Rev. 31 Dec 25
- AMS: Additional Member System. See page under Options.
- AMS+: AMS with some major faults corrected by the introduction of PV.
- APPG: “All Party Parliamentary Group”, specifically the one “for Fair Elections”. See Who’s Who.
- AV: The Alternative Vote system, a badly named and discredited version of PV
- Commission: For present purposes, the National Commission on Electoral Reform which has been proposed by APPG to advise on “which voting system would best serve modern Britain”.
- Condorcet: A voting method which can be used to improve the PV system. Named after the French Marquis de Condorcet, who invented it in 1785. But we don’t talk about him. And it was first invented by Ramon Llull in 1299 (says Wikipedia).
- D’Hondt: The voting method most widely used in “proportional representation” systems: see page under Options. Named after the Belgian Victor D’Hondt, who invented it in 1878. It was earlier invented by American Thomas Jefferson in 1792 (says Wikipedia).
- ERS: The Electoral Reform Society. See Who’s Who.
- FPTP: First Past The Post
- HoC: House of Commons, the “lower” chamber of the UK Parliament, whose members are the primary subject of the voting systems being considered..
- HoL: House of Lords.
- MP: Member of Parliament, the holder of a seat in the HoC.
- MVM: Make Votes Matter, a campaigning group who provide assistance to the APPG. See Who’s Who.
- NI: Northern Ireland
- NOTA: “None of the above”, a possible additional choice in any voting system.
- ORCV: Optional Ranked Choice Voting, a rather more meaningful name for Preferential Voting (PV).
- Parliament: The combined legislative assemblies of the UK in Westminster (i.e. HoC + HoL); or just HoC.
- PR: “Proportional Representation”. Strictly speaking, this denotes a voting system which, according to a given measure, makes the number of representatives (MPs) as close as possible to the number of votes their parties receive. Rather more commonly it is used to mean any system which make any moves towards such proportionality. But usually in practice it just means anything but FPTP.
- PV: Preferential Voting
- PV+: PV with some of its defects alleviated, when technically possible.
- RCV: Ranked Choice Voting
- STV: Single Transferable Vote. See page under Options.
- UK: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.