NEXT week’s general election in the UK could be the most revolutionary for a generation. The anticipated race between the ruling Labour party and their Conservative arch-rivals has been derailed by the Liberal Democrats – the constant bronze medallists of UK politics – putting in an unexpectedly strong performance. Now all bets are off.
So why haven’t the Lib Dems broken through before? They blame the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, under which a large share of the vote does not necessarily translate into parliamentary seats. Unsurprisingly, the Lib Dems want to reform it if they come to power.
It is not only the Lib Dems who could benefit. The number of UK electors voting for minority parties has risen from 1 in 20 in the 1950s to 1 in 4 today, yet the existing system nullifies almost all those votes. Something fairer seems to be called for – but what?
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There is no simple answer. The mathematics of democracy turns out to be so fraught with pitfalls and paradoxes that complete fairness is probably unattainable (see “Why voting is always unfair”). This should not, however, deter legislators from seeking systems that better represent voters’ choices. It has been shown that the greater the opportunity for voters to participate in the democratic process and the more closely the outcome matches their preferences, the happier they are. In the UK, a system whose results better match the electorate’s desires might even reverse the decades-long decline in the proportion who can be bothered to vote.