It’s a scandal: in the 2008 US Presidential Election, 47% of the votes counted for nothing! Rather than granting each candidate a slice of power proportional to his or her vote share, America inexplicably uses an antiquated “winner takes all” approach. Consequently, over 50 million voters received no representation whatsoever in the White House.

That sounded silly, didn’t it? So why does a parallel argument seem reasonable when we’re electing a local MP? Last Friday, The Guardian enthusiastically endorsed the Liberal Democrats as the only party ready to revolutionize our “discredited” and “unrepresentative” electoral system.

But what exactly is “unrepresentative” about the current system? Well, it doesn’t deliver parliamentary seats in proportion to national vote share. That’s just another way of saying it’s not a system of proportional representation. But representation by area is still representation. Under First Past the Post, everyone gets a vote, no one gets multiple votes, and everyone’s vote is worth the same for the purposes of counting. To accuse FPTP of “disenfranchising” voters exaggerates the problem — and trivializes the plight of those elsewhere in the world who are really disenfranchised.

So why all the fuss? Part of the problem, I suspect, is that many people no longer see a General Election as a chance to elect a local MP. Instead, they see it as a chance to elect a Prime Minister and a government by means of a baroque mediating process that bizarrely distorts the outcome.

Admittedly, it’s hard not to see the election in this way. When national media outlets bombard us daily with the latest gossip on the leaders, it’s hard enough to remember your local candidate’s name, let alone see her as the direct recipient of your vote. And maybe this is fair enough. After all, leaders have more power than they used to, and government is more centralized. In these circumstances, maybe a General Election should be a referendum on the government rather than a complex patchwork of local contests.

But there’s something to be said for the current system. As a means of electing a local MP, it is simple and fair. I would like to see the boundaries updated and AV introduced. But I wouldn’t like to see MPs determined from on high by party lists, or a complicated trade-off that combines the worst of both worlds.

Filed under: electoralreform, jonathanbirch on May 4th, 2010