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Voting systems are usually the preserve of psephologists and constitutional anoraks. I'm no psephologist, but I wouldn't argue against anyone that called me the latter.

Britain has, to many a person's chagrin, a first-past-the-post voting system. This means the person who gets the most number of votes — be that 1 more or 100,000 more — is the winner. For those that voted for the loser this can feel particularly harsh, especially if there are roughly similar numbers of people who voted for each candidate. (It is this system, incidentally, which has primarily led to Britain's largely two-party state.)

Many alternative voting systems exist: proportional representation is probably the best known, in which the number of representatives of a party in parliament is proportional to the number of votes a party receives. Such systems often give rise to multi-party states, such as Germany and Switzerland, and (like those countries) coalition governments. This is because single-issue parties (for example) can achieve success if they pass the (often low) electoral threshold. Most people who would like to see a reform to the voting system in Britain argue that proportional representation is the system they would prefer. There are many reasons for and against such a reform; on balance, I come out against proportional representation, mainly for the lack of strong government and inertial compromises it would inevitably lead to (an admittedly unusual position for a lefty).

Aside from proportional representation, two other well known voting systems are the single alternative vote and the alternative vote systems. We'll ignore the latter, because it's too complicated, and we can spice up a future European Parliament election with talk of the atv. The former, however, is the system in use for the London mayoral election and so is worth some consideration.

Single alternative voting works as follows. When an individual votes, they place a number 1 next to the name of their first preference on their ballot paper. Having done so, they can then choose to place a number 2 next to the name of their next preference. After this, they then submit their vote to the ballot box. When all of the ballot papers are collected, all of the number 1 votes are counted, and the candidates ranked according to the number of so-called first preferences they received. At this point, all candidates except for the two that have received the most first preferences are excluded from the remaining process: they are out of the election. However, the second preferences of all the people who voted for these excluded candidates are then taken into account: if their second preference was for either of the two remaining candidates, then that second preference is added to the remaining candidates respective totals. Thus, the single transferable vote.

It isn't as complicated as it sounds. Neither is it as democratic as it sounds, as the example of the London mayoral election shows. Consider the following: say someone — let's call them Gordon — wants to exercise their democratic right in the London mayoral election. He's not a fan of either Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson, and so doesn't want to vote for either of them. At the same time, he knows that none of the other candidates has a fart's chance in a colander of winning. So to get around this, Gordon puts down the Green party candidate as his first preference, and Ken Livingstone as his second. But what is the effect of this? The Green candidate will inevitably be excluded after the first round of counting, and so Gordon's second preference (i.e. Ken) will get his vote. As such, he has essentially voted for Ken in a straight run off between Ken and the other highest-placed candidate, which will inevitably be Boris.

Thus, in what is essentially a two-horse race, the single transferable voting system is redundant: it might as well be a first-past-the-post race (but with an artificially high electoral threshold).

There are two main ways a voter can ensure that their vote goes in no way towards helping Ken or Boris to victory. The first is by only putting down a first preference vote for anyone other than the dynamic duo. The second is by spoiling their ballot paper, possibly by some form of written statement outlining their feelings on the two main candidates and their suitability for the office of Mayor of London.

Whichever way Gordon decides to vote, he should therefore remember that the assumed benefits of a single alternative voting system are not realised in a multi-party election which is dominated by two leading candidates.

Tags — General Interest Politics Society