Electoral Reform

[SueEllen]

Regardless of how you do PR, its weakness is either you end up with a totalitarian government (unlikely but possible) or one that is dependent on coalitions which are inherently unstable.

At least FPTP gives a government with a clear mandate and a united opposition.

The UK coalition government in 2010 wasn't unstable.

There are forms of PR for different governments, assemblies and Mayors in different regions of the UK. They have got rid of one for the Mayor of London simply because no-one actually made use of the type of PR - transferable vote - used.

[d000hg]

Yes there will be some negotiating between potential coalition parties and what happens is that the most extreme policies get ditched and you get a moderate government most people can live with not a far left Corbynista or far right Johnson dictatorship

Johnson isn't a dictator and his government isn't far right. And if Corbyn is hard left, he never got anywhere near leading his party to form a government. FPTP kept the corbynites out of power; under PR that wouldn't be the case.

[TestMangler]

Regardless of how you do PR, its weakness is either you end up with a totalitarian government (unlikely but possible) or one that is dependent on coalitions which are inherently unstable.

At least FPTP gives a government with a clear mandate and a united opposition.

FTPT generally gives power beyond the proportions that the country voted for, like Blair getting 150 or so seats more than the tories in 2005 with about 3% more of the vote share.

[malvolio]

Regardless of how you do PR, its weakness is either you end up with a totalitarian government (unlikely but possible) or one that is dependent on coalitions which are inherently unstable.

At least FPTP gives a government with a clear mandate and a united opposition.

[TestMangler]

Here's a simple guide to the differences between PR and FPTP.

https://keydifferences.com/differenc...sentation.html

I can't say if it's biased or not, do your own research.

I personally prefer the idea of voting for a party that then gets seats proportionally according to its share of the votes, rather than voting for someone who has never lived in my area and was parachuted in by the party exec. However, I don't know enough about PR to know what the potential pitfalls of that system are and intend to do more research before I decide which flag I'm running up the pole.

The D'hondt system used in Scotland creates a pretty accurate (in most ways) proportion of voting popularity to seats. It's a mixture of constituency and regional lists, so for example if a party takes all the constituency seats in a region, they have virtually no chance of taking a regional list seat, which means that these seats are distributed to the other parties based on a vote share. If the SP was FPTP, it would have the SNP on 50 or something with the other seven seats split between the opposition parties. So, not balanced at all, but the regional list, based on D'hondt, pretty much leaves you with seats in proportion to votes. It's a system used in a lot of countries and a ton more democratic that FPTP.

[Eirikur]

What will happen is this - you vote for a party based on some attractive policy proposals in that party's manifesto.

What happens next is that those policies for which you voted get chucked on the bonfire so that the party can get into bed with another party to form a government.

The political back pedaling will be like an Italian tank regiment. In fact, I'd wager that parties will put things in their manifestos to get votes in the full knowledge that they'd never need to implement them.

Yes there will be some negotiating between potential coalition parties and what happens is that the most extreme policies get ditched and you get a moderate government most people can live with not a far left Corbynista or far right Johnson dictatorship

[WTFH]

What will happen is this - you vote for a party based on some attractive policy proposals in that party's manifesto.

What happens next is that those policies for which you voted get chucked on the bonfire so that the party can get into bed with another party to form a government.

The political back pedaling will be like an Italian tank regiment. In fact, I'd wager that parties will put things in their manifestos to get votes in the full knowledge that they'd never need to implement them.

You mean like promising 40 new hospitals, promising to balance the books, promising to get Brexit done, etc?

People still vote for the Tories, no matter how many manifesto lies they publish, and they always excuse their voting for the Tories by saying that everyone else would be worse, or that in 1842 someone who wasn't an elite privileged tory won and the country fell apart before the election, therefore we must continue to vote for Tories.

The fact that some gullible idiots continue to promote self harm in support of the elite (who now rebrand everyone else as elite) shows that the country is in the mess it is in because it's the will of the people to be run by the criminals we have in government.

[Guy At Charnock Richard]

Here's a simple guide to the differences between PR and FPTP.

https://keydifferences.com/differenc...sentation.html

I can't say if it's biased or not, do your own research.

I personally prefer the idea of voting for a party that then gets seats proportionally according to its share of the votes, rather than voting for someone who has never lived in my area and was parachuted in by the party exec. However, I don't know enough about PR to know what the potential pitfalls of that system are and intend to do more research before I decide which flag I'm running up the pole.

What will happen is this - you vote for a party based on some attractive policy proposals in that party's manifesto.

What happens next is that those policies for which you voted get chucked on the bonfire so that the party can get into bed with another party to form a government.

The political back pedaling will be like an Italian tank regiment. In fact, I'd wager that parties will put things in their manifestos to get votes in the full knowledge that they'd never need to implement them.

[ladymuck]

Here's a simple guide to the differences between PR and FPTP.

https://keydifferences.com/differenc...sentation.html

I can't say if it's biased or not, do your own research.

I personally prefer the idea of voting for a party that then gets seats proportionally according to its share of the votes, rather than voting for someone who has never lived in my area and was parachuted in by the party exec. However, I don't know enough about PR to know what the potential pitfalls of that system are and intend to do more research before I decide which flag I'm running up the pole.

[Eirikur]

What has changed in the intervening centuries to make it out of date?

In most western countries democracy happened, meaning some form of PR or in some cases a mix of PR and constituencies. Just PR where a party with 43% of the votes can have a huge majority of 80 seats in parliament is outdated and undemocratic