Part Six: Electoral Reform and why we need it
Electoral Reform is, for me, the most important issue of this election. It's the first that will affect me when I get to cast my own vote, for starters, but also it's one of the most clear weaknesses in our democratic system. Banks and economies go up and down, immigration increases and decreases, wars even come and go, but the system by which the British people decide who is running the country is a constant and important fact of life and, whatever our circumstances, always will be.
The fact is that our voting system is unfair, and grossly so. When the Lib Dems reached 34% of the vote, ahead of all other parties, earlier this week the BBC's seat calculator stull put them fifty seats behind the Conservative OR Labour parties despite the fact that they had a 3% lead over the Tories and nearly a 7% lead over Labour! This system is clearly not designed for fair representation. Its proponents, primarily the Conservatives, claim that it is vital as it delivers "stable government". Stability is perhaps, to an extent, an overrated factor in politics. We need a working government, of course, but stability at the cost of effective representation, carried to its logical conclusion, creates a very ossified political heirachy that is very bad for a country.
The alternatives are myriad; I'll leave you to look up the Single Transferrable Vote, Alternative Vote, Alternative Member, and Proportional Representation systems to gather yur own thoughts. The fact is, though, that the system we have now simply doesn't work in a democratic and fair way. And a democracy that doesn't work can, horribly easily, become no democracy at all.
