How To Make 54% = 100%

[jim360]

I suppose, since I've barely stopped talking about this sort of thing for the last couple of months or so, I ought to share the following picture:

http://tinyurl.com/mh4a77b

While the SNP have made the most of the system, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of FPTP is it? Imagine if this crap were repeated across the country. One party winning a sizeable vote share, but turning this into every single seat in parliament. A government with exactly no opposition whatsoever. That is not democracy. That is unacceptable.

[New Judge]

Yes and the answer, as I have said previously, jim, is that this situation comes about because of party politics. Ideally voters should elect their MP and he or she should canvas their opinions on individual topics and vote accordingly.

Becasue of the party system voters are presented with two or three packages of proposals, the entirety of each one probably suiting nobody. Even with some sort of PR this situation will still prevail. People should not go to the polls to elect a government, they should go to elect their MP.

[jim360]

Perhaps people should do that, but the majority don't -- and with good reason, really, as they are also electing representatives to a national government that spends a great deal of its time discussing national issues (and, for that matter, foreign policy).

Parliament is now a national legislative body and really ought to be designed as such. If people want to retain the constituency link, and I can understand this, then it's possible to make constituency elections more representative than FPTP delivers. One could even throw in a reform of the local government system while you're at it.

[Old_Geezer]

Of course that's representative democracy. Every constituency got the candidate who was most popular in that constituency.

Of course proper democracy, if it is ever tried anywhere in the world, would not have such controversy by folk who want to take the population's view as a whole and complain when it isn't reflected after being split up into areas.

With proper democracy one would make one's own decision and vote on things; not rely on an elite to do it and end up in what, in one's opinion, was the wrong lobby.

[jim360]

It's absolutely not representative, OG. Approximately half of people across Scotland will not have their voice heard fairly, if at all, based on the way the SNP are behaving and how the other parties are interacting with them. You might well think from listening to the Tories lately that the Scottish as a whole are already out of the UK.

It's a completely unrepresentative result if it happens. That it is even possible ought to be scary.