Freedom of Choice*

(*offer is limited to one free choice per customer per election. Other terms and conditions apply)

Ok, so last time I waffled about Simpsons Paradox, and how it can result in skew-if results. However, there's another significant implication of the whole dividing-and-counting-per-constituency malarkey that we've got going on, and that's wasted votes.

The way it works is like this: basically, either Labour or Conservative are going to get elected, and that's that: the chances of a hung parliament are slim enough to more-or-less ignore.

The result? Well, lets imagine a hypothetical situation in which someone dislikes Labour, and really wants to kick them out. Their preference would be for -- I dunno -- lets say Lib-Dem for the sake of example.

The person has TWO parts to their vote:

1. Do not want Labour
2. Do want Lib-Dem

Now, both parts would seemingly be satisfied by voting for Lib-Dem, but for the fact that Lib-Dem won't get elected, will they? So, in actual fact, because Lib-Dem have an appalling votes --> power conversion rate, and because the electoral system tends to grant a majority to either Labour or Conservatives thus rendering any power that the Lib-Dems actually get rather moot (Labour don't need to ally/co-operate with any other party, so the non-Labour MPs at the moment are collectively powerless), Lib-Dem's votes tend to be wasted and so voting for them strangely enough isn't actually a very good idea if you hold the above two objectives.

However, there is one -- and and only one -- alternative, and that is to treat a vote for the Conservative party as a vote for 'not Labour'. This is actually your only option if you hold the above objectives, as it at least accurately gets across the 'not Labour' part of your desires.


The system we have, therefore, limits our choices:

• We can choose to be ruled by Labour or Conservative, but we can't choose any other party
• We can choose on the issues that Labour and Conservative disagree on (right now, for example, electoral reform) but NOT on anything they agree on (they both want tax to stay the same? Then tax stays the same, and we have no say in the matter)
• We can choose on one of the issues they disagree on: like Labour's environmental policies but the Conservatives' policy on crime? Tough, choose one and only one issue; choose Labour or Conservatives
• We can choose between city and country: do you vote in your Labour MP who you think will do good for your city, or the Conservative MP that will help the Conservatives gain control of the country?

These issues all have something to do with the whole 'splitting country up into constituencies' thing: were it not for that, there'd be no wasted votes; no party would likely get a majority, forcing them to form alliances and thus making the votes/power of the parties that came in 3rd, 4th etc place still important and possibly the extra x% of the vote that an alliance need to form a majority; given this, there'd actually be the freedom to form and vote for new parties, thus allowing us a greater freedom of choice when it comes to who will represent us, and thus greater freedom to vote on a wider range of issues.

Or, in other words, there's no reason why someone couldn't start a party with Labour's environmental policies and the Conservatives' policies on crime, and then there'd be no reason not to vote for this party; if they don't 'win', that's ok, they can team up with Labour on environmental issues and the Conservatives on issues of law and order, so the fact they only got 5% of the national vote doesn't result in those votes being 'wasted'. At the moment, by making it all-or-nothing, any party that tries that will find no-one voting for them 'cos they don't want their votes to be wasted on a party that doesn't get elected (which of course will be because no-one votes for them... because they don't want their votes wasted on a party that won't get in because no-one's going to vote for them... etc.).

tl; dr?

The disproportionality of the electoral system results in 'wasted votes', and the 'fear' of wasting your vote stops you from voting for a party that's not likely to win, amplifying the disinclination of our electoral system to elect any party other than Lab' or Con'.

This drastically limits our choice, i.e. to Labour or Conservative; and in the issues that Lab' and Con' agree on, our choice is effectively non-existent. Which is hardly democratic.