If the UK had the LIFE PR election system in place the results of last week’s voting would have mirrored the desires and intentions of the people better, created a more effective legislative body and produced stronger leadership.
Of course, the UK doesn’t even have PR let alone a LIFE PR system. This left the average citizen trying to cast a vote that covered so much ground and met so many needs that they are to be commended for having made any choice at all. Faced with trying to select an effective local representative, choose a national direction and say something to the world, all in one vote, was a mighty task indeed. In the end many voted to keep out what they didn’t want. Hardly a model of effective democracy.
In a LIFE election the citizens would be casting one vote for a representative to the UK parliament/State Assembly. They would be able to pick from the same list of candidates, irrespective of where they live in the UK, and they would be able to select an alternative/second choice should their first choice candidate fail to muster sufficient votes to meet the quota. This would free everyone to vote for whom they truly wanted to lead their country, instead of voting for someone they didn’t want, and who wasn’t going to lead their country anyway, just to keep out a representative of a party they disagreed with even more strongly.
The UK State Assembly would have a maximum of 62 seats available [population/1 million]. Just over 29 million people voted so the quota for election to a seat would have been slightly less than 500,000 votes. On the face of it that would mean that Greens, who only got 285,616 votes, would not have had a single seat – but who knows how many people across the nation might have voted for a Green candidate if they knew that their votes counted? The BNP would have got a seat even though they got none in the May election, and UKIP would have secured 2 seats.
However all of the numbers are a little suspect because there was so much tactical voting and so little opportunity for the average citizen to truly express their intentions through their vote. Given the chance to choose a candidate who truly represented their views, citizens would quite likely have picked a much broader array of representatives to head up to Westminster on their behalf. Furthermore, with a LIFE PR system everyone 16 and older would have had a vote and those caring for others would have had their charge’s vote too – enfranchising the young, the old and the disabled.
So using the voting record from a flawed election to extrapolate what would have happened with a more perfect system is fraught with difficulties and anomolies, nevertheless it is interesting to look at. If nothing else if shows that the LIFE PR system is fair, effective and representative.
We will be posting a calculator model at www.standardsoflife.com that you can use to figure out for yourself how an election near you would have turned out if you had a LIFE PR voting system – post your results and comments at Topic – Voting.
Standards of LIFE 