Electoral System Isn't Perfect

 

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday, December 3, 2020.

As I sat down to write this month’s column, supporters of Donald Trump were still pursuing legal remedies to re-open the presidential election count in a handful of states. 

 

My interest here, though, is not so much in the final outcome. Rather, it is my incredulity that it seems to take days, if not weeks, even without a legal challenge, for the final tallies to be recorded for such an important democratic process. 

 

I appreciate the sheer size of the US electorate, but these delays do not encourage confidence in the honesty and accuracy of the system. 

 

As a libertarian, I believe that elections are a necessary and a vital opportunity for citizens to hold the state to account. 

 

Although much criticised by many on the Left, the UK system of counting ballot papers, including those submitted by post and proxy, either the same night or the following day after polls shut, is impressive. 

 

Aside from elections to the European Union ‘parliament’, when ballot papers were disgracefully not counted until the following Sunday, the UK system produces quick and accurate results which legitimises the whole system. 

 

That said, the rise in postal voting and growing evidence of corrupt practices in how those votes are cast, mostly in Labour-voting areas, makes me think this conduit to the democratic process should be abolished.  

 

There should, of course, be limited exemptions for those serving in the Armed Forces, UK citizens living and working abroad and a few other very specific cases.  

 

What about the electoral system itself? Well, here I would like to see some fundamental reforms. 

 

I don’t agree that voting should be made compulsory as that would be another abuse of the state in forcing individuals to act under coercion. 

 

However, I would like to see an additional option offered to voters underneath each of the successfully nominated candidates – ‘none of the above’. 

 

On the basis that every vote should be treated equally, I think that it is fundamentally undemocratic for elected representatives, whether MPs or councillors, to serve when they secure less considerably less than 50% of the vote. 

Of course, at a Parliamentary level this is not currently an issue as here in the East, of the 41 MPs in Cambs, Essex, Norfolk & Suffolk, 37 of them secured more than half of the votes cast in last year’s General Election.

That said, I would support ‘Second Preference Voting’ where there are more than two participants contesting a seat such that the votes of all but the top two candidates are reallocated. 

I’d then go further. Because of the tendency for the executive arm of any state apparatus to accumulate power to itself and, through the serpentine system of state patronage, its army of employees, I’d like to see the upper chamber in the Houses of Parliament reformed. 

 

The muddled, illogical reforms to the House of Lords instituted by Tony Blair is the worst of all worlds. The chamber is both not as representative as it could be nor is it as much the repository of independent voices and expertise that it was before Blair got his hands on it. The number of peers has also been creeping up over the last two decades so that now it is, once again, far larger than the House of Commons. 

 

Therefore, I would like to see an upper chamber, no bigger than its lower counterpart, whose composition is proportionally based on the results from the previous general election. 

 

The best electoral system is one which combines openness and integrity as to how it is run and one which provides sufficient checks and balances against those seeking to use the state to undermine individual liberties. 

 

The UK is better than most. But it could be even better.