Great Britain held local elections on May 2. Here is an interesting article about the results. The UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) made such substantial gains, it is becoming less and less meaningful to say that Britain just has two major parties. Thanks to Nathan Hetzel for the link.
Were these single-member plurality elections, like we generally use in the U.S.?
I keep asking this question because there seems to be such a sharp contrast between tolerance of multiple parties in the U.K. and Canada versus the United States. If you transferred that article’s graph to the U.S., it would look like this:
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@1 Yes, Britain uses single-winner plurality elections.
Want to be a part of a voting team that has used pure proportional representation (PR) every year for 18 consecutive years? Try the 9th USA Parliament! We’ve been doing it since 1995 and it works great.
http://www.usparliament.org
Hope you like it.
Very truly yours,
James Orlando Ogle
“Why do you THINK they called it Google?”
(I’m the original joogle, from whom Google got the idea for their logo in October of 1997.)
Perhaps the UK regime will now go to P.R. — see the New Zealand regime with its P.R. system and multi-parties in the NZ Parliament.
NZ = ex Brit Empire colony.
Noting again = Parliamentary regimes = 2/3 tyrants – having both legislative and executive powers.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The two coalition parties are fading fast If they were smart they would switch to a form of PR while they’re still in power. I think they could do it with a simple majority in the House of Commons. Could the House of Lords hold it up for a little while?
It is misleading to describe the U.K. as a two-party system and has been for a long time. In addition to the Liberal Democrats (generally 20% of the vote but many fewer than 20% of the seats), there are important regional parties — the Scottish National Party and one in Wales that I don’t remember the name of.
Great Britain did not have local elections on May 2. England had county council elections on May 2. These did not include most cities and urban areas, which are for most part not governed by county councils.
Local government is a devolved authority of the Scottish Parliament. Scotland held local elections in 2012, using STV.
Wales had local elections in 2012, except in Anglesey (Ynys Mon) where the election was delayed until Thursday.
Northern Ireland held local elections in 2011.
The UK & Canada have something going for them: fair ballot access laws! All candidates have the same process for getting on the ballot.
#7 So do Washington, California, and Louisiana.
Simple P.R. = Total Votes / Total members = Votes needed to elect each member = about ALL votes elect a legislator — plus BOTH majority rule and minority representation.
Way too difficult for 5 or 9 SCOTUS party hacks to understand ???
@10 Unfortunately, SCOTUS names are elected as single winners so there’s no previous experience in advanced elections as part of the election process for their own names.
Demo Rep, I would not expect the SCOTUS is understand the mathematics of proportional representation. That’s where 1/10th (or 9%) of the votes plus one vote would elect each of the nine seats.
If you want to see such an election system we should all consider supporting and engaging such a system rather than simply reacting to an unfair one which actually increases its power.
Remember? Bad publicity is good publicity.
Too often activists invest their time and money into promoting a bad system instead of a good one.