STV Action welcomes the news from Power2010 that proportional representation (PR) was by far the most popular of all the reforms proposed to fix our broken democracy (with over 10,000 votes), and will form one of the five pledges it wants MPs to support.

However, PR in itself is not “the best medicine for a sick democracy”. There are many types of PR and most would not increase voters’ power over politicians; in fact, most would increase the power of political parties. They provide simply Party Representation. In particular, most would not empower voters to hold dishonest or lazy politicians (and we accept that most are neither) to account.

STV in multi-member constituencies is the exception and the only system that allows voters the chance to vote against an MP they wish to reject, without voting against their party. It gives voters a real choice of candidates within and across parties and that puts them in charge. It lets voters choose not just a party but also an MP of that party who is most likely to represent the voters’ views on other matters, e.g. gender, education or Europe. It empowers them – not the parties – to decide whether an MP has been good enough to be re-elected or bad enough to be dismissed. It results in a Parliament far more representative of all voters’ views, not just their party allegiances; STV-PR is People Representation.

Without that reform, it is possible that Parliament would not necessarily consider the other pledges, let alone agree them, so it must be mandatory in Power’s pledge.

Electoral reform is topical at the moment with the Government’s proposed referendum on changing the voting system to the Alternative Vote (AV). AV uses preference voting, which is the key element of STV, but only in existing single member constituencies. That is a very small, but welcome, step. X voting is inefficient by wasting votes and distorts results by encouraging tactical voting. However, because AV does not provide multi-member constituencies, it does not give voters the wider choice of candidates that full STV does and it is, therefore, not a PR system. Nevertheless, at least it is a step in the right direction.