Voting System in the UK General Elections - Assignment Example

1 The voting system used in UK General Elections requires urgent reform to reflect the values of a liberal democracy After Labour Party won the 2005 general election of UK with the support of only a fifth of the adult population, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt publicly called for a debate on reforming the voting system in the country. Her remarks came amidst growing demands by political campaigners for a review of the voting system (Russell, 2005). They might have thought that the voting system lacked the credentials of a liberal democracy. Values of liberal democracy Liberal democracy is a form of representative Government where regular attempts are made to protect civil liberties against the onslaught of Governments, institutions and powerful individuals in the society. Basically, this is achieved through awarding political freedom to all people as it is the main platform for the masses to express themselves. The values of liberal democracy are reflected in its basic system where continuous efforts are undertaken to see that no group enjoys special privileges in the society. The values of liberal democracy can therefore be found in a society which struggles to develop through talent and merit rather than rank, privilege and status. The values of liberal democracy are also seen in programmes and policies aimed at restricting the Government intervention in political, economic and moral matters of the citizens. To enrich a democracy with these values, the political system is generally supported by a written constitution which clearly defines the powers and responsibilities of the executive, judiciary and legislature (liberal democracy). 2 The voting system in UK Presently, the UK general elections are held as per the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system. It is also known as plurality system, relative majority system or winner- take-all system. In this, a voter votes for a single candidate and the majority vote-getter among all the contesting candidates would be the winner in a particular constituency. For example, in a 1000-voter constituency, a candidate getting 4oo votes would be the winner if the other 3 contesting candidates receive 200 votes each. Though 400 out of 1000 votes is a clear minority, the number is higher than that of any of the other 3 candidates. It indicates that this system is endowed with the flaw of electing candidates / parties with minority vote, as the majority vote is divided among several contestants / parties. This is the most disadvantageous system but unfortunately most of the world democracies have been adopting this system for many years. This has brought embarrassment to the English in several elections including the 1983 general election in which Conservatives bagged 397 seats in the House of Commons with a minority vote (Hallowell, 2002, P 103). This situation has repeated in 2005 general elections too in the UK with the Labour party gaining power with a minority vote. The resulting disadvantage is that, though it is a representative government, majority voice is not heard in legislatures. This system has the capacity to curtail the political freedom of the majority of people, the basic ingredient of the liberal democracy. To put it the other way, the total number of seats gained by a particular party in the general elections would not be proportionate to the total number of votes received by it. 3 The alternative systems Preferential voting system There are some alternative systems too with regard to voting in a democracy. Let us discuss some of them. The preferential voting system is a method in which the voters are asked to express their preference of candidates in order of priority. In this, voters generally cast their votes by ranking the participating candidates in order of their priority. On the voting slip or card, the names of all candidates are printed and empty boxes are provided against each candidate. When there are 5 candidates, a voter provides rankings for all of them indicating 1,2,3,4 and 5 depending on his/her preference. Most preferred candidate gets ranking 1 and the least preferred candidate gets ranking 5. This system, known as the full fledged preferential system was implemented in Australia between 1962 and 1992 (Moon, 2003, P 94).Two or three candidates may get number 1 preference votes but majority winner of them would be the winning candidate. There are of course different counting methods for this. Proportional representation voting system Proportional representation voting, also known as the full representation voting system, has developed as a competing and rival method to the plurality-majority voting system. In Western Europe, 21 out of 28 countries had adopted this method of voting and prominent among them are Germany, Denmark, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland. In this system, members are elected 4 in multi-member districts in stead of in single-member districts. The number of seats a party wins in the election would be proportionate to the total number of votes cast for the particular party. Assuming that there are 20 seats in a district with Party A winning 25% of the total votes in an election there, it would get 5 seats in proportion to the votes received by it (Amy, 2000, P 88) Range voting system Range voting system is another method used to elect candidates for legislative houses. In this system, voters provide numerical score ranging from 0 to 99 to each candidate. 0 can be the worst and 99 can be the best for lowest and highest scores respectively. In case there are 5 candidates in an election for a seat, the voter should provide his / her score for all the candidates in the fray. For an example, the scores can be 5, 89, 99, 0, and 12 for the 5 candidates respectively. If a voter does not want to provide rating to a candidate he/she can put x mark indicating the unwillingness to allot numerical score for the candidate. The candidate with the highest numerical score wins the election (Range Voting). The better system Proportional representation voting system is certainly the better one compared to the plurality system. It can be the best one when compared with all other systems. In this voting system, all parties contesting the elections would get seats in the legislature proportionate to the total 5 number of votes received by them. Some parties may win highest number of seats and some parties may get lowest number of seats. The party with majority seats or two parties together having likeminded ideology may form the Government but it does not matter. The main advantage is that each and every section of society would enjoy some sort of political freedom and be able to raise its voice in legislature to put forward its point of view thereby fulfilling the prime criteria of liberal democracy. Clearly, this advantage is not available in the plurality voting system. Legislative houses, formed through proportional representation voting system, would be blessed with the sacred opportunity of knowing the feelings, ideas and opinions of all its citizens on various issues facing the country. This system would therefore provide first hand information and inputs to the executive to plan various programmes keeping the requirements of all sections of society. However, the problem with the proportional representation voting system is that antisocial elements may form political parties and contest the elections winning some seats. This is the most unwanted development in a liberal democracy. But then required laws should be made to see that criminals do not form political parties or contest elections. In this background, there is an emergent need to reform the UK voting system. A journey from plurality system to a proportional representation voting system will go a long way in turning the country into a liberal democracy. 6 References Books Amy, J Douglas (2000) Behind the Ballot Box. Connecticut (USA): Praeger / Greenwood. Hallowell, Jonathan (2002). Britain since 1945. USA, UK, Australia and Germany: Blackwell publishing. Moon, Jeremy (2003) Australian politics and Government: The commonwealth, the states and the territories. Cambridge (UK) and New York (USA): Cambridge University Press. Websites Liberal democracy. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from http://www.australianpolitics.com/democracy/liberal-democracy.shtml Range voting. The centre for range voting. Retrieved March 27, 2006, from http://math.temple.edu/wds/crv/RangeVoting.html Russell, Ben (2005, May).Hewitt breaks ranks in call to improve voting system. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article222790.ece Read More