Why our electoral system is rubbish

bloodiedathame · 2 May 2010 at 11:59

Dolph said:
And how do you deal with the fact that many people are idiots and would vote for policies that cripple the civil liberties of others, ruin the economy (although that's happened already) or are just plain pointless...

Put something in their water supply.

You can never stop idiots voting, plain and simple.

[TW]Fox · 2 May 2010 at 11:59

I dont know why your misguided and ridiculous impression I wont be voting comes from. I mmost certainly will and it wont be labour.

dalin80 · 2 May 2010 at 12:02

a.hay said:
I think we should be voting for policies not parties.

Thanks to the tv debates its actual turned more into x-factor, vastly more will vote for clegg just becuase they like him more with absolutely no clue as to what the policie are.

bloodiedathame · 2 May 2010 at 12:04

dalin80 said:
Thanks to the tv debates its actual turned more into x-factor, vastly more will vote for clegg just becuase they like him more with absolutely no clue as to what the policie are.

I agree. It's turned into a stupid celebrity campaign, another step closer to our American cousins system...

csmager · 2 May 2010 at 12:07

Their calculator's based on uniform swing rather than uniform voting (though obviously if if it were uniform voting, then labour wouldn't win any seats!)

It's a very crude model - even the BBC say so. Here's hoping it's wrong!

PMKeates · 2 May 2010 at 12:08

That's not how it would probably work in an election. The BBC election seat calculator is assuming a uniform national swing and that's very unlikely when you approach such large scales of change.

Edit: ^^^^ you got that in just before me

Just as important as where the swing goes, is where the swing comes from.

semi-pro waster · 2 May 2010 at 12:12

Dolph said:
And how do you deal with the fact that many people are idiots and would vote for policies that cripple the civil liberties of others, ruin the economy (although that's happened already) or are just plain pointless...

Isn't that just one of the risks we have to take when we allow people to have a say in their elected leaders? They've got to accept the personal responsibility of living with their choices?

RDM · 2 May 2010 at 12:14

semi-pro waster said:
Isn't that just one of the risks we have to take when we allow people to have a say in their elected leaders? They've got to accept the personal responsibility of living with their choices?

The problem comes when you have to accept the "personal responsibility" of living with other peoples choices.

Dolph · 2 May 2010 at 12:15

semi-pro waster said:
Isn't that just one of the risks we have to take when we allow people to have a say in their elected leaders? They've got to accept the personal responsibility of living with their choices?

RDM said:
The problem comes when you have to accept the "personal responsibility" of living with other peoples choices.

This is the big problem, and why I support strict constitutional limits on the power of government as a result.

Enforcing opinion through law and taxation should be considered unacceptable.

dannyjo22 · 2 May 2010 at 12:17

Why can't they just add up all the votes and whoever has the most wins.

scorza · 2 May 2010 at 12:24

dannyjo22 said:
Why can't they just add up all the votes and whoever has the most wins.

That's what they do, but on a local rather than national level. Apparently this is unfair.

rypt · 2 May 2010 at 12:29

scorza said:
That's what they do, but on a local rather than national level. Apparently this is unfair.

It's unfair because constituency sizes are not fair.
Huge areas of the country can be blue, but there are lots of small constituencies up north that will vote red - and their MP is worth just as much

kibblerok · 2 May 2010 at 12:33

It's the sheep round here especially that would still vote Labour if they urinated on them, took away all their benefits and put dog poo through their letterbox.

Labour need to go away and die a public, painful and humorous death.

dbmzk1 · 2 May 2010 at 12:34

dannyjo22 said:
Why can't they just add up all the votes and whoever has the most wins.

scorza said:
That's what they do, but on a local rather than national level. Apparently this is unfair.

It's unfair because the way it is now, a party can actually get more total votes than the "winner" but still get no seats, as Fox has shown in the OP. All votes for anyone apart from the winner, even if they add up to a majority, are ignored.

Dolph · 2 May 2010 at 12:45

scorza said:
That's what they do, but on a local rather than national level. Apparently this is unfair.

Because of unequal sized constituences and inconsistent boundaries.

There is also the issue that, theoretically, under FPTP you could end up with 1 party with 50% of the votes and no seats.

PMKeates · 2 May 2010 at 13:01

Dolph said:
There is also the issue that, theoretically, under FPTP you could end up with 1 party with 50% of the votes and no seats.

Or more impressively, 99.99%+ of the vote and 1 seat

Would take some seriously rotten gerrymandering, though.

SlyReaper · 2 May 2010 at 13:14

Try setting it to how the YouGov poll numbers are. In this case, the LibDems get more votes than Labour, and end up with less than a third of the seats that Labour have. How is that, by any demented stretch of a deranged imagination, fair?

rypt · 2 May 2010 at 13:22

SlyReaper said:
Try setting it to how the YouGov poll numbers are. In this case, the LibDems get more votes than Labour, and end up with less than a third of the seats that Labour have. How is that, by any demented stretch of a deranged imagination, fair?

Or even try this

LD and Lab on equal seats, but LD lead Labour by ~14%.

gambitt · 2 May 2010 at 14:32

Klo · 2 May 2010 at 14:40

My vote is worth 0.033

Super safe Conservative.