STV News 09/07

A recent survey revealed that STV is the most popular voting system among voters including Labour supporters. See STV News 09/04 for more details.

One voters positive experience of STV:

"At least in Scotland, thanks to the single transferable vote, we no longer have those problems in our council elections.

It is the system that should be used for all elections, including those for the Scottish Parliament."

Reform of Britain's voting system must give real power to the people

Submission by STV Action (SC-65)

Your chance to tell the Speaker's Conference how STV would increase the representation of under-represented groups.

Visit the Speaker's Conference forum now

The Parliamentary Outreach Officer wrote to STV Action and asked us to promote this forum.

Please do use this opportunity to express your views. When you visit the site, you will find three questions. "What is the best way to increase ...?" is the one most relevant to electoral reform. If you think that electoral reform, especially STV, would increase the representation of under-represented groups, this is your chance to say so.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7949077.stm

Sounds about right to me.

Quotes from the Ministry of Justice's Review of Voting Systems (24 January 2008).

"All the newly introduced voting systems have achieved a greater degree of proportionality than FPTP, although only STV in Northern Ireland has achieved what academic observers consider to be close to genuine proportionality."

[Paragraph 21 of the Executive Summary]

"We do not find, on balance, that any voting system is inherently more confusing than another for the voter, in terms of casting their votes correctly."

[Paragraph 29 of the Executive Summary]

Thursday, 2 October 2008
Press Release: Electoral Reform Coalition - Wellington

MEDIA RELEASE
1st OCTOBER 2008

STV confirmed for Wellington, Porirua and Kapiti
Wellington Regional Council should adopt STV

The win for STV in Wellington City's postal referendum confirms that the majority of local voters will use STV to elect their councils, says the Electoral Reform Coalition, which successfully campaigned for STV in 2002 and 2008. The ERC has begun a petition to have STV adopted by the Greater Wellington Regional Council.

THE REAL ISSUE

Dear Janice Parker,

Here is a 1997 safe seat election result which I have selected at random:-

Rother Valley: Lab 31,184; Con 7,699; LD 5342; Other 1,932. So 7699 plus 1 = 7700 voters were represented by the Labour winner. Every one of the remaining votes was represented by no-one: one Labour MP went to Westminster representing 7,700 voters, ie 17% of those who voted, or 11% of the total electorate. (Electorate 68584; voters 47157 = 69%; ie abstentions = 31%)

Clock show time since the Government published its internal review.