We need a new Electoral System. And it should be AMS.

After the AV referendum in 2011 a consensus formed that Electoral Reform is off the political table for a generation. I completely disagree.

The time is ripe for changing our Electoral System. Reform failed in 2011 due to a bad political circumstances, a weak alternative and incompetence campaigning.  None of these need re-occur, and the long-term trends will continue to strengthen the argument for change, as they have since the 1960's.  The decline of the two party vote, the rise of the minor parties, the increasing inability of 'First Past the Post' (or FPTP) to properly represent the democratic wishes of the people of Britain.  None of these things are going away.

I want to persuade you that AMS, the Additional Member System, currently used in Scotland and Wales, is the best and most achievable alternative to FPTP (and  a superior alternative to AV).

The massive 2011 vote against AV doesn't have to kill hope of reform for a generation. But it should kill AV for at least that long. Good, I say. AV was a bad, non-proportional system and we can do better.  AV solves only one of the numerous problems with the current system, and in a manner that potentially made other problems worse.

It did have one particular advantage that shouldn't be forgotten. It was quite similar to the current system.  This made it an achievable reform. Further attempts at change should be focused on a system as similar to the current one as possible, and sufficiently different to AV to give distance from its defeat. Regardless of the problems with FPTP the massive No vote shows there is considerable public sympathy, or at least familiarity, with its principles.  Any proposed alternative must work with this familiarity and general public small-c conservatism, not against it.

It should also not be based on the same principles as AV i.e. preferential voting. This means not only AV, but also the 'Single Tranferable Vote' or STV system is off the table. STV is the system used in Ireland, and the long-term obsession of Electoral Reform campaigners in Britain. It is AV in multi-member constituencies, which unlike AV gives largely proportional results, and it is the preferred system of most reformers. It should be abandoned anyway. If the AV referendum result was a rejection of anything it was a rejection of preferential voting, the only difference between FPTP and AV. STV requires voters to accept change to preferential voting and much larger, unfamiliar, multi-member constituencies. It is just too large a change to sell at once.

Both the reform movement's concentration on STV for decades and its overnight conversion to AV in 2011 can be explained by its obsession with preferential voting. Most reformers are just convinced it is cleverer than simple majority voting (putting a cross in a box). However, it has been rejected in the form of AV for now. It would appear to be a change and complication too far and, frankly, it is not worth sacrificing the chance to achieve real change out of a quixotic attachment to the wonders of preferential voting.

Another option that needs mentioning is basic PR.  This would be a very simple system where you just vote for a party, and then the votes are counted and seats portioned out to the parties equal to its percentage of the vote.  This is the only true PR system.  However its side effects are so awful that it is generally rejected even by hard-core PR enthusiasts. The problem is that voters have no control over who is actually elected, and there is no geographical connection between voters and representatives or sense that representatives represent everyone, rather than merely those who voted for them.  It is hence a massive leap from the current system, though it does bear the award of being the joint simplest system with FPTP from the opposite side of the spectrum.

So, ignoring Basic PR, AV, STV and FPTP, what is possibly left?

The answer to is very simple. The answer is AMS, the Additional Member System.

It's more proportional than FPTP, maintains constituency links, is a modest change, is already used in Wales and Scotland, and in countries like Germany, makes every vote count, and doesn't require preferential voting. It would ensure small party representation but still make majorities possible if one party wins an emphatic victory.

It works as follows:  Most MPs are elected the same way as now, one per constituency under FPTP, with every bit of the country having a constituency MP.  In addition to these constituency MPs there would also be a top-up List of MPs.  Parties gain a number of these MPs in proportion to their share of the list vote, taking into account those MPs already elected in the constituencies.  The system works like our current FPTP system, but the top-up List MPs dampen the extremity of the results guaranteeing some proportionality and ensuring that if you get enough votes you will get seats.

An AMS election is simple.  Each voter gets a ballot paper with two sections.  One where they vote with a cross for whatever candidate they want to be their local constituency MP, exactly as now, the other where they vote for the party they support, which goes towards deciding the list seats

Basically it would be the same system currently used for Scottish and Welsh devolved elections.

This system has a number of immediately apparent advantages.

Firstly, to go back to the point I mentioned above, it is familiar.  It's already used in Scottish and Welsh elections, and it's two parts are also already used separately for current Westminster and Euro elections.  It is a system used by Germany and a number of other European countries.  As a change from FPTP it would be modest and achievable.  Indeed it would be down-right familiar in considerable parts of the country.  Everyone would still have an MP elected in the normal way, albeit in slightly larger constituencies.  But they would just also have further MPs elected to represent their area.

I would recommend a split of perhaps 500 constituency MPs and 150 list MPs.  This would keep constituencies a reasonable size, while giving enough list MPs to produce reasonably proportional results. The country would be divided into about 30 multi-member regions (of about 4 MPs each) from which the list-MPs would be elected, attaching even list MPs to a reasonably local area with particular concerns and demographics.

AMS has many advantages over FPTP and AV. Unlike with AV it would be impossible to argue that AMS was an unpopular, marginal system only used in one major country, as was argued, with some basis, against AV. It would be much harder to argue that AMS was complicated or alien as we already use it. There is even the example of an English speaking Commonwealth Nation, which has already successfully switched from FPTP to AMS, namely New Zealand.  Any argument that the system was complex could be answered by saying that the Scottish, Welsh and New Zealanders have no problem with it.

Second, unlike AV, this system is always more proportional than FPTP.  There will be no incentive for a No2AV, Yes2PR type vote as there was with AV.  Almost all supporters of change should have no problem of principle supporting this change, even if they would prefer an even more proportionate option still.

Third, it would make every vote count.  Whether your candidate wins or loses at the constituency level you still have an incentive to cast a vote for the regional lists, knowing it will go towards securing representation for the party you choose.  Equivalently on the parties' side, it will give political parties an incentive to campaign even in no-hope areas, knowing that they need to maximise their vote to gain vital list seats. This is superior to FPTP and also AV.  AV made 'every vote count' by allowing people to put their 2nd, 3rd 4th choice towards influencing a result in a constituency, for a party they didn't want anyway, but at least hated slightly less than some other party. AMS gives every voter a chance to gain seats for a party they actually want to support.  This also allows people to cast an effective list vote that will reveal the true relative level of party support and still vote in their constituency election as they need to.

Fourth, this solves the problem of safe seats. Unlike the rubbish the Yes2AV campaign was putting out, the problem with Safe Seats was never that they exist.  If voters in a seat consistently vote for the same party then good for them, that is their business. The problem with safe seats is that if you're in such a seat and don't support the majority party, then you may as well stay at home or vote for any other party, or even the party you hated, or whatever. It has no impact on the national result.  As far as having any impact goes you are effectively disenfranchised.  AMS gets rid of that problem by allowing you to cast a regional list vote that actually goes to securing election for the party you support, even if there is no point turning up to your constituency election.

Fifth. AMS is more resilient to another of the core arguments against AV.  Anti-AV campaigners made a lot of the idea that AV violated 'one person, one vote', by taking account of some people's 2nd and 3rd preferences but not others.  This issue does not exist under an AMS system where everyone has two votes, in effect, and everyone's two votes are taken into account the same way.

These are all advantages of AMS.  However, I think there is a more general advantage that trumps anything offered by pure FPTP or AV.  Electoral systems are fundamentally about representation. Turning people's opinions and votes into the suitable representation in parliament and in our government and laws.

This is the point where I have a confession to make.  I would describe myself as a pro-PR reformer but I do not actually support totally proportional representation. A totally proportional system can have distortions just as great as our FPTP system.  A pure PR system provides fair representation in numbers in parliament, but it risks giving disproportionate power to tiny minorities who hold the balance of power, which can be as distorting as disproportionate numbers of representatives. I want a system that rewards party co-operation and cohesion, not one that leaves government permanently hostage to un-representative minorities. I want a semi-proportional, slightly majoritarian, consistent system.

Why else don't I want pure PR?  Well, another reason is, and there's no polite way to phrase this, that marginal ideas should be marginalised. Any political cause, no matter how ridiculous, will find some people to vote for it, and no matter how excellent, find some people to oppose it. In a democracy more popular ideas should be privileged over less popular ones in terms of representation, with popularity acting as the only democratically legitimate proxy for the quality of those ideas. Majoritarianism does this. It also provides an incentive for groups to work and stick together, to attempt to appeal to as large a swathe of society as possible, and stretch over a broad range of ideological ground.  It discourages and punishes splits, extremism and focusing on appeals to narrow sectional interest.  This is as it should be.  One idea held by 40% of the population should have more representation than ten ideas each held by 4% of the population.

But there must be some limit to this. A decent number of votes should lead to some representation, even if it is weighted down compared to more popular parties.  Exact numerical proportionality is not in of itself the most important thing because representation is not a linear concept.  It is far more important that you have some representation and only roughly in terms of scale how much that is.

Perhaps unusually for a conservative I am worried neither by hung parliaments nor by coalitions.  Under any sane system they are an inevitable and natural feature, which can work in a situation populated by realistic adults, both as voters and politicians. The previous Coalition government and the previous SNP minority in Scotland decisively answer the case against coalitions and minority governments while also conveniently demonstrating that FPTP does not guard against coalitions, nor AMS make single-party government impossible.

Absolute majoritarianism for the sake of majoritarianism is just unsustainable. In terms of legitimacy the argument for it is non-existent. Just how small a percentage of the vote are majoritarians prepared to have a single party government elected on?  Is 35% not too low already?  Would they really rather see a majority government elected with 33% or 30% or 25% of the vote than see a coalition or minority government?

My fundamental problem with FPTP is not that it isn't strictly proportional, but rather that it is arbitrary.  Its majoritarianism occurs on no consistent basis.It neither weights down less popular parties nor rewards more popular parties consistently. A consistent majoritarianism would always weight down parties compared to more popular ones, and weight up parties compared to less, however popular or not they were.  This is fair to all parties because they all have the same strong incentive to secure more votes.  FPTP doesn't work like that though. It is totally inconsistent. It is a system where the Lib Dems may get 17% of the vote at two elections and receive 9 seats at one election and 48 at another. A party's vote may go down and its seats up, and then next election its vote go up and its seats down. A party may get 31% of the vote and 166 seats, another 27% of the vote and 209 seats, and another 25% of the vote and 23 seats. A party may get 170,000 votes and receive 8 seats and another at the same election get over a million and receive none. And I could go on and on.

The traditional rationale for this is that general elections are not one national election, rather they are 650, or whatever, individual constituency elections.  And our system is a relic of when this was in fact the case.  Now it is clearly not though.  A general election is largely a mechanism for determining the national composition of parliament.  This, in turn, is largely denominated on party lines.  Our current system only extremely roughly reflects this reality though.  And the fact it does as well as it does is largely coincidence.  At times it has produced more proportional outcomes and at times worse ones.

This leads to another fact about representation.  The problem with FPTP and also AV is that they are only capable of adequately conferring representation on an individual constituency basis.  And on this level arguably AV does a better job.  But this is largely irrelevant because both fail on the national stage.  I am a liberal conservative who for several years lived in safe Labour seats.  But I did not feel entirely unrepresented just because my MP was a Labour party drone for the simple reason that my views were partially represented by Conservative MP's elsewhere, even though I was not in their constituencies.  Representation is both national and local.

In Britain, perhaps to a peculiar extent, representation really is also local. We value the independence of our MP's and we cling with pride to the notion that MP's may owe their candidacy to a party, but their election is solely in the hands of the particular voters of that constituency.  We rightly cherish the closeness of that connection, as well as the magnanimous notion that an MP must represent all his constituents rather than merely those who vote for him. The manner in which MPs can only referred to in parliament as 'the honourable member for X' is a mark of this.  Their name is unimportant, what is important is that they have been chosen to represent a particular community. This sense is so deeply ingrained in our political psyche that it would be wrong to derail it.  We also correctly take this sense of connection to be stronger the fewer people a representative is responsible for, and with closeness of geography and culture.

On these clear principles the top-up, multi-member regions of AMS would actually bring representation far closer to most people, who belong to the 60%-odd of voters shut-out in their one constituency because their candidate didn't win.  A mostly unseen problem with the current system is that what proportionality it does get comes largely through overwhelmingly disproportionate results in different regions. Most UK regions are, within themselves, massively dominated by a single party on a minority of the vote.  It is only the vast differences between regions that produce even vaguely proportional results nationwide. AMS addresses representation at this level.  Its top up seats will elected Conservatives in Scotland, Labour in the South, and Lib Dems and UKIP almost everywhere, meaning Conservatives in Scotland will no longer have to look to MP's far to the South, nor Labour voters in the South far to the North, nor the millions of Lib Dem voters to a few distant and scattered islands of representation around the country that few of them actually had a chance to influence, etc.

AMS contains both the key intuitions behind proportional representation and majoritarianism.  It ensures representation that is both tied to individual voters as closely as possible, and tied to the wider national opinion.  In other words a semi-proportional system.  Only STV or AMS can deliver this, and AMS is both closer to the traditional British model and less discredited than STV (for the foreseeable future).

AMS would improve representation at every level, enfranchise voters across the country who are excluded by FPTP, or would be by AV, and update our electoral system for a more pluralist and connected age.  It is a modest and simple addition and improvement on FPTP and remains true to its principles that, despite their shortcomings, are built into our understanding of politics and democracy.  In many ways it is a thoroughly conservative proposal for reform.  And although that may not commend it to some people, I believe that places it in a long, successful and unequalled history of steady, peaceful, evolutionary improvement that has helped make Britain one of the most long-lasting, peaceful, democratic and best governed countries in the world.

How to Fight for Electoral Reform.

In my previous articles I looked at the main reasons for the dramatic failure of the 'Yes' campaign for reform to the Alternative Vote in 2011 and then I suggested a better replacement for pure FPTP now AV has been so thoroughly electorally discredited.  That covers want went wrong before, and what we should try to achieve in the future.

So what's left?

Well, how we actually achieve that goal in the future, and make sure we don't just repeat the absolute thrashing of 2011.  What tactics and strategy should be used to finally achieve the dream of electoral reform?

I have become more and more convinced due to the election results in 2005 and 2010 that our electoral system is inefficient, unresponsive and broken, concentrates power in an arbitrary manner, and fails to respond to the plural reality of the modern world.  I also think that there is a relatively simple adjustment that can be made to it to bring it up to date, while still maintaining the vast majority of the tried and tested principles and structure that are such an ingrained part of our national and political culture, and have helped make Britain the longest lasting and most stable democracy in the world.

I am a conservative and a Conservative.  But a conservative is not opposed to all change, rather he supports measured change, considered change, evolutionary change, change that goes with the grain of human nature and most of all change that is necessary and possible without just making things worse.  I have come to believe that electoral reform, done properly is both necessary to make our democracy suitable for the 21st Century, and possible without losing what is best about our long-standing system. A conservative also knows the importance of practicality. Good intentions alone don't do anything unless you have the practical means of making them happen.  No-one can fault the devotion and patience of Electoral Reformers, but their tactics have been awful.  The 'Yes' campaign "was an epic clusterfuck of a campaign which will go down in the annals of political incompetence" in the words of one of its senior activists.  In fact a future campaign for reform couldn't go far wrong if it just did the exact opposite of everything done by the AV Yes campaign.

The 1st thing is to realise that a fundamental change of strategy and tactics are needed.  The cause of electoral reform has to be one of the most longstanding and least successful causes in UK political history.  The Electoral Reform Society, the UK's largest and oldest supporter of reform was founded in 1884.  It has been fighting the same battle totally unsuccessfully for 130 years.  Along with the Joseph Rowntree Trust it had a major role in the Yes campaign in 2010-11. These groups provided much needed money for the campaign. But beyond that though they imported a downright damaging mindset that profoundly handicapped the Yes campaign.

The skills needed to run a pressure group are very different to the skills needed to run a political campaign.  And the ERS is not even a particularly successful pressure group.  Pressure groups need to inspire a particular group of supporters and keep them involved.  National election campaigns need to rapidly build as a broad a coalition as possible and provide a clear and compelling narrative about why they are the choice that will most benefit people.  A pressure group must grab as much attention as possible in an public arena crowded with many other calls on people's attention, as well as simple apathy.  A referendum campaign has to win a binary choice.  It is Yes vs No.  Any future campaign for reform must move away from the ERS, pressure group model that has failed so comprehensively over many decades.

Electoral reformers shouldn't be thinking like an unsuccessful pressure group, they need to think like a political party. And also they need to appreciate the importance of political parties, and how they can be used to effect change.  The Yes to AV campaign had some idea about building an anti-politics campaign that would set itself against political parties and politics as usual.  This approach was rubbish. It straight and away alienated the very people most experienced and professional in political campaigning. and with power and influence in British political life. Like a political party they need to be able to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible from different ideological and political backgrounds and tie them together temporarily around a belief that electoral reform is a cause for them. It also needs to be ruthlessly practical in reaching out to people.

It must think about political parties in another sense as well. The facts are that our political life is overwhelmingly conducted through political parties, as much as they are also generally somewhat distrusted.  When people want cues about political decisions they don't look to celebrities or entertainers, they look to political figures, media commentators, etc, they trust.  These people set the tone of debate and commentary.  Politics in Britain is conducted on a shoe-string, but what resources there are, are overwhelmingly held by political parties as well, both in terms of money and also connections to the media, experience of campaigning, and standing nationwide networks for disseminating ideas and encouraging volunteers.

Political unbalance crippled the Yes2AV campaign. It deliberately sold itself as a left-wing, progressive cause and made deliberate attempts to even portray AV as an anti-Conservative measure.  At a stroke they successfully managed to alienate 43% of the electorate.  They also managed to alienate many more people who didn't want to support a political stitch-up designed to permanently exclude a particular party from government. It also allowed its media presence to be dominated by Liberal Democrats far too much.

This allowed the No campaign a completely clear run of right of centre voters and even motivated many to get out and vote against. This was absolutely fatal when the left-wing vote was also thoroughly split.  Any future campaign for electoral reform should put deliberate effort into pumping up a Conservative Yes campaign and UKIP Yes Campaign as much as possible, as well as among Lib Dem and Labour voters. The clear truth is that electoral reform will never happen without the support of many right-wing voters. (For a first hand account of how the Yes campaign deliberately ignored even the Conservative Yes organisation.  See here)

This is also important because any future chance for reform is most likely to come about due to action by a political party.  The 2011 referendum occurred because Gordon Brown opened a window in the Labour party, and the Lib Dems got themselves in a position to exploit it when a hung parliament occurred.  This means that a future opportunity for reform may occur as soon as 2015, and reformers should be working towards that eventuality.  The other thing is that an opportunity for reform will only most likely present itself if one of the two main parties opens itself up to reform.  As long as both parties are opposed to a referendum, then they can maintain a solid front against any attempt to negotiate for one. The best chance then is to persuade either Labour or the Conservatives to at least support a further referendum on electoral reform, though this may be too much of a long shot.  At best, it will require another hung parliament, with the Lib Dems in the driving seat.

This work should also be done starting years in advance, building a constant presence, however large or small, and seeking to influence the terms of debate through these crucial drivers of the political weather and discussion. Efforts should go into both lobbying and building support among the MP's, MEP's, Lords, Councillors who hold a vast amounts of power and influence among these parties and also persuading ordinary activists and members, as well as figures in the media and think tanks.  These are the politically active people in our country, and the best hope for reform success must involve getting as many of them as possible onside, regardless of their particular party affiliation. Also because they are among the few people interested in politics enough to listen to arguments about reform outside the context of an imminent referendum.

This is the uphill struggle the Yes campaign faces.  The Lib Dems and Minor Parties are already solidly behind reform, for obvious reasons.  Labour and Conservatives do very well out of the current system though.  This means roughly 65% of the electorate have very little incentive to support change.  One way that this can be countered is by stressing the dangers of FPTP to both sides as well as the way specific reforms such as AMS cohere with the principles they consider themselves to be proud of, such as fairness, while being aware how members of these parties conceive these values differently. Elements of these parties may support change to a more stable proportional system as an insurance rather than the more dramatic shifts of FPTP.   For the Conservatives the ghosts of 1997 and 2005 should raise a powerful argument against FPTP, as does the way FPTP continues to totally disenfranchise large right-wing minorities like UKIP  For Labour, the ease with which the Conservatives have dominated UK government over the last 130 years despite being a minority compared to the broad agreement along the left for much of that time, can only raise question marks against FPTP. Reformers can also appeal to Labour 'progressive' principles.  This attempt was one of the few successful parts of the AV yes campaign, that managed to build an, initially, impressive Labour Yes campaign out of almost no traditional Labour support for reform, although it was later lost in the general chaos and incompetence of the Yes campaign.

But support among political leaders and activists alone will not a referendum victory make.  It is obviously also extremely important to lodge the ideas of reform in the minds of the wider public.  The general public is even less interested in electoral reform that political activists though.  Because of this it may be wise, outside a referendum campaign, to concentrate on discrediting FPTP in the eyes of the wider public rather than actively promoting an alternate system. Support for an actual separate voting system is worth building among a wide range of poltical activists and parties as far in advance as possible, but among the general public this is almost certainly impossible, requiring too much detail.  However, even if reformers could just manage to lodge in the public consciousness a couple of ideas about how FPTP is an unfair, broken system it would build a much stronger platform to persuade them of an alternative in any future referendum campaign, which would hopefully have some support from activists and political groups across the political spectrum ready to go for any campaign.    

The crucial feature is to make electoral reform relevant to people.  In the jargon of campaigning it needs to be 'Retailed'.  That means instead of presenting people with an abstract argument and cause break it down into simple examples of issues people actually care about, both of how the old system is broken and of how the alternative (which for me would preferably be AMS) would be better.  This is what the No campaign successfully managed to do with its arguments about the cost and complexity of AV, and what the Yes campaign singly failed to do.  And again it is something that should be done years in advance.  FPTP has the massive advantage of incumbency.  A Yes campaign for reform needs to take a clear two part message.  Firstly, demonstrating why FPTP is broken, and then explaining how AMS will solve this problem. It is not just enough though to take reform, and take something people like, and tell them the two are connected.  There has to be a plausible and simple logical connection between the two such that their mind's will naturally slide between the two, even for someone not paying that much attention.

Again this was one of Yes' main failure in 2011.  Messages about the expenses scandals and ending seats for life look superficially clear and resonant with a cynical electorate but they failed the connection test.  The Yes campaign never explained (because there was no obvious link) how AV was meant to achieve these miracles and so they made little progress with the electorate.  On the other hand the No campaign's arguments plausibly, clearly and simply connected to AV and so were more successful at sticking in the electorate's minds.

The third crucial feature is to work with the general conservative bent of the public.  If it was not obvious before the massive AV No vote, the public is reflexively conservative about constitutional change, especially any one they don't easily understand the rationale and argument for.  A Yes campaign for Reform should seek to work with this rather than against it.  Stress should be put on how reform actually strengthens the familiar principles and arguments used in favour of our electoral system.  Obviously this won't be possible with all such traditional 'principles' but where possible it should be tried, to counter the unfamiliarity proposed in any change. An example would be that AMS would actually increase representation by electing Labour MP's where enough people vote Labour or Conservative MP's where there are Conservatives or etc.  Rather than giving large numbers of voters no representation on arbitrary geographical grounds.

The next point is not to do your opponents work for them.  This is largely a tactical point to consider during the election campaign.  The side that wins will be the side that more clearly gets their message to the electorate.  Relentlessly push the clear positive advantages of change, relentlessly slag off FPTP.  Every single message should follow a clear formula, FPTP bad because X, PR better because Y. Do not spend valuable time arguing about the minutia of your opponents claims. Don't waste time discussing their arguments to the point where it crowds out the points you are trying to make, especially when media coverage is scarce and the public's attention distracted.  All a No campaign has to do is generate enough reasonable doubt in the public's mind. A Yes campaign has to not do what their opponents would want them to do, which is to get bogged down in precisely the manner the Yes campaign for AV did. I can only repeat the ridiculousness of the latter stages of the AV campaign.  The NO campaign wanted to portray AV as an expensive Lib Dem fix, so the Yes campaign treated them to the ridiculous spectacle of a chorus of leading Lib Dems talking about nothing apart from how much AV would cost. A text-book example of what not to do.    

Be aware of what your opponents will do.  Any future Yes campaign has the advantage of the experience of the AV campaign, and especially the reaction of the No campaign.  Under any future referendum, for AMS for example, it is likely that very similar No arguments will be used.  Other obvious arguments against a semi-PR system can be anticipated. The argument about Cost, possibly about complexity, about there being more hung parliaments, etc.  A Yes campaign should already have pre-prepared and tested plans and responses to the main likely arguments, ways of countering them and re-directing the debate back to the areas a Yes arguments want to hold it on.  They know what didn't work for the Yes campaign in 2011, and hence what to do differently, both in terms of debate and in terms of messages in the future. Generally speaking a No campaign will try to make the argument about anything rather than the issue of the actual features of FPTP vs AMS (or another alternative) because they know that FPTP just doesn't stand up under scrutiny. Yes campaigners must do whatever they can to shut down other issues and direct any debate back to the failures of FPTP and the advantages of AMS (or another alternative).  That is their winning ground.

The final point is a positive one.  The circumstances will be better.  The circumstances in 2011 were almost uniquely bad for Reformers.  It is highly likely that a future referendum will take place in more favourable political weather.  This is certainly not a reason for complacency, but it is a reason for hope.  This is doubly true if Reformers do learn the lessons of 2010-11 and make sure they are better prepared and better planned for any future referendum.  With a combination of a broad political coalition and a clear set of anti-FPTP, pro-AMS reform lines to take there is every reason to hope that we will see Electoral Reform in this country within the next decade.

The Future for Electoral Reform is AMS

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After the AV referendum a quick consensus formed that Electoral Reform is off the political table for a generation.  This was a consensus between opponents of reform and, bizarrely, most supporters of Reform, who seemed to suffer a massive collective loss of nerve.

I, personally, could not disagree more.

Over the medium and long-term the time is ripe for change, regardless of the result of that referendum. Reform failed in 2011 due to a combination of temporarily awful political circumstances, the presentation of a weak alternative and gross incompetence on behalf of the Yes Campaign.  None of these circumstances need recur, and it is highly likely that the long-term trends will continue to strengthen the argument for change, as they have since the 1960's.  The decline of the two party vote, the rise of the minor parties, the increasing inability of FPTP to properly represent the democratic wishes of the people of Britain.  None of these things are going away.

What is needed is for the Reform movement to pick itself up off the floor, knock itself hard on the head and learn the lessons of 2011.  Only honestly admitting that it got things horribly wrong and committing to change can give hope of success in the future. The Electoral Reform movement needs a dramatic modernisation, like Tony Blair's refounding of New Labour or David Cameron's modernisation of the Conservative Party, to achieve its aims in an age where politics and campaigning are professional and serious businesses.  It needs a thorough reconsideration of both Aims and Methods.

In this article I consider the aim for reformers by suggesting what I consider to be the best achievable alternative to FPTP.  And a superior alternative to AV.  In a following article I will suggest some ideas about a change in tactics and strategy that I think reformers need if they are to actually achieve their goals within a generation, and avoid repeating the disaster of 2011.
 
The massive 2011 vote against AV doesn't have to kill hope of reform for a generation. But it quite probably has put paid to any hope for change to AV itself for at least that long.  Or to put that another way, any hope for change within the next two decades can only exist on the basis of abandoning AV.  Good, I say. AV was adopted mostly because it was what was on offer, and it only became what was on offer for reasons of Labour Party convenience.  AV was capable of solving at most one of the numerous problems with the current system, and in a manner that had the potential of making other problems worse.

It did have one particular advantage though that should not be forgotten in its tidal wave of defeat. It was quite similar to the current system.  This made it an achievable reform. And this is my first criterion for a candidate for replacing FPTP. A further attempt at change should be focused on a similarly achievable reform, sufficiently similar to the current system to be recognisable as operating on similar principles, and sufficiently different to AV to seek distance from its calamitous defeat. Regardless of the problems with FPTP the massive No vote shows there is considerable public sympathy or at least overwhelming familiarity with its principles.  Any proposed alternative must work with this familiarity rather than against it.

It should also not be based on the same principles as AV i.e. preferential voting. This means not only AV, but also the other alternatives to FPTP that have been seriously proposed by reformers, namely STV and AV+.  AV+ was the system recommended by the Jenkins commission on reform in the late 90's. It is AV with an additional top-up of PR apportioned seats. It is a remarkably complicated change, as one would perhaps expect from a committee, and should be rejected for that reason and for being largely reliant on AV.

STV is the long-time preferred alternative of the Electoral Reform Society, Lib Dems and most other UK reform groups, and is currently used in Ireland. It is AV in multi-member constituencies, which unlike AV gives largely proportional results. STV is the preferred system of a majority of reformers. However, regardless of this, it should be abandoned, at least as a medium term aim. The staggering defeat of AV means that its central mechanism is politically discredited for the foreseeable future and because it requires voters to accept change to preferential voting and much larger multi-member constituencies, in reality, like AV+, it is too large a change to be sellable at once.

Both the reform movement's concentration on STV for decades and the strength of its conversion to AV in the previous year can be explained by its obsession with preferential voting. Most organised reformers are just convinced of its superiority to simple majority voting, regardless of other considerations. However, it has been rejected in the form of AV for now. It would appear to be a change and complication too far and, quite frankly, it is not worth sacrificing the chance of achieving real improvement by other means, merely out of a quixotic attachment to the wonders of preferential voting.


Where does this leave us if we've already rejected FPTP, AV, AV+ and STV? Except in Acronym hell. Another option worth mentioning is Closed List PR.  This would be a very simple system where you just vote for a party, and then the votes are counted and seats portioned out to the parties equal to its percentage of the vote.  This is the only true PR system.  However its side effects are so awful that it is generally rejected even by hard-core PR enthusiasts. Basically the problem is that voters have no control over who is actually elected, and there is no geographical connection between voters and representatives or sense that representatives represent everyone, rather than merely those who voted for them.  It is hence a massive leap from the current system, though it does bear the award of being the joint simplest system with FPTP.  Though from the opposite side of the spectrum.

So, ignoring Closed-list PR, AV, AV+, STV and FPTP, what is possibly left?


The answer to that is very simple. It's more proportional than FPTP, maintains constituency links, is a modest change from FPTP, is widely used by some European countries and within the UK itself, makes every vote count and is relatively simple compared to AV or STV but would still have given single-party government from our more decisive of recent electoral victories.

This system is the Additional Member System (or AMS).  In particular in a form I like to think of as FPTP+.

It is a combination of our current FPTP system used for UK General Elections and the Proportional Representation D'Hondt system we use for European Elections.  It would work like a combination of the two, producing a composite system that hopefully maintains the main advantages of both, while smoothing away their most stark problems.

The way it would work is simple.  Most MP's would be elected the same way as now, one per constituency under FPTP, with every bit of the country having a constituency MP.  In addition to these ordinary constituency MP's there would also be top-up list MP's.  Parties would gain a number of these MP's in proportion to their share of the vote, taking into account those MP's already elected in the constituencies.  The system works like our current FPTP system, but the top-up list MP's act to dampen the extremity of its results. Guaranteeing a degree of proportionality and ensuring that if you get enough votes you will get seats.

An AMS election would be simple.  Each voter gets a ballot paper with two sections.  One where they vote with a cross for whatever candidate they want to be their local constituency MP, exactly as now, the other they vote for the party they support, which goes towards deciding who gets the list seats.

In particular for the UK I would recommend the following arrangement.  I would suggest keeping a House of Commons at its current size of 650 MP's.  Of these 500 would be constituency MP's and 150 list MP's.  List MP's would be allocated by the D'Hondt system based on the list vote, taking account of the number of constituencies already won.  List MP's would not be based on the vote over the entire country.  Rather I would suggest multi-member list constituencies across the country based on the UK regions used for European Elections.  These could be subdivided to give list constituencies of an appropriate size of 4-8 MP's. I would also suggest allowing candidates to stand as both constituency and list candidates at the same time.  I think of this particular arrangement of AMS as FPTP+.      

That's phrasing it technically.  Basically it would be the same system currently used for Scottish and Welsh devolved elections.  Just with a higher proportion of constituency MP's to list MP's than they have.

I believe this system has a number of immediately apparent advantages.

How could Electoral Reform Fail so Badly?

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It's not very controversial to say that the result of the AV referendum on was disastrous for the cause of Electoral Reform in the UK.  Almost everyone was surprised by the scale of AV's defeat and this has been followed by an immediate consensus that electoral reform is off the political table for at least a decade, if not a generation. For reformers, after 80 years of campaigning and finally getting the referendum they had dreamt and hoped for reform is now, cruelly, even further away than before.

This would seem an odd time then to talk about the future of electoral reform.  But in reality now immediately after its big defeat is precisely the time that supporters of Reform needs to take stock, think clearly about what has happened and plan for the future. And there is no such thing as a perfect certainty when it comes to politics and the future. With boldness and a serious willingness to really reconsider both means and aims anything is possible.

First it is important to face up to the reality of what happened, what went so wrong, and what must be learnt from 2011 to make sure next time is extremely different.  So this is what I try to do in this article.  In my next article I set out what I believe to be a better option for achievable electoral reform than AV, and then argue how we can apply the lessons outlined here to give the best chance to achieve that success as soon as possible, however long that may be.  


Just a quick note.  If at any point I make rude comments about electoral reformers, I mean the core of leaders of pro-reform organisations, politicians, media commentators and the rest of the small group of people who frame and direct the public image and fight for electoral reform, rather than supporters of electoral reform generally, of whom I am one.

So what happened?  And what went so wrong?

2 weeks ago the UK held its first ever referendum on the subject of electoral reform.  This represented the 2nd closest Britain has ever got to ditching First-Past-The-Post as its electoral system.  The 1st being when a switch to AV and STV was narrowly rejected by parliament after a lot of argument and numerous votes in the 1920's.  The particular chance of electoral reform on offer was of course the Alternative Vote.  This was rejected by 68%-32% on a 42% turnout, or in other words by 13 million votes to 6 million.  It is hard to over-estimate the scale of the thrashing.  AV lost in every region of the UK and in 430 out of 440 counting regions.  Equally telling is the fact that in the tiny number of areas AV did pass in it squeaked through with around 55% of the vote, only gaining more than 60% in a single London Borough.  In contrast it was defeated by margins of 70-30% in literally hundreds of areas.  Most UK regions did even contain a single voting area that supported AV.

Personally I was broadly neutral on the question of AV or not. I remain massively unconvinced that AV would offer a significant improvement on the current system in terms of results or the problems of FPTP. Neither do I think its introduction would have been the end of the world. AV could be summarised as a system that is slightly better than FPTP in some areas and slightly worse in others. At best it would solve 10% of our problems, at worst it would occasionally make them slightly worse.  That said, in one sense it is a deep shame that AV was defeated so badly, because it discourages the thought of considering further ideas for reform, and gives the resemblance of a mandate for the current pure FPTP system, something that system does not deserve. 


In a weird way though I'm glad AV was destroyed so badly. I'm glad because the result was decisive, thus forcing the defeated party to admit clear and straight defeat. The worst of all possible worlds would have been a close result on a low turnout, whether for Yes or No.  Such a result would have only fuelled bad feeling about any change or lack of it and damaged the credibility of the result. It would have led to an orgy of blame with the losing side looking for any chance to excuse their defeat by blaming a technicality or their opponents misdeeds. The sheer scale of the result luckily means that the defeated side was left with no option but to give way gracefully(ish).  

The second silver lining, from my point of view, is that even when Electoral Reform does come back onto the political agenda it is highly unlikely that pure AV will be the alternative option.  This is good because I don't think AV is significantly better than pure FPTP for Britain, nor solves the problems that pure FPTP brings.  It is a step sideways, the illusion of reform without actually solving the serious issues with the current system. I think it was said best by a journalist, raging against the progressive majority's failure to vote through AV, who complained that FPTP was a "broken, majoritarian voting system that disenfranchises millions of voters and puts power in the hands of a hundred thousand or so "swing" voters in "Middle England" marginal seats". To which his solution was to introduce a broken, majoritarian voting system that disenfranchises millions of voters and puts power in the hands of a hundred thousand or so "swing" voters in "Middle England" marginal seats. Right.  

My general lack of interest in the Alternative Vote to one side, I think Electoral reformers made a big mistake in their approach to the referendum that has the capacity to seriously damage the hope of reform over the next years if not understood and overcome.  Starting on entirely pragmatic grounds I think that whoever was running the YES campaign owes supporters of reform an apology, for monumentally cocking up the 1st decent chance for reform in 80 years.

The scale of AV's defeat means it may have been impossible for the best campaign in the world to have won for a YES vote.  The circumstances were very adverse, but they certainly could have done a lot more with them and given the cause of reform a much stronger platform from here on. Now it is really easy to be wise with hindsight and blame the Yes campaign after it lost but there's more going on here than that. There have been numerous serious explanations about just how bad the Yes campaign was, most damningly by senior members of the national Yes campaign who felt unable to speak up before the vote itself, and feel crushed by how their efforts were thrown away.  (For example, here, here, here and particularly here.)  Even from miles away I can rattle off the top of my head 4 things the Yes campaign were obviously doing wrong.

Firstly, running a cosy, smug, left-wing campaign by Guardian readers for Guardian readers. The Yes2AV campaign made almost no effort to reach out to right-wingers, running a campaign opened by Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas, and involving almost no attempt at political balance. This was an astonishing failure. Especially when they had an ace in the hole in the form of UKIP and its charismatic front man Nigel Farage.  They could have used these to devastating affect to counter the solid Conservative No campaign among right-of-centre voters.  They didn't almost certainly out of the liberal-left's general distaste for UKIP. They'd rather run a campaign by 'progressives' for 'progressives' and lose. Particularly remarkable was the comparison with the relative role given to the Green's Caroline Lucas, despite the fact that UKIP gets about 3 times as many votes as the Greens. The Yes campaign's seeming approach could be summed up by a short conversation I had with a friend. I said the Yes campaign was cocking up by failing to engage right-wingers. He said why should they bother when right-wingers were a minority and would just vote No anyway. My jaw dropped.

In fairness he was technically right on one thing. Identifiably right-of-centre parties gained 43% of the vote in the last election, which leads me to my 2nd point. If the Yes campaign were going to be so stunningly complacent as to write off almost half of voters they needed to make absolutely sure they had the other half locked down so tight they could hardly breathe. This again they failed to do. Right from the start it was clear to anyone with half a brain that Labour voters would be crucial to securing or defeating AV.  They were the vital swing voters. Especially if the Yes campaign was planning to not bother with right-of-centre voters they needed to make damn sure they secured the support of the vast majority of Labour supporters. 

One way to do this would be to make the referendum a vote on David Cameron, they barely mentioned him. The other way would have been to make sure they had almost all Labour MP's, CLP's and other senior figures on board.  Again, they failed.  They almost went out of their way to antagonise Labour MP's with their main message, which, bizarrely, was that MP's were lazy and corrupt and AV would make them work harder and be more honest. This understandably didn't fire up Labour MP's, Lords, Councillors and other party figures to throw their weight behind the Yes campaign.  Once it became apparent that NO2AV had secured a considerable chunk of Labour support (let alone a majority of Labour MP's), combined with the Yes campaign's wilful neglect of right-wing voters, it was obvious they were going to lose.

The 3rd bizarre error was failing to reach out to as many voters as possible.  Beyond their choice in problem 1, they failed to utilise the opportunities they have available to them.  They and the NO campaign were both offered one free mailing to every house in the UK. The No campaign eagerly took the opportunity, producing a slick and compelling leaflet. The Yes campaign decided to just not bother. The No campaign launched one of the biggest political ad campaigns in UK history, with billboards around the country and vast quantities of online advertising. Yes2AV barely bothered. Yes2AV did manage to produce a TV political broadcast.  It was absolutely bizarre. It contained voters going around harassing MP's through megaphones, who were portrayed as lazy, corrupt caricatures. It barely mentioned any real positives of AV, only vague nonsense about AV making MP's work harder with no back-up explanation and claiming it would have avoided expense abuses.  It failed to make a genuine case for AV, it failed to make any case as to why FPTP was broken. It assumed voters were idiots. It may as well have promised them that AV would make diamonds rain from the sky.        

The 4th failure was doing their opponents work for them.  The Yes campaign spent far too little time genuinely making a case and clearly pushing the positive improvements of AV, or the glaring problems with FPTP.  They spent far more time trying to rebut their opponents case and thus cemented it in the public's mind.  It failed to pick a single message and stick to it, apart from the nonsensical line taken in their broadcast.  The No campaign, on the other hand, desperately wanted to make people think that AV was expensive so the Yes campaign spent huge amounts of time arguing the toss over how expensive it was.  The electorate, seeing the debate through a thick fog of apathy and other concerns, just heard that AV was expensive.  The No campaign wanted to make it a referendum on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems in general.  So the Yes campaign obligingly filled the latter stages of the campaign with Lib Dem Cabinet ministers complaining about how mean the No campaign was, and to cap it off Ed Miliband publicly refused to share a platform with Nick Clegg. Thus making sure everyone knew the yes campaign thought Nick Clegg was important. Brilliantly done. These failures combined with the genuinely difficult circumstances the referendum was held in meant AV was doomed, and visibly so.

Apart from these pragmatic issues I think that electoral reformers made a serious strategic error in their more long term approach.  The vast majority of reformers did not want AV before the referendum was called. For what I believe are very good reasons. In fact numerous individuals and organisations had been downright scathing about it. As soon as the referendum was called though most of them moved as one to pushing AV and doubling back on their previous opinions. In of itself I don't blame them for this. AV was all that was on offer.  But that was precisely the problem.  The electoral reform movement is built on an extreme point of principle, whereas AV was the result of some pretty seedy political bargaining. In particular Gordon Brown's death bed conversion to reform in 2010, in a late attempt to cosy up to the Lib Dems, all while holding out the one type of electoral reform that could possibly actually INCREASE Labour's already bloated electoral advantage.  Pro-AV campaigners were caught between a rock and a hard place.  Support AV too strongly and they just looked hypocritical, given their recorded objections to it.  Damning it with faint praise was also not really an option, as that would just help speed it to defeat.  Faced with this choice they went with the 1st option and just looked like hypocrites. There was a 3rd option though.

I don't care whether you're for YES or NO. For God's sake please actually go out and vote in the AV referendum on May 5th!

We are now rapidly approaching the 5th May and the long awaited referendum on whether for elections to parliament we should switch from First-past-the-post (FPTP) to the Alternative Vote (AV).  I would like to say that national conversation has been buzzing with the excitement of quite possibly our biggest constitutional change for a century.  I would like to say that campaign has been dominated by thoughtful and accurate but accessible explanations of the different mechanics and likely effects of switching to AV or not. But, that would be an utter lie!

Sadly, the truth is that the AV campaign has so far almost entirely passed the public by. Without the scale and widespread organisation of the main political parties the campaign has just not had the bulk necessary to seriously enter the national consciousness or disturb the thoughts of most of the population.  The Yes2AV and No2AV campaigns have been chipper and enthusiastic but thus far largely ineffective.  With disaster in Japan, War in Libya, Politics at Home, Local and sub-national elections their message has been largely crowded out.

On the other hand this is quite possibly a good thing as the AV campaign has been almost certainly the worst political campaign I have ever seen.  Both sides have barely even tried to wade into the complexity of explaining the somewhat technical differences between FPTP and the proposed AV system. Instead preferring to throw a vast wave of heavily emotive sheer rubbish at the electorate in the hope some of its sticks.  It has been truly awful, with a particular low point from the No side with their Vote No or the Baby gets it line of argument only just beating the Yes campaign's repeated massive non-sequiturs that AV will make politics fairer, MP's work harder, expenses lower and is apparently a more 'modern' system, all without explaining precisely how or why these miracles will occur; not to mention end safe seats (no it won't), make every MP have the support of 50% of his constituents (no it won't), end tactical voting (no it won't) and make election results more proportional (actually in direct contradiction to ending safe seats).  Not to mention simultaneously claiming that it will harm the BNP and also help smaller parties (connect the dots between those two if you can). Both sides have also managed to scrape the barrel when it comes to chasing celebrity endorsement rather than discussing to issues and more widely planning the man rather than the ball.

The campaign over AV has been even worse in quality than our last general election, which was itself a new low. In case you have forgotten that campaign was largely occupied by an argument over making £6 billion of cuts between two parties who were planning to cut £80 billion and £50 billion respectively, shortly followed by an unbelievably silly and impressively short lived personality cult based on one semi-decent TV performance that then fizzled out even before election day two weeks later.  It was pretty grim, but it has been surpassed in sheer balloon-faced stupidity by this AV campaign (from both sides).

It gets worse though.  Largely due to the bizarrely low profile of the AV campaign itself, and also, I think, due to the crass, irrelevant negativity of the two campaigns, there is a record low engagement with this important constitutional change.  At this stage in the campaign Yes and No are roughly equal in the polls, leading to the possibility we could see major constitutional change with the support of perhaps 12% of the electorate.  I call that pretty grim.  Lest you think I am exaggerating let me explain myself.

Turnout in general elections is about 2/3.  Turn-out in devolved, local and European elections is commonly about 35%.  I have seen nothing to convince me this referendum has a higher profile than the concurrent local and devolved elections. And see every reason to believe it will be lower.  People are used to local elections, they are somewhat aware of them as they come along with reasonable regularity.  They are also spurred by the high-profile of party politics.  The AV, as a non-party political one-off, has none of these benefits.  I was recently shocked to discover the people in my office between them knew almost nothing about AV and cared almost less.  These are highly educated people working in one of the UK's top universities.  I would put them in easily the top 20% of the country for expected general political awareness and engagement, and they were barely aware a referendum was even happening.  In places where there are local/devolved elections I expect turnout to be slightly lower than for those, where there are no local elections I expect turnout to be even worse.  All in all this means we can expect a turnout somewhere between 20-30%. On the higher end of that if we're lucky, the lower if we're not.  Combine that with an expectation that the result will be close, and we have AV defeated or accepted with roughly 11-16% of the electorate.

This is dire, you have to go back to the mid-19th Century to find a time when such a small percent of the population got to decide the direction of our constitution. Though, embarrassingly, this time the problem is due to apathy rather than legal restriction. It will be a terrible shame if such serious an issue that so affects us all were decided by a thin majority on a tiny turnout. Something that would quite possibly lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the new or retained system, stuck without any real democratic mandate.  It will certainly leave a legacy of bad feeling and mistrust about such change.   It is in all our best interest, whether win or lose, for as many people to be involved in this crucial democratic decision as possible.  

This is the reason for the headline of this article.  It doesn't matter whether you are for AV or against it.  Please, please go out and vote on May 5th!  If you don't have an opinion then get one. If you know nothing about the issue then please take a small amount of time to get yourself at least reasonably informed.  Whatever the case MAKE SURE YOU GET OUT AND VOTE!!!