries, and also for elections within the U.K. to the European Parliament.   

Despite my thinking that the LibDems have rather bungled things, I would nevertheless have voted for AV if I were voting in the referendum. For two reasons. First, AV is not a particularly good system, but FPTP is a bad one. In 1951, 97% of all voters voted for either Labour or the Conservatives; in 2010, only 65% did, yet the two main parties still got almost the same number of seats, and that is not fair. Secondly, I think it's time for a change, even if AV represents only a modest one; British politics has been stuck in the mud for far too long.

Walter Blotscher