Time for a fairer voting system

Yesterday Nick Clegg announced that there will be a referendum on electoral reform in May 2011. Our current voting system is unfair, the Liberal Democrats, for example, received a quarter of the vote nationally in this year’s General Election yet won less than 10% of parliamentary seats.

The system on offer is the alternative vote (AV), it is not the Liberal Democrats’ preferred voting system which is proportional representation (PR) single transferable vote (STV), however, that’s not up for the referendum yet and this is a step in the right direction.

The key difference between AV and the current system, first past the post or FPTP, is that FPTP returns the candidate with the most votes whereas AV returns the most popular candidate overall.

Dawn Barnes, Witney Liberal Democrat candidate for 2010 said: “It’s crucial that we get behind this push for a change in our voting system and vote yes. It’s a fairer and more representative system than we have now and will result in a fairer parliament.

“A lot of MPs seem to be ready to use it as a political argument but this is beyond politics, it’s about people in the UK, like you and me, having the chance to cast a vote that actually counts. Once we win this referendum then I’ll be pushing for the next step. Whatever you hear in the news, this is not complicated and to suggest it is merely patronises people, and it is worth doing as the result is a fairer Britain.” 

Dawn had a letter published in The Guardian on Saturday in response to comments from a Labour leadership candidate against supporting the alternative vote referendum.

To support the campaign or find out more visit Take Back Parliament or join the Lib Dem campaign for fairer votes.