AV referendum: for the sake of England, don’t vote!

Do you think the First Past the Post voting system used for electing UK MPs should be changed to the Alternative Vote? Do you even care? Firstly, should anyone who supports the idea of an English parliament give a monkeys about the voting system used to elect the UK parliament? On one level, no: the [...]

DPEV: absolutely the best single-member voting system for the UK and England – honest

OK, I admit it: I’m a voting-system geek, if not obsessive. I really dislike AV, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it leaves England short-changed: nothing done to address the West Lothian Question or the broader English Question, to say nothing about the unaccountable nature of executive power in [...]

First Past the Post is the past; AV is its final outpost: let’s draw a finishing line for them both!

The present First Past the Post voting system used for UK-parliamentary elections is the post that is propping up the whole crumbling House of Westminster. It’s like one of those wooden buttresses that are used to hold up the remaining outer walls of part-demolished buildings: a common sight on post-war bomb sites. ‘We should have [...]

Send A V-Sign to Westminster: Spoil your ballot in the AV referendum on 5 May

Check out the article of the above name at Rise Like Lions and sign up to the Facebook campaign to send a message to Westminster about the referendums we really want (English parliament and the EU) by spoiling your ballot in the AV referendum next May!

Alternative alternative voting systems, part five: AV+, or denying (proportional) representation to England

The Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) is the system for UK-parliamentary elections recommended in 1998 by the Independent Commission on the Voting System (the Jenkins Commission) appointed by the New Labour government. That government then reneged on its 1997 manifesto promise to hold a referendum on whether to adopt the recommendations of the Commission. AV+ is [...]

Lessons from the Australian election for AV in the UK

The Australian elections are heading towards an almost perfect tie. At the time of writing, the governing Labor party had won 70 seats, with the opposition Liberal-National Coalition gaining 72, while independents had won four seats and the Greens one. This meant that, with three seats still outstanding, no party would cross the threshold of [...]

Alternative alternative voting systems, part four: TMPR

TMPR stands for ‘Two-member proportional run-off’. This is another method that I’ve invented, in the wake of ARV, which I discussed in the last post in this series. TMPR is a blend of, and compromise between, the UK’s present single-member, highest-plurality system (First Past the Post – FPTP); an instant run-off, majority system such as [...]

Alternative alternative voting systems, part three: Approval Rate Voting (ARV)

In this series of posts on alternatives to the First Past the Post and Alternative Vote (AV) voting systems, which are the only alternatives the British people are going to be offered for English and UK elections in the proposed referendum in May next year, I’ve discussed AV itself and Approval Voting (which could also [...]

Alternative alternative voting systems, part two: Approval Voting

I’ve been re-examining one aspect of my critique of the Alternative Vote electoral system of the other week: the extent to which it enables voters to express the full range of their political opinions – one of six criteria against which I’ll be measuring a number of alternative voting systems. In my previous post, I [...]

Alternative alternative voting systems: Part One

It seems fitting to begin this series of analyses of alternative voting systems on the day when our half-Dutch Deputy PM has leaked the date of the coalition government’s proposed referendum on replacing the First Past the Post voting system with the Alternative Vote (and is doubtless also celebrating his motherland’s World Cup triumph over [...]