Many people are angry about the way some politicians abused the way they were able to claim expenses – but for me this doesn’t mean the system for electing them is at fault. We have good politicians locally, but this may not be the same in other areas, therefore we may need better politicians - but to get these we certainly don’t need to change the way they are elected. The current system is called ‘first past the post’ where the winner is the one that comes first, and has stood our Country, and many others around the world, in good stead for hundreds of years. In election after election, it has given our country the kind of government it was seeking – the occasional coalition mixed in with plenty of strong governments that reflected the type of leadership, we wanted at the time.
There are lots of genuine reforms which would go some way to restoring people’s trust in politics, many of these that will enable local people to have more say in the decisions that affect them. I am all for reform of many of our present systems of government, but the way we elect our politicians is not one of them.
The current system creates strong governments, it’s simple to understand, it’s the most widely used system in the world, it’s quick and easy to count, but importantly it’s cheap to administer, and above all else its fair – giving one person, one vote, rather than some people’s vote being counted more than once.
7 comments:
What is wrong with the most democratic system available? First past the post means the constituency member who gets the most votes in that constituency gets in. How can it be that someone who doesn't have the most votes ends up representing you aka Ed Miliband in the labour leadership. It's a plot to have hung parliaments and coalition government for the foreseeable future and should be rejected!
AV is a way for second rate and third rate candidates to sneak in.
I completely agree with the other comments. What we have now is a democratic way to vote and simple to administer and I would say least costly to the rate payer. Clegg even stated on TV he does not know who would win using the AV system, but surely he must have a good idea why else bother.
We understand Mr Clegg is a tad unhappy that his party didn't fare as well as he would have wished, but to attempt to throw out a voting system that has served us so well for so many years for one that no one in their right mind would want is an obscene waste of tax payers' money.
Why squander around £90million on this AV referendum?
Why not do as countless parties have done in the past when results in an election didn't come up to exp3ectations? All they did was shift constituency boundaries to suit the voting demographic they required.
Simples!
What has always bothered me about AV is the way second, third, fourth, etc, votes are given the same weight as first preference votes. This is, of course, if people bother to number all the candidates when they vote. In Australia it is illegal not to vote and you can also be fined for not rating all the candidates.
It will mean candidates have to appeal to minority voters; it will always favour the Lib Dems as a large third party, and will give us more coalitions; i.e. we will never get a government we voted for.
I am not necessarily against electoral reform, but I am against AV. It is the worst of all worlds.
Being in Europe creates too much interference with British tried and tested ways of running our democratic systems.
http://www.tfa.net/betteroffout/
Interesting now AV has been resoundingly rejected by approximately two to one, its supporters are wailing on ("impartial"?) BBC programmes that the decision process was flawed.
Once again the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies spring to mind "well he would say that wouldn't he?" Change he to they and off we go.
Post a Comment