Lets Play! Reforming the UK electoral system

Great Debates
1

If we of the SDMB were charged by HRH Queen Liz with boldly reforming the British electoral system what would we come up with? Pretend we’re a quango or some-such.

Problems with FPTP

The list of problems is long but includes encouraging tactical voting, driving parties towards the middle (which may not reflect people’s actual views) and wasted votes

The House of Lords
Unelected/undemocratic, appointed by the government so makes them lackeys sometimes. But on the other hand contains some very intelligent people who make very useful contributions to the quality of the laws made.

The Unity of the executive and parliament
As the government is part of the house of Commons this leaves the commons as a very weak block to executive power. The PM in the UK is basically all powerful, we don’t call it a elected dictatorship for nothing!

I’m sure other problems are known, so what would you do about it?

In my dream world I would continue to have the Commons elected as they are in order to represent geographical areas, but the house of Lords should be elected under single-transferable-vote with the whole country being a single constituency (crazy I know) this should give an accurate reflection of the countries ideology as a whole.

Both houses should have equal power, which will likely result in quite a lot of blockages but imho that’s all to the good as it will retain a drive towards moderation but still be more democratically legitimate.

So what’s your idea? Imagination encouraged!

2

I’m in favour of some sort of voting overhaul (and will be voting Lib. Dem. on this issue and civil liberties), but I must confess to being poorly versed in the various methods. My two main criteria for the commons would be to retain the link between MPs and constituencies whilst somehow addressing the imbalance between share of overall vote and representation in parliament. Basically I don’t have an answer though :slight_smile:

For the Lords I’m actually firmly against a fully elected body. I just don’t see the beenfit in having two bodies created in identical ways. The Lords has actually served this country extremely well in the past as a blockage to commons governments overstepping their bounds and the current drive for overhaul is based more on a (justified) desire to make it more egalitarian than ‘fixing’ the way it functions (with the exception of the sitting governments which always see the Lords as a barrier).

To that end I’m happy to have the Lords appointed by government, maybe requiring approval by the parliament of the day (which, as long as some form of PR is introduced would not necessarily contain a majority of one party). In this way the Lords becomes a house composed of people of proven merit representing the previous political balances of the country. This would IMO be a body well suited to the task of moderating popular governments.

3
  1. House of Commons

Dissolve the House of Commons and the regional assemblies.
Create a standard constituency size across the nation. This may or may not be multi-member.
New elections for assemblies in Wales, England, Scotland, and NI. Together they form the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. This neatly answers the West Lothian Question too.
Elections to use Approval Voting, not FPTP. This is a better way of choosing a MP. It’s not Concordet-optimum, but balances choosing the best candidate with ease of use, particularly with large numbers of candidates while promoting the elector-elected relationship. Any sort of party list system promotes loyalty to party over loyalty to electorate. It’s bad enough already and needs diminishing.

Note that the use of Approval voting permits large, multi-member constituencies if so desired while retaining the elector / elected link. For instance, in Scotland it may make sense for particular areas like groups of islands to be double constituencies represented by two MPs

I would put restrictions on who may become an MP. Lawyers will be banned from becoming MPs as it’s a conflict of interest. Candidates who are employees of the State may not stand for any elected post (even those outside the Commons), nor may they stand within 1 year of such employment, nor may they be members of any political party - they’re supposed to implement policies regardless of their source. Again, it’s a conflict of interest. Note that this applies to both civil servants and the military.

MPs must do their jobs. This is the Margaret Moran issue. If a MP is not doing their job or brings their office into disrepute, then they should be dismissed. I’m minded of the Quaestors of ancient Rome who made sure that inactive Senators lost their titles. Perhaps this should come under the Parliamentary Standards Committee? That said, I’m aware that the process could be subverted by a malevolent government, and safeguards would need to be put into place.

Parliamentary terms will not be fixed, but have a maximum duration of 5 years, as at present. I don’t want to inflict America’s election cycle on us. And it keeps everyone on their toes.

  1. House of Lords

To be a revising house, the House of Lords must remain wholly unelected. Otherwise the Commons would be contradicting the will of the people. So who should be members? Basically, I’d leave it pretty much as is but formalise things somewhat. I would like to see more people of achievement as members. I would expect all Privy Councillors to be members if not already members of the House of Commons. Something does need to be done about the Parliament Act. Labour have abused it. So, I would suggest that if the Parliament Act is invoked, the matter is referred to a full session of the Privy Council.

  1. Government - unity of executive and Parliament.

I like the PM and ministers being MPs and part of the House of Commons. I like it that they are regularly held to account. I like them having to watch their backs and having to carry their party with them. This system really showed up John Major, whereas under an American system, he’d have triangulated or something.

I most certainly don’t want an elected President as in America, and I prefer the current monarchy to an elected President in the Irish mould. QEII has done a very good job, as did her father. I have strong doubts about Charles, but William looks to take after his grandmother.

Political advisors should be paid out of Party purses, not by the state.

  1. Money.

Only citizens may make contributions to politicians and political funds. All non-trivial donations are public. This neatly blocks both corporate and union sponsorship, and donations for contracts.

All MPs expenses are public. They work for us. Get over it.

4

No voting at all. MPs are selected in much the same way as for jury duty, serving a one year term.

Oh, or do that jury duty thing but select a large pool of potential MPs and have 'em compete in a series of challenges that take the best bits of It’s a Knockout, Total Wipeout and I’m a Celeb, add in some Masterchef, Eggheads and Countdown, then a little bit of Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor. Do all that until you’ve whittled 'em down to the number of MPs needed. Make it regional, with a champion for each area.

For the PM, the regional champions all have to live together in a house and you do yer basic Big Brother thing until we get to the final three.

They face off in drag race against the Stig.

5

Are we talking about a complete do-over, rebuilding our democracy from scratch, or only what is feasible politically? Let’s face it: any politically feasible attempt to modernise our system over the next few years is going to make the whole mess even more byzantine.

Ideally, I’d go the whole way and make the UK a federation of nation states. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England all get their own parliaments, with an overarching United Kingdom parliament handling common defence, foreign policy, immigration, etc. Social services, health, education, social policy (things like drug policy) etc. are handled by the individual nation parliaments.

I’m not sure how much this would require a written constitution, though.

6

House of Commons
Single member constituencies, reviewed in the middle of each election cycle to be equal in size, within a small margin of variance. Voting method, optional (extinguishing) preference voting.

House of Lords
Cut the chamber down to half the number of Commons constituencies.
I like the idea of a House of Review not being elected, or at least with greater tenure. If you have HoC with 4 year terms them I’d allow a HoL member to sit an 8 year term, with 1/8th retiring every year. They are replaced with a list nominated by the government but each nomination requires a 2/3rd magority in HoC to be elected. That way you’ll get less party flakies and a lot more non-political people of expertise, experience and eminence.

I don’t know what allowance you make for the Lords Spiritual. Personally I wouldn’t give them any quota. Conversely if all the elected HoL happened to be clergy, that would be fine too.

7

I’m very pissed off about non-proportionality, and not JUST because I like the LibDems :)! So I’d want to bring in some form of PR. I’m aware that one criticism of some PR schemes is that they lose the constituency link (that people in East Bumfuck elect a politician whose primary raison d’etre in the House of Commons, is to represent the people of East Bumfuck). So I thought of a way of doing it that makes things pretty proportional but keeps a location-link, albeit weaker that the one we have now.

Thing is, there’s no way we need 650 constituencies. This country just isn’t that big. And whilst West Codswallop is terribly worried about their fnargle industry, and Dangleberry-upon-Thames is against adding a third runway to their space-hopper port, nevertheless the humans in both areas are far more alike than they are different. And even with the constituencies, an MP really won’t be looking out for their little patch of turf anyway… when we pass laws on drugs, crime, bail-outs, education etc, these laws are national, not local. And I sure as hell hope that all of the legislation Brown has championed in his time as PM hasn’t been a result of taking notes at Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath council hall (if there is such a place). In short, chopping up Britain into so many tiny pieces is really not necessary.

So my brainstorm is, instead of having 650 constituencies with 1 MP each, have 26 regions with 25 MPs each (or even 13 regions with 50 MPs each). And in each region, people vote for a party rather than a candidate. Parties are allocated for that region in proportion to their vote shares in that region. Obviously there’d still be rounding errors, but nothing like with FPTP.

Alternatively I’m happy with the idea of having, say, 325 constituencies with one MP each, elected FPTP style, but then having the other 325 MPs in the same house have a ‘national’ mandate, and be apportioned to the parties in such a way as to bring the TOTAL 650 into proportion with the national votes.

I’m sure both of those schemes have a name, but my brain hurts when I try to understand the names.

And the House of Lords… fuck yeah, elect them already! ALL of them.

8

The problem with electing the Lords is that it fundamentally alters our democracy. The Parliament Act making the House of Commons the ultimate legislator was enacted because whilst the Lords aren’t elected, the Commons are, and the elected chamber should always have precedence over the unelected one when it comes to passing legislation.

If you elect the Lords, then the moral backing for the Parliament Act is no longer there. What is the relationship between the two elected houses? Do we begin to see the stalemates where laws are bounced back and forth between houses, like we see in America? Do we severely limit the role of the Lords?

If you propose to elect the Lords, the relationship between the Commons and Lords needs to be clarified.

9

So what you’re saying is, some of the reforms I’ve just pulled out of my arse might have… consequences? That they might require changes to the way our government works? That they would not leave the machinery of Westminster exactly as they found it?

You might have a point there.

Maybe we should start an alternative thread: “Leaving everything like it was before”, where we can put forward our ideas for not changing anything. I already have a huge post lined up for that, admittedly copied verbatim from large chunks of an encyclopedia.

10

Just make The Stig PM then. The Stig would never make any campaign promises he couldn’t keep, nor make any gaffes.

But to be more serious, I think a split of proportional rep and FPTP would work in the UK. There’s already a degree of proportional rep in European elections, so it’s not a totally alien concept. I think though the proportional regions should be rather large, though: probably no more than seven or eight, with Scotland, Wales, and NI taking three, Greater London taking one, and the rest of England split into three or four.

IMHO the UK hasn’t made more strides in voting reform out of fear of hung parliaments. But I think the UK may be in for a long period of minority governments even without reform. If the LibDems are going to take 90-100 seats, and “Others” take 30 seats, it means either the Tories or Labour are going to have to beat the other by over 125 seats to get a majority. I just don’t think either of the two main parties are going to be that far ahead for some time.

11

New Zealand has an interesting mixed system in which most of the seats are elected FTPT (winner-take-all) from constituencies, but then party lists are used to “top up” in order to give parties proportional representation.

12

“Some say that he is in no way implicated in the cash for honours scandal… all we know is, he’s called - Lord Stig!”

13

Multi-member districts are banned in the United States because they were historically used to dilute the voting power of targeted groups, such as urban voters or racial minorities. Is this not a concern in the U.K.?

14

You already have multi-member districts: they’re called States. You have two senators per state, don’t you?

Anyway, we have multi-member constituencies for the EU Parliament, and historically have had multi-member constituencies for the Commons. IIRC (not sure) Winston Churchill got his start this way.

15

The U.S. Senate is conceptually different. It’s not apportioned by population; it’s not designed to offer equal representation to voters. No state legislature has multi-member districts, not even the state senates.

I could perhaps see where you are going if the multi-member districts you have in mind are historically stable nationality-based entities like England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (and maybe a couple of others, like Cornwall). But that doesn’t really seem to make much sense in such a small country.

And why were they disposed of?

My understanding was that the multi-member districts proposed were directed at the House of Commons.

16
  1. Elections

Elections are held on Fridays. The Friday of an election is a Statutory Holiday. It will be a criminal offence for a manager to prevent one of their staff from voting. Postal votes will only be available to those who are physically out of the country on the day of the vote and cannot return. Companies must pay staff reasonable expenses for journeys to vote. Candidates are restricted to their constituencies during the campaign, and there is to be no opinion polling. Candidates who also hold office will be permitted to travel in their official capacity but this must not be mixed with campaigning.

17

Granted, but a State is still a multi-member constituency.

I don’t know. The last multi-member constituencies, the university seats, abolished in 1950, were elected by STV, and the experiment in PR was deemed to have failed.

18

No, what I’m saying is that simply proposing to elect the Lords isn’t a particularly smart idea if you don’t also explain how the relationship between the Commons and the new Lords works.

Or is this thread for suggesting changes at random?

19

Well, some of us across the Atlantic would say she is the first thing to get rid of!

The idea of a non-elected, hereditary head of state is just plain undemocratic, immoral, and evil. And so is the whole system of Barons, Dukes, Knights, etc. Get rid of them all!

But not “off with their heads”, like you did with King Charles.
After all, Liz seems fairly nice, as does most of the family. (And that Harry is quite cute.) Just pull their titles, their ill-gotten inherited wealth, and send them off to get a real job.

20

The very best argument for keeping the monarchy is the American presidential system. No thanks.