Quote:
Originally Posted by danielf
Under PR there can be options for voting for specific people. Candidates for a party are generally ranked on the ballot paper, and candidates are assigned to parliament according to that order. Voters can however vote for a specific person and if this person gets enough votes they can leapfrog candidates that are ahead of them in the queue. Thus, number 15 on the list could get into parliament at the expense of #10 for a party that wins 10 seats.
Also, under PR you tend to have more parties, thus further increasing the choice.
---------- Post added at 17:45 ---------- Previous post was at 17:42 ----------
Not if you have a coalition. The combined parties can have 60% of the vote, which means that only 40% of those who voted did not vote for one of the parties in government. Under FPTP that number can be higher than 60.
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I thought of that and duly amended things - however you can't have a coalition in a single seat. I'm talking locally now not nationally.
I don't find the idea of losing some of the locality of the FPTP system good. While on one side one could say that the Lib Dems would receive far more seats the fact would be that a majority of the people in a majority of those seats did not vote for the MP they will receive as a result of PR. Great for the Lib Dems nationally, not so great locally especially in areas where strongly Tory or Labour seats find themselves with a Lib Dem MP who may not represent their views locally.
It's swings and roundabouts, it's all well and good jumping up and down saying that the Lib Dems didn't get as many MPs as their share of the vote suggests but there is a local flip side of denying the majority, potentially vast majority of people in some ridings the representative they voted for.