Fair votes in practice

In a recent discussion of voting systems on “Any Questions”, Brian Paddick said “If I have to choose between simplicity and fairness, I’ll choose fairness every time”. There are plenty of arguments for the Single Transferable Vote on grounds of fairness, as we shall see. But it can also be claimed that STV is simpler than our present “first past the post” (FPTP) system in the aspects that really matter. It may seem simple just to put a cross against your favourite candidate, but around half of UK constituencies have elected the same party since 1945, so in any of these it is hardly worth voting. Indeed, many political analysts, and party organisers, believe that the result is largely dictated by a very few swing voters, variously estimated in the hundreds, or even merely tens, of thousands. Certainly in most constituencies at most two parties will be in the running, so that the intelligent choice (at least in the short-term) for supporters of other candidates will be to vote tactically for one of these two. Note the unnatural distribution of votes in Figure 1(a), where the case of close 3-party contests (the centre of the triangle) seems to act as a “repeller”. What is not obvious in Figure 1(a) is the huge bias possible in the FPTP system. Figure 1(b) shows the votes required for various levels of majority; note that the actual outcome of the election in votes (38, 38, 24) %, shown by the asterisk, falls within Labour majority territory, with the outcome in seats being (54, 37, 9) %.