Britain needs electoral reform but what is the best alternative? Phil McCarvill from ippr lays out why the Additional Member System is most suited to the UK context.
The outcome of the 2010 general election has dealt a potentially terminal blow to the First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system and put electoral reform centre stage. ippr’s recently published Devising an Electoral System for the 21st Century: The case for AMS argues that FPTP has clearly failed and that the time is right for meaningful electoral reform. The paper makes clear that a move to the Alternative Vote system will not constitute sufficiently meaningful reform and that the Additional Member System is most suited to the UK context. AMS combines the best elements of the current system with a sense of continuity, proportionality, representation and fairness.
First Past the Post: Time for Change
The 2010 election result has delivered yet further evidence of the inadequacy of the First Past the Post system. FPTP has yet again produced a distorted result which rewards the Conservatives and Labour and penalises the Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties.
The central problem is that FPTP is a system which is built around the principle of two party politics, yet the proportion of vote secured by the Conservative and Labour Parties continues to fall with every election. This means that we effectively have an electoral system which belongs to previous era.
By almost any measure, the UK has been experiencing an acute democratic deficit for decades. Perhaps most damningly, in 2005 41 per cent of MPs had no right to hold their seats on the basis of their party’s share of the vote (Dunleavy & Margetts, 2005).
In spite of the weight of evidence against it, FPTP has ultimately been undone by one of its own proudest boasts – its failure to deliver ‘decisive’ majority government. It is surely no longer possible to overlook its flaws - the UK now needs meaningful election reform. The key question is what form should this take?
Electoral Reform – The Essential Criteria
Ippr believes that in order to secure electoral reform which combines proportionality and stability, the successor to FPTP should satisfy a number of clear criteria. It must:
• Maintain the constituency link
• Establish a clearer relationship between the number of votes cast and the number of seats secured by each party
• Ensure that all votes have a value
• Provide for stable, but not glacial government.
Electoral Reform: The Choice
There are a number of systems which could replace FPTP. However closer inspection and reference to the above criteria helps to narrow the field down quite considerably. We can quickly eliminate those purely proportional systems which rely exclusively on party lists for distributing seats according to the proportion of the popular vote secured by each party. Such systems offer no opportunity to retain the constituency link and potentially concentrate too much power in the hands of party leaderships.
Despite being the subject of a proposed referendum the Alternative Vote system is similarly not the answer. The core problem is that AV is not proportional; it includes no mechanism to ensure that the allocation of parliamentary seats is in proportion to the number of votes cast. It simply allows for more of the voters’ intentions to be taken into account in deciding the result in a single constituency. As Curtice has shown, the biggest concern is that AV can produce results which are even more distorted than FPTP (Curtice, 2010). Surely, this is not where we want to go.
Next up is Alternative Vote Plus (AV+). Whilst AV+ retains the constituency link and injects a degree of proportionality, the fundamental concern is that AV+ is built around AV. This means that whilst AV+ leads to a fairer distribution of seats than AV, it is still not sufficiently proportional (Baston, 2006).
Single Transferable Vote (STV), historically favoured by the Liberal Democrats, has the potential to be one of the most proportional electoral systems available. However, STV requires huge constituencies in order to ensure genuine proportionality, a factor which all but destroys the constituency link.
To date the current debate about electoral reform has been predicated on an assumption that the choice is between FPTP, AV, AV+ and STV. However, there is a strong, viable alternative: the Additional Member System. AMS supplements the FPTP system for constituency elections with an additional party list. The latter is used to inject an element of proportionality, which is based on regional shares of the vote.
AMS successfully maintains the constituency link, establishes a clear link between the number of votes cast and seats secured and thus delivers greater proportionality. Academic analysis of recent elections has demonstrated that AMS would deliver more balanced and representative parliaments than other alternative systems.
AMS has delivered stable governments in a range of countries, including most notably Germany and New Zealand. In the UK context, AMS has successfully been used in Scotland, Wales and the Greater London Assembly. The latter begs the question if AMS is good enough for the devolved assemblies, why is not good enough for Westminster?
There is a further reason why AMS would be good for Britain – politics. Electoral reform has traditionally divided the parties, both from each other and from within. It is proposed that AMS may be the only solution quite simply because it is no one’s preferred option. Viewed from the Conservative standpoint, AMS does not give Labour what it wants; AV or AV+, depending on who you speak to. Similarly, it does not give the Liberal Democrats what they really want which is STV. Perhaps most importantly, it offers an electoral system which is built on the foundations of the current first system. It offers a gentle move away from the current approach, rather than a dramatic leap which is associated with systems such as STV. Could it be in that this holds the key to its ultimate political acceptability?
Conclusion
The First Past the Post voting system is no longer fit for purpose. It is therefore vital that in considering a replacement we look at all the options and not just those favoured by the major political parties. We think that a referendum which offered the voters a straight choice between FPTP and AV would be a wasted opportunity.
AMS is politically and democratically the natural choice. It offers comfort to those who are wedded to the current system through its use of FPTP, while delivering the proportionality and representation desired by those who advocate change.
Download the report below:
Devising an Electoral System for the 21st Century: The case for AMS