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June 10, 2009
A Timely Debate on Electoral Reform
Our friends at the RSA are holding a debate on the 17th Jun 2009 at 13:00 entitled: 'Electoral Reform: Right question? Right answer? And who decides?'
Sign up for it at - http://rsaelectoralreform.eventbrite.com/
Their description of the debate is -
At this critical time for UK democracy, the RSA brings together a panel of key players and commentators to respond to the current political crisis and to debate the range of parliamentary, electoral and constitutional reform proposals which are now being considered by politicians, parties and the public.
Our panel will focus, in particular, on the issue of electoral reform, and ask: is the growing call for electoral reform the right response, right now?
Speakers to include: Chris Huhne, Lib Dem MP for Eastleigh and Shadow Home Secretary; Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich and Clacton; John Keane, professor of politics at the University of Westminster and author of The Life and Death of Democracy and Matthew Taylor, RSA Chief Executive.
Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsareform
Their events page is here
See you there?
Posted by philconnor on June 10, 2009
Comments
Gordon Brown spoke today of the importance of the constituency to the voters of this country. Therefore it is necessary that the constituency remains at the centre of any new system to which we move.
Despite what is being said by some, we do have the Boundary Commission whose task it is to keep the size of the electorate within each constituency resonably the same, though perhaps their procedures and criteria could be updated.
Bearing this in mind, as well as the fact that change is simply not wanted by some and would appear to be feared by many, perhaps to look at ways which would give proportional representation with as little change as possible would be of some value. We now have the electronic systems to enable voting results to be brought together centrally, as used in the European Elections. So why could we not continue voting as we do with all votes being brought together centrally (the popular vote) to decide the overall numbers which should make up the House of Commons, then to achieve this to reorganise those seats where the candidates came the closest. This would be similar to the alternative vote, as the most popular candidate would not necessarily end up as the winner, but everyone would know their final representative from the local campaigning, and we have had instances of the person who first appeared to win not being the final represetative, most specifically in the case at Winchester which ended up in court. Has this idea ever been fully investigated? It undoubtedly would, as with all other systems, have its problems, most obviously making fair arrangements for independants and national/regional parties. But it would be nice to see it as part of the debate.
Posted by: Delia Aldis at June 10, 2009 10:51 PM
I have just listened to Greg Dyke's pitch for speaker on the BBC Radio 4 program. He included the change of house of Lords, limiting MPs service to a maximum of three parliamentary terms and a maximum 2 term Prime Minister with fixed term Parliaments of 4 years. Also getting the number of seats down to 400. I think if we can get the MP's to realise he is not the only one that wants serious change, by voting for him it may do more than put the cat among the pigeons we might get some Action!
Posted by: Roger Scammell at June 17, 2009 06:57 PM
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