UK General Election (Poll Results in OP)

[KSaiyu]

So what's the solution?

You run for Chief Whip? Although anyone who watches House of Cards knows how that guy turned out....

 

[jackargent]

There's a tl;dr at the end of this...

Right. *cracks knuckles*

There are about 47 billion problems with just about any voting system when you apply it to our political process and structure - and that alone should tell you that it's our country that needs the reforming, not the voting system. This is, in part, why the AV referendum failed to replace FPTP - we went for the devil we know.


As @ExigeEvan points out, when we vote we are selecting someone to represent the interests of our particular group of 68,000ish people living in roughly the same area at a national level. On the one hand I agree that this is a necessary job, but I also don't on a much more significant scale.

Some of you know I live up on the North Yorkshire coast and to be entirely honest I'm not sure what potential problems our group of 68,000ish have that need addressing on a national level day in, day out*. I couldn't even tell you what our MP did at Westminster every day* for the last five years that required them to be paid more than £300,000 in that period. That may not be true of some people - I imagine that if you live near where HS2 is going, your MP has been quite busy either doing what you want or not doing what you want because he's following the wishes of the people that own his tie not the local people who he represents.

That last part right there is another problem all by itself. The 68,000ish of us who put the MP there aren't as scary as the Chief Whip is to our MPs - largely because 23,000ish of us couldn't be arsed enough to vote for them and of the 45,000ish who did, only 16,000ish of us voted for him. There's 52,000ish of us already against him whatever he does and the 16,000ish who like him only get a chance to change our mind in five years - but the Chief Whip is on his case every single day*. Do you think he'd rather do what the locals think (when they can express a thought beyond "I dunno really") or what the Chief Whip orders?

So back to the first part of that. What local issues are MPs needed for to represent local people at a national level? I mean it's all well and good knowing that if you get locked up in an Indonesian prison for drug smuggling your local representative will talk about you in the green padded cell (with about 8 of the other 649 representatives present) to general murmurs, but frankly that's a pretty poor return on investment.

Indeed what the MPs should be doing is what they are known for doing. Creating national level legislation, managing national level taxation and budgeting, organising national level civil engineering projects, directing national level defence (domestic and national) and representing the country itself at international level. We don't need 650 local representatives for that - and indeed what we need local representation for is local issues at the local level. Up here we all elected people to the councils too... has anyone checked to see how their local council elections turned out or are you all more concerned by what colour tie the guy in London who says he lives in your town is wearing?


So what's the solution?
First of all we need to redefine what our levels of government are and do - and constitutionally limit them to this with an equivalent to the US Bill of Rights. As the scope of governance increases the powers should decrease and vice versa so that individuals have the most power over their own life - for a crude example, a national government can decide where buildings don't go by protecting land, a county government can do the same but with more restriction if they wish, the city government can decide which bit of available land builders can put houses on (zoning), a housing association can decide what type of shrubs you have in the garden of your house and your wife tells you where to plant it.

With local government now the defining power for local matters (and frankly it already is, but no-one cares about council elections whatsoever), we then need to radically reform the Houses of Parliament. Firstly the Commons...

There should not be 650 MPs in a country this size. While any number I could choose would be a pretty arbitrary one, I'd probably plump for somewhere between 100-200, each covering a town or authority with larger cities returning two or three MPs (Greater London can be divided up into authorities much as it is now, but my cigarette-paper calculations say no more than 16 MPs). With local officials representing people at local government, the MPs will be returned not to represent local people at a national level, but to represent local governments at a national level.

With the Commons now operating as it ought, the Lords needs a far more serious look. It should work as oversight to veto non-constitutional legislation and it should both be elected and smaller than the Commons - I think that around 50 members would do it, so one for every two to four MPs. Their job would be not to represent anyone, but to ensure that legislation is constitutional. In the case of a split vote, the casting vote would go to the Prime Minister.


But I haven't addressed actually polling yet... So let's start at the most important part of the structure - local government.

Typically local government elections are made up of multiple people in 'wards', some representing the same party, with more than one councillor per ward but council control belonging to whomever has the most councillors across the ward (my ward is Lib Dem, but it looks like my council is NOC at the moment). This multiplicity of candidates in such a small area with so few votes available necessitates the Alternative Vote method as FPTP in will often result in winning candidates with tiny vote percentages or with a handful of votes between election and failure. Checking my local results again, it looks like the top candidate (of three elected) scored TWELVE percent of the available votes, while top six were separated by just 400 votes...

Moving to the national level now, I think - controversially perhaps - we should retain FPTP to elect the severely reduced number of MPs, but with one key change. All uncast votes should be included (along with any rejected ballots) and in any constituency where the total number of votes not cast for any candidate exceed the total number of votes attained by the leading candidate, a no result should be declared and a further by-election triggered.

Now for the biggest change up there in the ex-Lords. Candidates should be fielded by the parties just as they are for the Commons but they should be elected by PR. We see one of the big problems about PR with all the comments about "under PR UKIP would have n seats" - exactly who would they be and how would they be chosen? By UKIP? That's about as democratic as having an unelected Prime Minister is. We don't have that problem here, as the upper house represents no-one but the constitution, but still I would suggest that the parties should field their candidates prior to the election.

Speaking of unelected Prime Ministers... In the UK we have no actual say in who our Prime Minister is. He is elected by being elected by his party to be the leader of it and then by his party returning the majority of FPTP seats - and we have had three Prime Ministers from the last five who didn't even manage that. John Major became PM by winning a private leadership election rather than a general election (though he did go on to win one), while Gordon Brown became PM by the existing PM personally deciding he should take over from him - subsequently losing his own general election as leader. David Cameron who has been PM for the last five years failed to win the 2010 general election, becoming leader of an unelected coalition of parties by private negotiation, though has now won an election outright.

This should change, as should the role of Prime Minister. He (or she) should no longer be the individual who is the leader of his party and effectively in control of the lower house, but directly elected by the population, by AV, and serve as the lead overseer of the constitution and defender of the realm. His main legislative power ought to be as the casting voter in split decisions in the upper house, but still command the armed forces in offensive actions (unless overruled by the upper house) and represent the UK in negotiations.


Now, some of you might point out that having four elections in one (Local AV, Lower House FPTP, Upper House PR, Prime Minister AV) might confuse and serve to exclude stupid people who'd do it wrongly.

I say "Good".


Teal Deer

• Introduce a constitution to limit powers as the breadth of governance increases
• Local government: Change polling to AV due to small numbers of voters and high numbers of candidates
• National government: Reduce number of MPs to less than or equal to 200, representing local governments and authorities at a national level
• Elect MPs by FPTP, with uncast votes included; Re-election required in any constituency where uncast votes exceed total by "winning" candidate
• Elected upper house acting as constitutional oversight
• Elect these representatives by PR
• Prime Minister to be directly elected by the people with a separate AV poll

*Definitions of working days may differ significantly from expectations - and that's a problem too

Wow!, that is what I call a comprehensive post & there is lots & lots that makes perfect sense in it. So I hope you don't take offence if I concentrate on what I disagree with:

1: I kind of guess you know this yourself: It just ain't gonna happen - certainly not under the current government or any other likely government. For starters it would mean between 400 & 500 MP's voting themselves out of a job. Turkeys & Xmas spring to mind. So no matter how good an idea it is, it is a non-starter.

2: Much of the criticism of the current system centres around the fact that parties like Ukip & the Greens are under-represented. Both of these parties currently have only one MP. They have won these MP's by being able to concentrate their support in one constituency. By making the constituencies 3 or 4 times larger than they currently are You make it even more difficult for these parties to win a seat. Indeed, even the Lib Dems might struggle to win a seat. You could easily end up with a situation where, in England at least all or nearly all MP's are Labour or Tory. I just don't see how that is an improvement on what we have now.

3: You spent a long time questioning the value of the link between an MP & his/her constituency and then proposed a solution that maintained that link. I happen to disagree with you. i think the link between an MP & his/her constituency is important. It enables good MP's to retain their seats even when their party loses popularity. Perhaps the most striking example of this was in Scotland where the only Labour MP to retain his seat was defending the smallest majority. The trick is to try and maintain the constituency link while delivering some level of proportionality. As I posted before, I think the Scottish system works pretty well.

4: Your "uncast votes" thing interests me but I'm not sure it is the best way of achieving the desired end. What happens if the second vote is still inconclusive? & the third? And how do you ensure people keep turning out to vote when presumably it is no longer in the national news?

The truth is we are pretty unlikely to get any voting reform from this government (what's in it for them?) but your proposal is one of the most radical & interesting I have come across.

Apologies that I haven't addressed local government or House of Lords. Perhaps another time.

 

[Famine]

Wow!, that is what I call a comprehensive post & there is lots & lots that makes perfect sense in it. So I hope you don't take offence if I concentrate on what I disagree with

Actually I do. I'm going to wee through your letterbox now.

1: I kind of guess you know this yourself: It just ain't gonna happen - certainly not under the current government or any other likely government. For starters it would mean between 400 & 500 MP's voting themselves out of a job. Turkeys & Xmas spring to mind. So no matter how good an idea it is, it is a non-starter.

There is a great way to guarantee it not happening, and that's by not starting it. If you believe you're doomed to failure before you begin something, chances are you will fail.

2: Much of the criticism of the current system centres around the fact that parties like Ukip & the Greens are under-represented. Both of these parties currently have only one MP. They have won these MP's by being able to concentrate their support in one constituency. By making the constituencies 3 or 4 times larger than they currently are You make it even more difficult for these parties to win a seat. Indeed, even the Lib Dems might struggle to win a seat. You could easily end up with a situation where, in England at least all or nearly all MP's are Labour or Tory. I just don't see how that is an improvement on what we have now.

It's because it's no longer about who gets seats in the Commons.

Your local council is FAR more important than the Commons is right now, but so few people who voted in the General Election and council elections on Thursday will even know who the candidates for councillor were, much less who's won the seats. Local council votes, as I mentioned are far more prone to small voter movements - my council ward was won by three councillors who polled 1,300, 1,200 and 1,100 votes apiece from 10,000 while the next three all polled between 850 and 900 votes but were not elected.

UKIP held 370 council seats and Green 184 prior to Thursday. While Farage didn't win his Thanet Commons seat, UKIP took Thanet council. Move to an AV system and you are far more likely to see wards and councils elected that accurately reflect the feelings of the local people that they serve.

Meanwhile the Lords (I think we'll have to change the name) moves to oversee proposed legislation from the Commons to ensure it doesn't overstep the new constitution and with PR system in place to elect its members. With the results on Thursday a 50 seat Lords would have 20 Conservatives, 15 Labours, 7 UKIPs, 4 Libdems, 2 SNPs and 2 Greens.

Both of these things are a significant improvement on how things are now in more ways than one.

3: You spent a long time questioning the value of the link between an MP & his/her constituency and then proposed a solution that maintained that link. I happen to disagree with you. i think the link between an MP & his/her constituency is important. It enables good MP's to retain their seats even when their party loses popularity.

No no, I questioned the downstream benefit, not the upstream one. Of course we'd still have the situation where if MP does good at his job (which would be officially almost exclusively national level, as opposed to unofficially as it is at the moment) he gets returned again and if he doesn't he might not, but the point was to move the local issues of local people across to where they will be dealt with most effectively... locally. MPs should be dealing with national and international issues.

There is still the scope for a significant international issue for someone to be escalated across from ward councillor to council to MP to parliament. There's still scope for lobbying your MP too. But day to day the problems you face in your town should be dealt with by the people in your town.

For reference, I know where all three of the councillors returned for my 10,000 person ward live. They're in the next two streets over from mine. They live here, they work here, they're from here. They should be who I go to about pot holes in my road, not my MP who lives in the next town over when he's not in London... My MP is who I should talk to when he's going to vote "Yes" on the Snooper's Charter and I think he should vote "No" (and I should hope that my representative in the "Lords" would vote to veto it as unconstitutional). Local issues vs. national ones.

4: Your "uncast votes" thing interests me but I'm not sure it is the best way of achieving the desired end. What happens if the second vote is still inconclusive? & the third?

Keep going. It is absolutely not democracy to say that someone who has not achieved at least a plurality of available votes is the person to represent those voters and I don't care one iota how long it takes. If it takes two or three or seventeen elections, the representatives are not doing their job and shouldn't even be considered to be elected. Hopefully by the point that everyone's decided that no-one's good enough for the second time, the parties will be firing the candidates and replacing them.

And how do you ensure people keep turning out to vote when presumably it is no longer in the national news?

I couldn't give a toss about the national news either - honestly, why should what Rupert Murdoch thinks I want to think matter?

It'd certainly be in the local news though - and once again we come down to why local issues matter more and why local governments should have more powers than national ones.

 

[Liquid]

Keep going. It is absolutely not democracy to say that someone who has not achieved at least a plurality of available votes is the person to represent those voters and I don't care one iota how long it takes. If it takes two or three or seventeen elections, the representatives are not doing their job and shouldn't even be considered to be elected. Hopefully by the point that everyone's decided that no-one's good enough for the second time, the parties will be firing the candidates and replacing them.

100% this.

 

[jackargent]

Actually I do. I'm going to wee through your letterbox now.


Hey Famine, take care there are sharp edges on my letter box.


There is a great way to guarantee it not happening, and that's by not starting it. If you believe you're doomed to failure before you begin something, chances are you will fail.It's because it's no longer about who gets seats in the Commons.


Maybe you can tell us how you think it can be made to happen then?


Your local council is FAR more important than the Commons is right now, but so few people who voted in the General Election and council elections on Thursday will even know who the candidates for councillor were, much less who's won the seats. Local council votes, as I mentioned are far more prone to small voter movements - my council ward was won by three councillors who polled 1,300, 1,200 and 1,100 votes apiece from 10,000 while the next three all polled between 850 and 900 votes but were not elected.


In what way is my local council more important than the House of Commons? It hardly even raises any of its revenue. There is certainly an argument for rebalancing that but I just don't see your point here. We have PR in one form or another for all elections in Scotland apart from Westminster so we have already addressed part of the problem.



UKIP held 370 council seats and Green 184 prior to Thursday. While Farage didn't win his Thanet Commons seat, UKIP took Thanet council. Move to an AV system and you are far more likely to see wards and councils elected that accurately reflect the feelings of the local people that they serve.


I agree, we should have some form of PR for all elections.



Meanwhile the Lords (I think we'll have to change the name) moves to oversee proposed legislation from the Commons to ensure it doesn't overstep the new constitution and with PR system in place to elect its members. With the results on Thursday a 50 seat Lords would have 20 Conservatives, 15 Labours, 7 UKIPs, 4 Libdems, 2 SNPs and 2 Greens.


I can't really argue with this.


Both of these things are a significant improvement on how things are now in more ways than one.No no, I questioned the downstream benefit, not the upstream one. Of course we'd still have the situation where if MP does good at his job (which would be officially almost exclusively national level, as opposed to unofficially as it is at the moment) he gets returned again and if he doesn't he might not, but the point was to move the local issues of local people across to where they will be dealt with most effectively... locally. MPs should be dealing with national and international issues.


But you still haven't addressed the issue of disproportionate representation in our main legislative body.


There is still the scope for a significant international issue for someone to be escalated across from ward councillor to council to MP to parliament. There's still scope for lobbying your MP too. But day to day the problems you face in your town should be dealt with by the people in your town.


For reference, I know where all three of the councillors returned for my 10,000 person ward live. They're in the next two streets over from mine. They live here, they work here, they're from here. They should be who I go to about pot holes in my road, not my MP who lives in the next town over when he's not in London... My MP is who I should talk to when he's going to vote "Yes" on the Snooper's Charter and I think he should vote "No" (and I should hope that my representative in the "Lords" would vote to veto it as unconstitutional). Local issues vs. national ones.Keep going. It is absolutely not democracy to say that someone who has not achieved at least a plurality of available votes is the person to represent those voters and I don't care one iota how long it takes. If it takes two or three or seventeen elections, the representatives are not doing their job and shouldn't even be considered to be elected.


That's great in theory like much of your proposals but not in any way practical.


Hopefully by the point that everyone's decided that no-one's good enough for the second time, the parties will be firing the candidates and replacing them.I couldn't give a toss about the national news either - honestly, why should what Rupert Murdoch thinks I want to think matter?


My point is the electorate will lose interest. Like yourself, I couldn't give a fig what Rupert Murdoch thinks


It'd certainly be in the local news though - and once again we come down to why local issues matter more and why local governments should have more powers than national ones.


Do you think enough people follow “local news?”


I think the main point behind what you are saying is that we should take more decisions locally & there is definitely much in favour of that. But it needs much more than a reform to the voting system. It needs a massive overhaul to the way revenue is raised & distributed . There is much wrong with the current method but it does allow money raised in wealthy areas to be spent in poorer areas. A lot of thought would need to be given to how that would continue under your reformed system. Unless of course you think the rich should keep hold of all their money & the poor should pay for their own services.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

We might be better than the British at cricket, but they still lead the way in the competitive field of spontaneous rioting:

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-...-against-re-election-of-david-cameron/6458098

 

[PeterJB]

That's hardly surprising. I'm yet to come across anyone who's pleased with the result.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I'm yet to come across anyone who's pleased with the result.

Have you spoken to David Cameron? I hear he's dead chuffed with the outcome.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I thought I'd uploaded this but hadn't; the spread of actual per-party votes. Just over a third of the electorate didn't turn up or spoiled their vote. You can see that only about a quarter chose the party that holds power.

 

[KSaiyu]

Chief whip position is now open as Gove has been promoted.

The time for the Indigo revolution is now.

We might be better than the British at cricket, but they still lead the way in the competitive field of spontaneous rioting

Cry babies, and they did a nice job for their cause defacing a WW2 memorial

 

[Grayfox]

The Daily Mirror paper hates the Conservatives

 

[KSaiyu]

The Daily Mirror paper hates the Conservatives

Britain hates winners. That's what separates us from America, Australia etc

 

[Liquid]

The Daily Mirror paper hates the Conservatives

Britain hates winners. That's what separates us from America, Australia etc

The Scum, The Grimes and The Torygraph love the Conservatives though.

Hm, wonder why?

 

[mustafur]

I thought I'd uploaded this but hadn't; the spread of actual per-party votes. Just over a third of the electorate didn't turn up or spoiled their vote. You can see that only about a quarter chose the party that holds power.

View attachment 363151

How much would that be if you only counted the people that voted though.

People have zero right to complain if they didn't vote in the first place.

 

[Liquid]

People have zero right to complain if they didn't vote in the first place.

Exercising a right to not vote is perfectly acceptable. Even if you don't vote you still, for example, pay taxes; there is every right to question how that money is spent regardless whether you voted or not.

 

[mustafur]

Exercising a right to not vote is perfectly acceptable. Even if you don't vote you still, for example, pay taxes; there is every right to question how that money is spent regardless whether you voted or not.

Yes if this is after the fact, im talking about the result of an Election purely on that.

If there was a referendum to let a Murderer free and the referendum passed allowing a murderer free.

It would be quite silly to protest the result if you didn't vote.

 

[Liquid]

Yes if this is after the fact, im talking about the result of an Election purely on that.

If there are no candidates you agree with, and you choose to not vote for any of them, is it unfair to look at the results and comment?

 

[mustafur]

If there are no candidates you agree with, and you choose to not vote for any of them, is it unfair to look at the results and comment?

I would protest the lack of candidates not the result.

It's not unreasonable for there to be no candidates for you to which to agree with as it actually requires a being to exist to do so, but it is reasonable to protest something which you can't vote on in the first place.

 

[TenEightyOne]

How much would that be if you only counted the people that voted though.

People have zero right to complain if they didn't vote in the first place.

In the OP the figures are shown including and excluding non-votes. See @Famine's extensive comments for why not voting (and the different ways of doing it) can be a good thing.

 

[Dotini]

That's hardly surprising. I'm yet to come across anyone who's pleased with the result.

Similar to the US in 1972, where Richard Nixon swept 49 states, prompting the comment, "How could this happen? Nobody I know voted for Nixon!"

Perhaps this article explains why the British reticence for honesty in polls hides shameful secrets. Gasp!


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/gen...he-British-people-was-entirely-justified.html
But the question that demands an answer is: why did so many voters feel compelled to avoid telling Mr Kellner and his friends their real intentions? Because that is certainly what happened. I am as sure of this as I was of the eventual election result: the four in 10 poll respondents who said they had not yet made up their minds who to vote for (a figure that remained remarkably consistent right to the end) did not, as one Labour spokesman claimed, suddenly decide “when they had the pencils in their hands” that they were going to support the Tories. Most of them knew all along that they were going to do that – but they were not willing to say so.

Somehow we have arrived at a point where the conscientiously held beliefs and values of the majority of the population have become a matter for secret shame. The desire to do as well as you can in life, to develop your potential and expect to be rewarded for it, to provide your family with the greatest possible opportunity for self-improvement and to do that on your own without being dependent on the state – these are the assumptions that seem to have become so unacceptable that identifying with them is beyond the pale, or at least so socially outrageous that it is not worth the ignominy of admitting to them.

 

[Liquid]

To be honest, I don't know why people are so surprised at the results. Maybe it was just me but I sensed a Conservative majority a few weeks ago. The exit polls were right and even understated.

It's not just that people vote Conservative and don't admit to it. It's that people know others will vote Conservatives but don't want to accept the reality.

 

[TheCracker]

To be honest, I don't know why people are so surprised at the results. Maybe it was just me but I sensed a Conservative majority. The exit polls were right and even understated.

It's not just that people vote Conservative and don't admit to it. It's that people know the Conservatives will get votes but don't want to accept the reality.

Lets not forget that they barely scraped a majority. The lowest majority since 1974. Even the universally derided John Major won by a greater one.

 

[KSaiyu]

The Scum...

It is? I was banned from bringing it in the house as a kid by my Liverpool supporting mum and I've only since read stories about the NHS in it. I just assumed it was a Labour leaning paper.

 

[Touring Mars]

I just assumed it was a Labour leaning paper.

It used to be.

Now it supports the Tories. And for viewers in Scotland, the SNP.

 

[Liquid]

Lets not forget that they barely scraped a majority. The lowest majority since 1974. Even the universally derided John Major won by a greater one.

This is David Cameron we are talking about; someone with the most kickable face this side of Piers Moron. And he still has a majority, no matter how small. The Conservatives might be an incredibly unpopular party but they get votes. They just do.

To paraphrase The Simpsons:

Because you need me, Britain. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Labour, but deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted Conservative to lower taxes, brutalise criminals and rule you like a king!

The big question is why people switch from Lib Dems to Tory. What great a personal journey have these people undertaken to sway that much? Either Britain is full of duplicitous moral reprobates or people are easily led.

If the Liberal Democrats were supposedly there to neuter the Tories, why would those Lib Dem supporters then vote them out and give the Blues full powers?

Operation Human Shield was a big success.

It is? I was banned from bringing it in the house as a kid by my Liverpool supporting mum and I've only since read stories about the NHS in it. I just assumed it was a Labour leaning paper.

It is. Rupert Murdoch is a big fan of the Conservative Party and has been ever since Bliar stepped down.

But that "Reason 2" does seem at odds with their Scottish edition. ON THE SAME FREAKING DAY.

 

[KSaiyu]

Oh wow

 

[TheCracker]

But that "Reason 2" does seem at odds with their Scottish edition. ON THE SAME FREAKING DAY.

Divide and conquer. A strong SNP vote meant taking votes from Labour north of the border.

 

[TRGTspecialist]

If the Liberal Democrats were supposedly there to neuter the Tories

Given how quickly the Lib Dems collapsed in the opinion polls after the coalition was formed, this likely isn't the reason why their voters were voting for them.

 

[Touring Mars]

Divide and conquer. A strong SNP vote meant taking votes from Labour north of the border.

Yeh, it makes sense for two reasons - talking up the SNP's chances in Scotland definitely galvanized the Tory vote. Also, the Sun's only real aim is to sell papers - supporting the SNP in Scotland was a no-brainer on that front.

edit: Nigel Farage's resignation as leader of UKIP has been rejected by the party's executive committee, and so he is officially still the leader.

 

[TRGTspecialist]

That didn't last long.......