It is easy to dismiss a Green politician campaigning for a fair voting system as self-interested, but this is not about my job, my party having a fair share of power, or even the gross injustice of my vote in parliamentary elections having been trodden into the dirt in every election over the past 40 years. It is about claiming the right to live in a democracy: that is a duty not just for me but for every British citizen.
The impact on the Green Party of first-past-the-post (a horse-race, not a democratic ballot) is made clear in the Electoral Reform Society’s analysis of the 2019 general election Voters Left Voiceless, showing that a full 98.5% of Green votes were ignored, i.e. had no impact on the final outcome and 96.2% of Green votes were unrepresented, i.e. were cast for candidates who were not elected. It takes more votes to elect a Green than to elect a politician from any of the parties in the Westminster Parliament. According to analysis by the House of Commons Library, ‘In 2019 the Conservatives got one seat for every 38,264 votes, while Labour got one seat for every 50,837 votes. It took many more votes to elect a Lib Dem (336,038) and Green MP (866,435), but far fewer to elect an SNP MP (25,883)’.
First-past-the-post elections are what a game theorist would call ‘repeated games’: as somebody who supports a party that is neither Tweedledum nor Tweedledee you get the opportunity to be beaten up repeatedly. We can all recall the feeling that comes when a general election is announced: first the excitement unavoidable for a political hack, and then the sense of doom at what the ‘two-party squeeze’ will do to you and your voters. The outrage of ‘tactical voting’ – voting against your interests and your better judgement because the electoral system forces you to – is a torture unique to majoritarian systems like ours. It is a torture that should be put back in the middle ages where it belongs. As 21st-century British citizens we should have the right to make a free choice at elections – what else can democracy mean if not that?
