Recently, I wrote to our new MP, Jessica Lee, asking about her position regarding the referendum on the Alternate Vote taking place on May 5th.
Jessica was kind enough to respond and give her personal opinion about the options on offer, stating:
“My own personal belief is that the First-Past-The-Post electoral system has stood the test of time and importantly is the system most likely to allow voters the power to eject failed Governments from office.”
However, what does this mean for Erewash? Let’s look at the figures:
Election 2010 results for Erewash:
|
Name (Party) |
Total Votes |
% of votes |
|
Jessica Lee (Conservative) |
18805 |
39.5 |
|
Cheryl Pidgeon |
16304 |
34.2 |
|
Martin Garnett (Liberal Democrat) |
8343 |
17.5 |
|
Mark Bailey (British National Party) |
2337 |
4.9 |
|
Jodie Sutton (UK Independence Party) |
855 |
1.8 |
|
Lee Fletcher (Green) |
534 |
1.1 |
|
Luke Wilkins (Independent) |
464 |
1 |
|
Turnout |
47642 |
68.4 |
source: BBC News – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/constituency/b67.stm
The top line of the table is illuminating – Ms. Lee became the MP for Erewash last year with less than 40% of the votes. First-past-the-post (FPTP) is an effective solution when there are only two choices, but when there are more than two choices FPTP starts to look like a lazy way of deciding who becomes an elected representative of the people.
A problem commonly faced in modern Britain is that there are often more than two choices on offer, and politics is no exception. Faced with a multitude of candidates and only one choice, a voter is faced with a dilemma of whom to vote for, depending on political polls indicating the likely winner.
If a candidate acceptable to the voter looks likely to win, does the voter:
- Vote for the likely winning candidate to make sure of their victory?
- Use the opportunity to vote for a preferred candidate, on the basis that you can show your support whilst resting easy in the knowledge that someone reasonable will get in?
It’s an even harder choice for the voter faced with an unacceptable choice of winning candidate. Does the voter:
- Vote for the person most likely to defeat that winning candidate?
- Vote with their conscience, in the certain knowledge that they are throwing that vote away?
- Or stay away from the whole event in disillusionment, like over 30% of Erewash voters did in 2010?
Ms Lee is obviously happy that she was elected, but in reality most people didn’t vote for her. And out of the people that did, there is an unknown number that only did so because they weren’t happy about giving continued support to Labour.
In summary, first-past-the-post means that many voters end up second-guessing the actions of their peers when in front of the ballot box. Voters can end up voting against a candidate, rather than for them – a corruption of what elections should be about. AV eliminates this issue, because it allows voters to grade candidates on their acceptability by ranking them in order of preference.
And of course, AV gives voters flexibility on their preferences – if you have no other preferences than a single candidate, you enter “1” against their name and post the ballot paper. You only need put as many alternate preferences as you desire – if there’s one candidate who you don’t want to express ANY support for at all, then don’t put a number next to their name.
Of course, in Erewash it’s likely that Ms. Lee would still have been elected as MP if such a system had been in place in 2010. But we would know for certain that the overall proportion of votes gives her a legitimacy that FPTP simply can no longer provide in a modern democracy.