One of the less noticed elements of the government’s constitutional reform programme has been the extensive changes to the way that we cast our votes. Although First Past The Post (FPTP) has been retained for Westminster, forms of PR now operate for the Scottish parliament, National Assembly for Wales, Greater London Authority and European parliament. Many councils now have directly elected mayors. And all voters are now entitled to vote by post – indeed, universal postal voting is being piloted in four regions in the European elections.
As a result, the process of voting has become a great deal more complicated. Voting used to be a simple matter of marking an ‘x’ next to your preferred candidate. No longer. Voting systems now vary from area to area and from election to election. And the scope for voter error is large – in the 2000 London elections, the number of spoiled ballots was as high as twelve percent in some areas, and nearly one in five voters failed to use their second preference in the mayoral vote. To add to the confusion, PR means that voters now have a bewildering choice of parties – as a result, the ballot paper for the London region in the 1999 European elections was a metre long.
This poses a challenge to voters. The recent success of tactical voting in the 1997 and 2001 general elections shows that, for all its faults, voters know how to use FPTP to send a strong message to politicians. But the same calculations do not apply to the new electoral systems. Each of us therefore needs to re-learn how to make the most of our votes. This article sets out the quirks and complexities of the various electoral systems in operation in this year’s elections, and explains to Labour voters how to make their votes count.
European elections
The most straightforward electoral system you will encounter this year is the system of PR for the European parliament elections. Forget everything you may have heard about the d’Hondt divisor, beloved of PR geeks – you don’t need to know about it. All you have to do is vote for the party of your choice. Seats are then allocated on a regional basis, in proportion to the votes cast for each party, to candidates on a list determined by the party itself.
This form of closed list PR has some drawbacks. Voters are able only to choose between parties, and do not have a say over particular candidates. But in other ways the system treats voters very fairly. Everyone’s vote counts equally. It doesn’t matter where you live – every Labour vote counts towards Labour representation in the European parliament. This also means that turnout really matters. Because for every Labour voter who stays at home, the task of achieving Labour representation becomes harder.
Turnout also matters because a strong Labour vote is the best chance of denying representation to extremist parties. There is a real risk that the BNP will achieve representation in this election. In the North West region in particular, the far right is campaigning hard, and they could win a seat with as little as 10 per cent of the vote in the region. Unless Labour voters turn out to vote for their party, they could provide a small number of fascists with a huge leap forward.
Mayoral elections
On 10 June, electors in London will be voting to re-elect Ken Livingstone as Mayor, and will also be choosing a new GLA to support him.
The electoral system used to choose directly-elected mayors – in other cities, as well as London – is known as the Supplementary Vote SV system. Each elector receives two votes – a first and second preference. A candidate is elected automatically if they receive more that 50 percent of first preferences. If no candidate polls more than 50 per cent, all but the top two candidates are eliminated, and, where applicable, the second preferences of the eliminated candidates are redistributed to the top two. Whoever has the highest combined total is the winner.
SV is often confused with the Alternative Vote (AV), a similar system where voters are able to rank all candidates in order of preference and the lowest placed candidate’s votes are redistributed one at a time until a winner is declared. But there is a crucial difference. Under AV, the need for tactical voting is eliminated. The same is not true, however, of SV. While voters can happily give their first preference to a minor candidate, their vote will be wasted if they do not give their second preference to a candidate who makes it into the top two.
For Labour voters, this is something of an academic point – it would be unthinkable for Ken Livingstone to be eliminated. But it is an important point for Labour activists to convey on the doorstep. People voting for other candidates should be encouraged to make use of their second preferences and to cast them in Ken’s favour. If they do not, they may be wasting their vote – and potentially letting someone else in.
One problem is that many voters are unclear about what the second preference vote is for – indeed, many believe that it somehow dilutes their first preference. On this point, everyone must be clear. Your second preference can never count against your first.
Greater London Assembly
Unlike the European parliament, members of the Greater London Assembly are elected through a form of PR known as the Additional Member System (AMS) – also used for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh assembly. AMS is both more complicated than closed list PR and more vulnerable to distortions.
Under AMS, all electors are given two votes. The first vote is a simple FPTP ballot to elect a local constituency member. Fourteen of the 25 GLA members are elected in this way. The second vote is for a London-wide top-up list. The remaining eleven GLA members are allocated according to the votes each party receives in the list section, with preference given to those parties that are under-represented in the constituency section. This enables small parties like the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, which did not win any constituency seats in the last election, to achieve representation. But it also ensures that larger parties are fairly represented – four of Labour’s nine representatives were elected in the top-up section at the last election, compared to only one Tory, because the Tories performed better in the constituency section but polled slightly fewer votes overall.
One of the big problems with AMS is that because electors each have two votes, it opens up the possibility of split-ticket voting. For example, a Liberal Democrat voter could punch above their weight by voting tactically in the constituency section, and then voting Liberal Democrat in the top-up section. Similarly, disillusioned Labour voters might feel tempted to salve their consciences by voting Labour in the constituency section but registering a protest vote in the top-up section – under the wholly mistaken impression that this is a cost-free way of expressing dissent.
Why is it not cost-free? Because overall representation in the assembly is determined according to the proportion of votes each party receives in the top-up section. So voting for another party in the top-up section will result in Labour achieving lower representation overall, even if you vote Labour in the constituency section – the top-up vote cancels out the constituency vote. Labour voters cannot entertain any illusions about the damage of a split vote.
The other reason for Labour voters to ensure they turn out on 10 June is, once again, to stop the BNP. The threshold for achieving representation in the Greater London Assembly is even lower than for the European parliament – only five percent of the vote. The BNP polled only 2.8 per cent in 2000, but could find themselves closer to the threshold this year without winning a single additional vote – all that would have to happen is for overall turnout to drop.
2000 London mayoral ballot paper