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02 Jul 24
20:56
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Date Joined:
03 Dec 15
Just heard someone saying we need it.
My question is how would it work. We have a constituency-based democracy. You vote in your local area for your representative, who just happens to (usually) carry the flag for a wider party and they just sum up the results to find out which party has the most. PR seems to be different I think. Where you sum up the total votes altogether and use the percentage split to give so many MP's to each party.
But what would that mean for constituencies? And there are a lot of very good constituency MP's who don't have their eye on high office but genuinely work to make their local area better. There will be a lot of Tories keeping their seats (rightly) because they are respected and loved for their work in their area.
So how would PR work? Would it be at the expense of this local representation? Or is there a way of it being used alongside constituencies?
My question is how would it work. We have a constituency-based democracy. You vote in your local area for your representative, who just happens to (usually) carry the flag for a wider party and they just sum up the results to find out which party has the most. PR seems to be different I think. Where you sum up the total votes altogether and use the percentage split to give so many MP's to each party.
But what would that mean for constituencies? And there are a lot of very good constituency MP's who don't have their eye on high office but genuinely work to make their local area better. There will be a lot of Tories keeping their seats (rightly) because they are respected and loved for their work in their area.
So how would PR work? Would it be at the expense of this local representation? Or is there a way of it being used alongside constituencies?
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You can have a hybrid system...
Halve the number of constituencies to 325 or so and have directly elected MPs for those.
Then the other 325 could be elected proportionately on a regional basis...
So if there are 50 MPs for London, 25 are elected FPP
Then the other 25 are elected on PR. A party gets 4% they get 1 MP, the top name on their list. You get 20% then you have the 1st five on the party list elected.
Of course there are various systems of PR, like transferable vote, 2nd preference etc
Tony Benn was always the most vocal critic of PR, mainly as he felt the link between the directly elected individual and the constituents was crucial.
Halve the number of constituencies to 325 or so and have directly elected MPs for those.
Then the other 325 could be elected proportionately on a regional basis...
So if there are 50 MPs for London, 25 are elected FPP
Then the other 25 are elected on PR. A party gets 4% they get 1 MP, the top name on their list. You get 20% then you have the 1st five on the party list elected.
Of course there are various systems of PR, like transferable vote, 2nd preference etc
Tony Benn was always the most vocal critic of PR, mainly as he felt the link between the directly elected individual and the constituents was crucial.
*to be clearer
halve the number or FPP constituencies, and double their size.
halve the number or FPP constituencies, and double their size.
Easy to invent another pr system to suit uk.
As already noted by others, there are ways to personalise PR or to have a hybrid system. Could do what tobermory suggested or as you-have-to-laugh said invent one that suits the UK.
E.g. Germany does it like this (roughly) for federal elections:
1. The state groups of the parties do two things:
1 a) They make an ordered list of MPs that run for them in the respective state
1 b) They put forward candidates for the constituencies in the state. The number of constituencies differs from state to state, but in the entire federal republic there are 299 of them.
2. On Election Sunday all ze Germans go to their allocated polling booth, where they are allowed to make two crosses. One for the party (This is called Zweitstimme and you vote CDU, FDP, Die Heimat etc.) and one for the direct candidate in your constituency (Erststimme - here you make your cross for a specific person, not a party).
3. From the Zweitstimme votes it is determined how many seats the parties get in the new parliament (Bundestag). A party with 25% Zweistimmen will get a bit more than 25% of the seats (slightly more because Germany has a rule where parties that have less than 5% in Zweitstimmen don't make it into Bundestag)
4. These seats are then allocated to the states by population size.
5. The state groups of the parties now give these seats to its candidates. First to the people that were elected in the constituencies with the Erststimme (whoever has the most votes in a constituency wins it). If a party in a state has more seats than directly elected candidates, then the remaining seats are filled up from the list. If it has fewer seats, then people who won a constituency can also miss out. The winners of the constituencies are then ranked by vote share and seats allocated to them in that order.
6. Since absolute majorities in Bundestag are just about impossible with this kind of election system in a modern liberal democracy due to various niché parties, the election winner then goes into tough negotiations with other parties and eventually a coalition contract is signed and everyone lived happily ever after. In some PR countries minority governments are more or less normalcy and the governments simply seek themselves individual majorities in parliament for the policies they wish to legislate. Can have its charms I think.
....Do away with the state thing and this could be one way to personalise a PR system for the UK. That said, I never felt this personalisation much. You have your regional MP, sure, and they will probably be more aware of some regional issues than an MP from the other end of Germany, but.....they are federal MPs at the end of the day. We also don't do that thing that you guys do when it's "Rt Honourable Gentleman for Islington North". A Scholz is not introduced like that. He is simply Scholz. Regarding the UK I might have gotten the wrong impression, but apart from that "Rt Honourable" thing I never really got the impression that the constituencies really matter all that much. They are national politicians in the national parliament doing national politics and not Lucy from Telford primarily having Telford issues in mind.
For more regional matters, a federal republic has other layers anyway. Like, every state has its own government, which is then also represented in the other chamber of the legislative (Bundesrat).
E.g. Germany does it like this (roughly) for federal elections:
1. The state groups of the parties do two things:
1 a) They make an ordered list of MPs that run for them in the respective state
1 b) They put forward candidates for the constituencies in the state. The number of constituencies differs from state to state, but in the entire federal republic there are 299 of them.
2. On Election Sunday all ze Germans go to their allocated polling booth, where they are allowed to make two crosses. One for the party (This is called Zweitstimme and you vote CDU, FDP, Die Heimat etc.) and one for the direct candidate in your constituency (Erststimme - here you make your cross for a specific person, not a party).
3. From the Zweitstimme votes it is determined how many seats the parties get in the new parliament (Bundestag). A party with 25% Zweistimmen will get a bit more than 25% of the seats (slightly more because Germany has a rule where parties that have less than 5% in Zweitstimmen don't make it into Bundestag)
4. These seats are then allocated to the states by population size.
5. The state groups of the parties now give these seats to its candidates. First to the people that were elected in the constituencies with the Erststimme (whoever has the most votes in a constituency wins it). If a party in a state has more seats than directly elected candidates, then the remaining seats are filled up from the list. If it has fewer seats, then people who won a constituency can also miss out. The winners of the constituencies are then ranked by vote share and seats allocated to them in that order.
6. Since absolute majorities in Bundestag are just about impossible with this kind of election system in a modern liberal democracy due to various niché parties, the election winner then goes into tough negotiations with other parties and eventually a coalition contract is signed and everyone lived happily ever after. In some PR countries minority governments are more or less normalcy and the governments simply seek themselves individual majorities in parliament for the policies they wish to legislate. Can have its charms I think.
....Do away with the state thing and this could be one way to personalise a PR system for the UK. That said, I never felt this personalisation much. You have your regional MP, sure, and they will probably be more aware of some regional issues than an MP from the other end of Germany, but.....they are federal MPs at the end of the day. We also don't do that thing that you guys do when it's "Rt Honourable Gentleman for Islington North". A Scholz is not introduced like that. He is simply Scholz. Regarding the UK I might have gotten the wrong impression, but apart from that "Rt Honourable" thing I never really got the impression that the constituencies really matter all that much. They are national politicians in the national parliament doing national politics and not Lucy from Telford primarily having Telford issues in mind.
For more regional matters, a federal republic has other layers anyway. Like, every state has its own government, which is then also represented in the other chamber of the legislative (Bundesrat).
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