Rev. 25 Dec 25
We welcome the APPG recommendation of a National Commission on Electoral Reform. PV Now is proposed because the Commission is by no means guaranteed to have any effect before the next General Election. Change is urgently needed and PV Now is the only feasible alternative to potential disaster.
It needs to be clear, however, that PV Now is not proposed as an alternative to the Commission’s recommendations but as an invaluable interim solution. And it would also be a useful move towards what the Commission is likely to recommend.
All possible more “proportional” options necessarily entail having multi-seat constituencies. There are some who doubt that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and would rather stay with a single-seat system.
The Single Transferrable Vote (STV) system (as used in NI) is the option favoured by many. PV is, of course, a single-seat version of STV, and clearly a useful preparation for it.
Many countries use the simple PR (Proportional Representation) of the D’Hondt system, or a version thereof. PV a good preparation for, and no barrier to, a switch to full D’Hondt (as is to be used in Wales).
On the other hand, there may be strong support in the UK for the hybrid Additional Member System (AMS), as used in Scotland and London. In this, half the MPs are elected in single-member constituencies and the other half by a D’Hondt-based form of PR. PV is a suitable first half of AMS
As a concession to practicality, the Commission might possibly recommend letting each of the three devolved nations of the UK do their own thing,[1] e.g. AMS in Scotland, D’Hondt in Wales, and STV in Northern Ireland.
Or it might recommend yet another referendum; in which case it would be appropriate
(a) to have separate referenda for the four nations of the UK
(b) for those referenda to offer voters a range of options, the results to be decided by PV, of course.
In any case, although PV is currently the best feasible basis for our future electoral system, it too has some significant deficiencies which should be corrected (PV+) as soon as we are no longer constrained to having a purely manual count.
- As does the EU for elections to the European Parliament ↩︎