Actor Steve Coogan and presenter Carol Vorderman have backed Liberal Democrat pledges to reform how the UK’s general elections are run.
Actor Steve Coogan and presenter Carol Vorderman have backed Liberal Democrat pledges to reform how the UK’s general elections are run.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
Neither are proportional. If STV was used as multimember then constituencies would have around quarter of a million voters instead of 90k and parties would get list candidates, either regional, national or UK wide and they wouldn’t be elected by anyone.
Things not talked about by PR promoters.
The Republic of Ireland has 39 multi-member constituencies electing 160 members in total (so an average of four per constituency). That achieves almost perfectly proportional results. They have no party lists - each party nominates multiple candidates and you can (for example) choose to rank the individual candidates in whatever order you prefer.
If you translate this into UK terms, it would be the equivalent of merging four neighbouring constituencies into one and then having that elect four MPs. There might be a handful of unusual cases where you choose to take a different approach for reasons of geographic common sense (for example, Orkney and Shetlands or the Isle of Wight would probably remain as they are) but for most parts of the country that hardly seems particularly egregious.