We can’t be agents of change unless we change our voting system. The Alternative Vote referendum is the first step towards a meaningful and representative democracy. Every progressive should support it.
Oona King
The Labour party is getting ready to shoot itself in the foot over electoral reform tonight. A small group of MPs who are deeply conservative on this issue risk alienating a whole group of voters who expect a big response to last year’s expenses crisis. There are two crises at hand. Labour feels it’s got a response for a broken economy, but without electoral reform there’s little evidence they’ve got anything serious to say about our broken politics
Willie Sullivan, Vote for a Change
Come the amendment permitting the Alternative Vote referendum, the Liberal Democrats are unlikely to lend their support because they will want to push for something which offers more options. The upshot will be that some Labour MPs will stick with first-past-the-post, while others will back the amendment. The parliamentary Labour party could split, and the headlines won’t then be ‘Cameron blocks electoral reform’, but ‘Labour shambles.’
Pro-electoral reform Labour MP
The party is right to demonstrate it is serious about reforming the political system. Any sign of backtracking on promises will be punished by the electorate. All Labour MPs should show unity and loyalty in supporting what has been promised by the PM and endorsed by Cabinet.
The pro-reform MP should not fear a split – MPs that want to go further could simply abstain on a Lib Dem amendment rather than vote against. AV is the position of maximum unity so why not take the opportunity to draw the dividing line between Labour as the party of reform and the Tories as defenders of the status quo?
Ed Balls and his ilk should have a re-think – they might be about to let Cameron of a rather large hook.
OK readers – how does your intelligence feel? A little bit slighted even insulted. Hence an anonymous post by some MP .If the Lib dems amend the bill for a more proportional systems this will be defeated in the commons. The Pro reform Labour MPs will take the whip on this and support the governments position as it is in the best interests of reform and of the party. The Lib Dems will come in behind it in the Lords. Doh!
“Progressives” have a most annoying habit of describing as ‘reform’ their latest fad. Since (natch!) the fads change, the progs confuse themselves even more than their fellow-travellers (even some objecive observers of Prog’ism get a little unsure).Is the new salvation AV (which on Australian experience INCREASES the majority representation of even a smallish plurality) or AV+ (a l’ecossaise/allemande, which securely ensconces those ‘representatives’ with NO constituency link – remember Helmut Kohl?)? a genuine request for info, comrades! At the peak of the MP expenses scandal, a genuinely democratic reform briefly emerged on the agenda – ie, one which would put MPs etc more under pressure from their constituents: a recall system, quite common in the USA (isn’t it odd that those who worship every aggressive move of US imperialism hate and fear the democratic internal system of the US?): more than a third of US states have something like the following New Jersey provision:
New Jersey is one of 18 States that provide for recall elections of State-wide elected officials. The authority for a recall election in New Jersey is Article 1, Section 2b of the New Jersey Constitution. A recall committee of at least three registered voters either serves its target with a recall notice, or else files a Notice of Intent (with no specific grounds required) with the appropriate election official–who is the Secretary of State for a State-wide office. That official then has three business days either to approve the notice or to state reasons for rejecting that notice. Once the recall committee has an approved notice in hand, it has 320 days (the specified limit for recalling a governor or a US Senator) to gather enough signatures on a petition (25% of the registered voters in the jurisdiction in question, as of the last general election) to put the question to a vote.
A recall election then typically has two questions:
Whether to recall the official or not, and
Whom to elect in that official’s place.
An elected official, even when recalled, can still stand as a candidate for the position he holds. Therefore, without a candidate, the Recall Committee could see its target win “re-election” unopposed. The Tea Party Coalition has not yet named a candidate to oppose Menendez.