Proportional Representation.

Can someone explain to me how this system works and would it work in this country?

 

No and Yes

 

Cheers for that I now want it.
You should be in parliament great straight talking and transparency. Lol

 

We’ll need proportional representation of football threads the way things are going …

… I’ll never post another political thread and won’t respond to any either, starting now.

This just seems to be an exercise in swamping the board, now where’s that ignore button

 

Its certainly an interesting debate, there was a referendum on something similar in 2011 and was voted against by ~68% of the voters.

Would massively shake up the electoral system, based on 2024 result Labour would have 224 seats, Conservatives 139, Reform 100, Lib Dems 73 and Greens 71.

Personally I can see decisions on policies etc taking longer to agree, and some parties would just be deliberately awkward. It is the most common method of democratic voting around the world however. Time for another referendum? Possibly.

 

There are way too many political threads now like, I agree

 

Simple question, if you no likey hit the ignore button prams and dummy come to mind.

 

I think I'll start one about the tramp who leads the Green Party . Can someone advise on how to start a new thread please

 

Hopefully the genned up political posters can explain the pros and cons of the system,while i think it will be a good idea,i remember reading that numerous countries that do have the system, nothing gets done quickly and general elections are more frequent

 

We would be stuck with hung Parliaments for the rest of time, although coalitions would be much more prevalent. In a nutshell.

 

The issue in terms of our current system (in my view) is that there are historically only a relatively low number of seats which have changed hands...other than in a couple of referendums I haven`t ever had a meaningful vote...

When I was a student early 1990`s I lived in Newcastle - labour majority of c.10,000 - my vote didn`t count!

I have lived in south Lincolnshire ever since - the local constituency is The Deepings and South Holland - the Tories haven`t ever lost it since winning it in the 1960`s... typical majority (pre-Reform!) 10,000 +...

From a personal perspective I`d like some sort of PR system as my vote would have some sort of meaning...that said the reality is that with PR systems you typically get more coalition governments which many believe are less effective...

 

I wouldn't mind seeing proportional representation but would like it to be a lot simpler than the Lib Dem's proposal circa 2011. That was horrible.

Just one vote for one candidate, then work out the proportions to divvy out between the parties from there.

 

There is more than one type. But mostly, used at national level, they end up with government being choked by various groupings of small parties.

For most countries in Europe this does not matter that much, as they are almost entirely controlled by the EU, either by direct Law making or conditional provision of EU money.

But for some, Germany and Holland particularly, it has caused stasis and deadlock. France too is locked , though does not have PR.

It tends to produce, even more than here, people who get onto lists and get awarded seats without winning them. Professional politicians really, usually with no other experience of the world.

 

PR will mean that the smaller parties get actual seats which will infuriate a few on this forum. I'm in a similar situation to @safcyellowbelly in that most of my votes have been a waste of time in that there were huge local majorities but that changed in the last general election where the locals were so pissed off with the Tories that Labour actually won - for the first time EVER.
Not sure if they'll hold on though

From my experience in Chile where PR is used these days, it still tends to lead to either a right-wing or a socialist coalition government.
The communist party were once elected but that's a different story ...

 

Cheers for the info guys.

 

I wonder how a devolved government would work per county.
I think a few years back Labour were looking into it it could have been during the Blair years.

 

You will end up with the country looking like the yellow shed in Auf Wiedersehen

 

its extremely similar to the electoral college system in the states, it benefits the smaller parties for sure.
I'm old fashioned, we have around 70 million people in the UK...who get the most votes wins in each constituency. The current system is fine

 

There is only one system of PR worth having - Single Transferable Vote but we'd need some form electronic voting to make it work.

Under STV you rank all candidates in order of preference. If no majority is obtained then the lowest is eliminated and those voting for them have their vote transferred to their second choice, this elimination & redistribution of votes continues until one candidate obtains a majority and wins the seat.

However, that is not the system used here for elections to the Welsh Parliament (Y Senedd).

We used to be able to vote for a candidate and then the Senedd would be made up by allocating seats to make up to the proportion of votes cast for each party by electing the required number of members from a list provided by each party.

However, the politicians decided that gave too much power to the electorate and they are moving to a Closed Proportional List system, which does away with directly electing any candidates and goes straight to selecting candidates from each party list in proportion to the votes cast for each party.

Of course, the party get to say which people go on the list (but this is divorced from any existing constituency party as the constituencies are now clumped into bigger groups) and the party decides the order in which candidates will appear on their list. Thus people listed 1st & 2nd on a list have a near certain chance of being elected but someone appearing in 10th place on the list is virtually unable to get elected.

This system will remove any semblence of direct accountability to the electorate and hand all power to the individual party leaders.