First Past the Post just not working

The Make Votes Matter campaign has an action day on Saturday, July 6 to promote the benefits of Proportional Representation (PR).

PR is often criticised because it is claimed it would lead to weak, unstable coalition governments and constant elections.

But many developed democracies use PR, including Germany, Norway and Switzerland, and it has proved to be a very effective way of governing. Countries with PR perform better on average in the quality of democracy, in building more equal and egalitarian societies, and in responding to long-term issues like protecting the environment and tackling climate change.

Our current First Past the Post (FPTP) system simply isn’t delivering stability. It’s hard to describe recent British governments as stable. Countries with FPTP have unplanned elections slightly more often than countries with PR.

If elections to the House of Commons were changed to a proportional system so that the shares of seats a party wins matched the share of votes it receives there would be a better representation of the voters’ wishes.

Another criticism is that smaller parties could wield disproportionate power.

But the bigger parties have more options when forming coalitions and more posts in the resulting governments. This gives them more power in forming and steering a coalition government.

Smaller parties may achieve some of their objectives in government but will always be in a weaker negotiating position.

FPTP hands the power of majority government to parties on a minority of the votes and is far more likely to foster extremism.

The fact that most voters are ignored and millions have no voice in our democracy is the perfect environment to breed disillusionment. FPTP is also far more likely to put extremists into government, because winner-takes-all systems allow one side to seize total power on a minority of the votes.

A major benefit of PR is that it allows a light to be shone on all parties. When extremists win representation they are often exposed as unaligned with the interests of their voters, incompetent, or both.

Where extremists win seats in countries with PR the other parties often rule out any coalition with them. This is a far more effective and democratic way of limiting extreme voices than denying their voters any representation at all. Dr David Martin Claverton Down