Contradictory Position of the Electoral Reform Society
The Electoral Reform Society is as we all know from the name, the place to go for your one stop shop on everything to do with reform. It’s an age old pressure group dating all the way back to 1884 and has fought in the many battles of attempts to change the voting system in 1884, 1910, 1917, 1929, 1931, 1974, 1993, 1997 and our very own 2010.
They are the passionate supporters of Single Transferable Vote, the most proportionate way of distributing votes to seats. Yet like its brothers in arms at Take Back Parliament, Unlock Democracy and the Make Votes Count Coalition they find themselves in a bit of a pickle.
We are not voting on STV (or for that matter AMS, SV or any other method) and this has obviously left the Electoral Reform Society confused on its position.
Back in February of this year, politics.co.uk published a press release from the ERS regarding New Zealand’s own electoral reform referendum in 2011 and its say to say, ERS were alittle excited by this. The reason for that was they were thrilled by the two questions on offer, the first is to be a simple:
Part A
Should the current MMP voting system be retained?
*I vote to retain the MMP voting system
*I vote to change to another voting system.
And the second part (which is really where they are excited) is:
Part B
Regardless of how you voted under part A, if there was a change to another voting system, which voting system would you choose?
‘*I would choose the First Past the Post system.
*I would choose the Preferential Voting system.
*I would choose the Single Transferable Vote system.
*I would choose the Supplementary Member system.’
Now obviously to anyone this seems a lot more fairer then our own:
‘Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the ‘alternative vote’ system instead of the current ‘first past the post’ system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?’
And Ken Ritchie, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society didn’t waste a second hammering that point home:
“The Government wants to offer us a referendum on whether we elect MPs using AV or our present ‘first-past-the-post’ system. But they will not give us the option of choosing a much better system, such as STV which would give us the advantages of AV and also a more representative parliament.
By contrast, in New Zealand the Government is proposing a two-question referendum…That would allow a real debate on the merits of different electoral systems and would let us, the voter, take the decision on the type of politics we want.
So as we can tell they may be fans of this type of referendum, but what’s this? By the 23rd July it’s all changed and politics.co.uk were more then happy to print this press release entitled ‘AV: A Clear Question A Clear Choice’:
The Electoral Reform Society has welcomed the publication of a clear Yes/No question for the proposed Alternative Vote (AV) referendum…We’ve now got a clear question for a clear choice between the politics of the past and a better alternative.
Oh dear, seems that Electoral Reform Society has done a bit of a u-turn! However this is not the first time, for those who accessed the page for the alternative vote BEFORE May you were greeted by such statements like:
‘Overall result of an election held under AV would not be very different from elections held under FPTP… Smaller parties will probably not get any more MPs elected to Parliament’
Such wording has been edited out now, yet their press releases still remain.
