Monday 2 August 2010

AV or not AV

I read in today's Guardian that MPs are concerned at the level of scrutiny the electoral reform bill is being allowed for http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/02/mps-denied-enough-time-to-study-electoral-reform-bill

As regular readers will be aware I am a supporter of the Additional Member Voting System, this allows a constituency vote and a Party vote, so total votes and total seats are fairly proportional.

This Alternative Vote system seems to me as not proportional nor fair, with the second place candidate the true beneficiary, so the second choice wins, I want to vote FOR a candidate and a Party and I want my vote to count.

Parliament should allow a referendum on a proportional voting system and any boundary changes should receive the same scrutiny with public inquiry if necessary.

The new coalition government is playing fast and loose with our unwritten constitution, maybe it's time for a written constitution and bill of rights, this to defend our constitutional rights.

2 comments:

  1. I am not happy at all with the idea of AV... the Labour Party commissioned Roy Jenkins to investigate PR and he recommended AV+, where the "constituency favourite" would be elected by an AV system and then nationally the shares of the vote would be tallied with the number of MPs and correct with "top up party MPs"... seems perfectly sensible to me, but Blair & Brown didn't want it and neither - it seems - do our LibCon Coaliation.

    Which is an opportunity lost, because this is so insignificant in promoting electoral reform that I wouldn't be surprised to see the populate vote for "stick with what we have".

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  2. We do have a written constitution, Chris; it is not codified, however - and it is certainly not in one place. That does not make it any the less powerful or effective.

    The problem is that it has been ignored for a very long time. Our absorption into a federal superstate is contrary to it (and collusion with that process is treason in statute law) as indeed is party government. But it is inconvenient to adhere to it, and so it will continue to be ignored.

    Instead, we have substituted ill thought-out, over-arching legislation, much of it originating in the anti democratic European superstate, which actually removes the freedoms it purports to endow.

    We have common law which enshrines over a thousand years of hard-won experience and freedoms, but we choose to dump it in favour of ill-drafted legislation introduced by an alien legal system and form of government.

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