Alex Parsons (London, Feeding the Fish): The idea of democracy implies that each of us has an equal say in elections. But this is hardly true in our current system. As a result of variations in constituency size and turnout the true value of our vote changes from constituency to constituency: the value of your vote and my vote could be very different.
If we look at blogger Iain Dale, who stood for a seat in Norfolk North, the problem becomes obvious. He received 20,909 votes and lost, yet 394 MPs (61% of the total) received less than that and still won their constituencies. One can only wonder how the 25,191 people who voted for Adrian Flook felt about him having quadruple Angus MacNeil's votes (6,213), besting Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and 91% of currently sitting MPs, but still not winning his seat. In the 2005 election, only 34% of MPs could claim a majority in their constituency. Not only can Labour not claim a majority of over 50%, Parliament as a whole cannot: only 47.6% of the total vote went to candidates who won their constituencies. In the strictest sense, FPTP has failed to provide political representation for the majority of citizens, as the majority of voters did not get their preferred representative.
Constituencies are vital for keeping politics centred on candidates but all constituency-based systems suffer from this problem as they create closed islands of voters. But what if we imagined a different system? The problem could be avoided by maintaining a universal value for the vote. In many corporations shareholders hold a different number of votes depending on the number of shares they own. My proposal (the Delegated Vote or DV), works under similar principles. Instead of an MP's vote in parliament having a value of one, its value would be equal to the number of votes they received in the last election. If, in a constituency of 1000, the vote split 700/300 the constituency would return two representatives, with voting powers of 700 and 300 respectively.
If votes retained their original value, they could be moved between constituencies. Candidates could deed their voters to another candidate elsewhere (declared in advance). A small party could pool votes from multiple constituencies to reach a set threshold needed to enter parliament. This would theoretically result in 100% symmetry between votes cast and the make up of the chamber: as every single vote counts towards the result. DV would bring the same benefits as other proportional systems but uniquely would reward MPs for voter engagement: MPs with a higher turnout would have a greater voting power.
So this raises questions: Is DV workable? How easy would it be to work in the system it produces? And perhaps most relevantly, does it hold any advantages over existing systems proposed for reform? Comments and critiques would be welcomed.
This proposal can be read in more detail here.
