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I’ve long disliked our voting system. It has given the Labour and Tory parties absolute Westminster power for years. But by their share of the popular vote they’ve been minority governments. That also correlates with a long-term decline in turnout, a decreasing engagement with politics, and many voters finding their votes count for nothing because they live in a ’safe’ seat: Only about 100 seats changed hands in this election.

These days I live in Glasgow. The definition of safe Labour territory. All seven constituencies here have returned Labour MP’s this time around, as they have done for years. But I got to wondering what the actual share of the vote was, and how behind Labour is this city, really?

The problem for me with the electoral system is that the way people vote has fundamentally changed. We used to vote for local candidates to represent us in parliament: our system – one that’s been unchanged for a long time – reflects that with local constituencies and individual names on the ballot paper. There was no broadcast media when it formed. However, despite this, voters now vote for and associate primarily with parties – and not individual candidates. This perhaps most recently exemplified by leadership debates, to the way the media reports the election, and the decline in local engagement (Glasgow South had just one hustings). I’d therefore suggest most voters would be hard-pressed to name their “preferred” party candidate as they go to vote: rather they’re mainly looking for party symbols.

I know there are proponents of First Past The Post – amongst them my returned MP – but low turnout in ultra-safe constituencies, and the disenfranchisement of many, is the price that’s paid. The electorates desire for representation by different parties are ignored, and often (although not in my constituency) more people vote for other parties than the winning candidate, than support them. This is not a long term sustainable approach.

I don’t hold for arguments for ’strong’ governments being ‘necessary’. Coalitions work in Germany, and many other places. They work very well in Scotland, as also does a minority government right now. To suggest we can’t get used to coalitions is to dismiss the electorate as unable to cope with compromise. Goodness me, wasn’t it actually refreshing to hear our politicians reflective about compromise this morning?

But is Glasgow as deeply Labour as it’s reputation suggests? I’m a bit of a statistics nerd, so I grabbed the published election results for Glasgow, and sliced and diced them to look at what the picture actually says about the preferences of Glasgow voters. You can download my spreadsheet here.

The detail is 417,578 people were eligible to vote in Glasgow, and 229,223 did so. A turnout of 54.89% – Compare that to the national average turnout of 65.1% (as of 4pm). 10% lower where there is a predominant assumption that Labour will win. To me that suggests that FPTP in safe seats (which is most), does not encourage engagement. Even if you add a little for the fact that the dynamic in Scotland is different, with the Scottish parliament controlling much of the ‘domestic’ agenda we see picked over in the national media.

If we look at how the votes were cast, based on the four main parties across the region, the SNP secured 17.32%, the Liberal Democrats 13.70%, Labour 56.2%, and the Conservatives 7.63%. Other parties just 2.83%. If we take the total vote and allocate out Glasgow’s 7 seats based on that – in a simple proportional way (it assumes people would have voted the same in different systems, but as we have no measure of what their preference would actually be, it’ll have to do), Labour would get 4 seats, the SNP, Liberal Democrat and Conservatives would get 1 seat each. Quite interesting to compare it to the Glasgow regional votes in the 2007 Scottish parliament elections (Labour 38.2%, SNP 27%, Liberal Democrat 7.2%, Conservative 6.7%, Green 5.2%).

So in short, 43.8% of people in Glasgow, who cared enough to vote, did not support the Labour party, for which the city is assumed to be loyal. Of course, Labour is still very much the dominant party even looked at this way, but it’s not the 100% support that the 7 returned Labour MP’s suggest. Plus turnout across Glasgow was 10% lower than the national average. If people actually felt their vote would matter, how much higher would it have been?

We have the system we have. Congratulations to the MP’s who were returned, and I trust and hope they’ll execute their tasks well.

My issue with the system remains that as a result of voting patterns shifting to parties, not candidates, and the voting system not reflecting that, a large proportion of the electorate are disenfranchised. Their votes do not count, because the boundaries are arbitrary, and we insist on returning the candidate with the most votes, not candidates that reflect the will of the people.

Solutions? I think the Scottish parliamentary electoral system is excellent. We maintain the constituency link that’s so important, and have regional MSP’s who are allocated based on share of the vote. The only draw back is the party list system that has, so I’d argue for a wider involvement of the public in selecting candidates – a primary of sorts – before they go on that shortlist.

I know many people disagree it’s necessary to reform our voting system (not least, my MP), but the cost of not working to revise the system to ensure that it reflects the wider will of the people will be reducing turnout, reduced engagement in politics, and a continuation of the strange situation where a handful of ‘marginal’ seats determine who actually takes power. The voters in a hundred or so constituencies are where Governments are decided, not the country as a whole, and that can’t be right.

Glasgow may well always be heavily Labour, but it saddens me that a large minority of voters – such as myself – are being ignored, simply because we have an outdated voting system that reflects a bygone age.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a political-geek, and that I spend much of my free time reading up on the latest political developments, or even writing about my take on things. Or maybe there is an element of truth to my impression that the political debate that is going on around the Scottish elections is really very good.

A UK parliament election gets whipped up by the popular media in particular directions, and it seems to be nothing more than party leaders stalking about in their battle buses, making trite statements that are barely distinguishable from one another (”Cut crime”, “Support the NHS”, etc. etc. Like they’d do the opposite… Sheeesh), and generally treat the electors like muppets.

For the Scottish elections we’ve had generally good quality flyers through the door. That’s not to say they don’t trot out much of the same thing, and there’s a strong negative message in many of them (Labour’s in particular), but that they make some distinguishing points.

But the flyer-through-the-door doesn’t (to me anyway), make much of a factor in my decision making process for where to cast my votes. It’s more what I’m reading in the press, seeing on the political programming. In that regard, I think both STV and BBC Scotland have done quite well. Sure, they’re sometimes a bit light, and the BBC Scotland debates have nowhere near enough public participation (Seems to be all ’selected’ for relevance to the discussion at hand).

We’ve even had (though I’ve not seen) head-to-head debates between the four main party leaders. Something I think we would benefit from seeing at a UK-level between the three main party leaders, especially given Prime Minister’s Question time is all about theatre, and point scoring, and rarely about policy proposals.

In particular, much of the weblog discussions have been interesting, but I’m struck by how few candidates seem to have grasped the nettle and put something up. Perhaps the candidates have moved on to the black-hole that are ’social networking sites’. I’m on Facebook, but that’s it. But even those that have created a website seem to have the annoying habit of just putting policy statements on. Rarely do they talk about what they’re doing, or give a more personal view of it. Indygal is perhaps the best example I’ve come across recently of a personal, political, weblog that’s written by the candidate (rather than some PFY in campaign HQ).

But exceptions aside, comparing to the last General Election, the ’signal to noise ration’ is good. Lots of points being made, lots of policies being proposed, and plenty of outlets for the candidates and parties to get their message across.

All said, it’s quite good, and judging by the increase in weblog posts recently, it looks set to keep improving through to, and after, the election itself on May 3rd. I just hope some of it rubs off on the public-at-large, and we get a good turnout.

Readers of my various posts over the course of the recent general election will have realised that I’m a proponent of electoral reform in this country. Therefore, I’m very pleased to see the campaign launched by The Independent has attracted some serious attention See the makemyvoutecount.org.uk website too

The most senior politician of all, Tony Blair, has been asked for his opinion on the growing calls for a review and reform. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm has been somewhat muted since the heady days of the 1997 election campaign manifesto which read:

“We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to first-past-the-post”

The 1998 Jenkins commission report (set up by Blair) in 1998 backed a Proportional system. So it’s ironic that Blair should now be saying that “…there are no plans to change the present system.“

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Michael Martin has been re-elected the speaker of the house of commons. Whilst I’m sure from his record that Mr Martin is an excellent choice for this role, I feel that his Glasgow North East constituents (and those of other speakers before him) are terribly let down by this process.

The reason is that the main parties traditionally do not oppose him in his constituency. Consequently, his constituents are unable to properly express their opinion. Whilst the speaker is independent, the fact of the matter is that 30,000 people essentially had their opinions ignored by the system. He does not take part in votes other than in a casting vote capacity, and does not take an opinionated part in the debates.

I support the idea of an independent speaker, but surely as it’s a largely management role, it could be filled without drawing on the current MP’s. A previously elected MP perhaps? So long as they command the support of the vast majority of the House of Commons, it’d ensure that every citizen had the right to choose from a genuinely diverse set of candidates from all parties who would wish to contest the seat, and could ensure they have a MP who is able to represent their views on all matters.

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking through the repurcussions of the election result… Northern Ireland; Blairs tenure; Blunkett returns; Browns involvement; The European Question; the “Opposition”…

All this and more, you lucky, lucky people…

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Interim results from the General Election are available for download from the Electoral Commission and there are some interesting results, seemingly including the Veritas candidate (Kenneth Haigh) in the City of Chester receiving zero votes. Whoops!

It’s a superb resource, and will no doubt provoke some interesting home grown analysis. Via Madmusingsof.me.uk

Well, it’s all over. No huge surprise in the actual result. A Labour majority of 66, exactly what the BBC forecast in their exit poll. Was that a first? It’ll certainly mean politicians next time will be less able to avoid theorising about the forthcoming result!

I stayed up to the glorious time of 5am (and am regretting it all the more now in hindsight). George Galloway’s appallingly bad-tempered acceptance speech and interview with Paxman was hardly a highlight of that last hour, but no doubt a sign of things to come: Whilst he’s certainly a firebrand, he’s opinionated and strong-minded which we could do with more of in parliament. Highlight of the night had to be Bremner, Bird and Fortune (spot-on as ever). I was curious that the BBC’s election results seemed to lag quite substantially behind ITV’s tally. Peter Snow was in fine form (loose the silly Downing street race graphics next time though), especially the “three way battlefield” graphic which did an excellent job of showing the movements between the parties.

It’s certainly not the ringing endorsement for Blair, but understandable given the Iraq war and the knee-jerk campaign fought by the Tories. The Tories certainly did well, especially at seeing off the Liberal Democrat challenge. That’s a shame because there are a lot of seats that would have been vulnerable, but given the Liberal Democrats are perceived (especially in the Tory heartlands) as being “left of labour”, it’s understandable the blue-rinse brigade didn’t switch over. Hopefully the Lib Dems will revisit some of their policies to make them a more viable alternative in such seats. They’re certainly well placed nationally now to grow further. They did particularly well in Scotland, moving back into 2nd place on the national popular vote at the expense of the SNP. Their decapitation campaign was more of a poke with a fork, only a few minor successes, but they have moved very well into some Labour heartland seats, so some promise for more seats at Labours expense in the future.

Turnout was actually up on last time, which is something to be hopeful about. I’d expected a record low turnout, but am glad to be wrong on that count. Certainly the election campaign, whilst very much stuck in a rut and dreary to listen to, seems to have got the electorate enthused to turn out in better numbers. That the Tories gained seats is a shame with their knee-jerk and unpleasant campaign, but hopefully better for a more effective voice to the opposition in the coming years. Another leadership struggle so soon after the election is laughable: I’d have thought they would do better to spend a year or more working out their strategy and direction before finding another embarrassing leader for the next election. Already the jockeying for position by a poor selection of leadership candidates makes me think that “effective opposition” will rightly move to the Liberal Democrats.

The biggest looser though still has to be the British people. We’ve succeeded in electing in a government that has the lowest share of the popular vote since the reform act of the 19th century. It means that fewer people, as a share of those who voted, wanted the government we have than at any other time since Britain became something resembling a modern democracy. More people did not want a Labour government than did. It’s a by-product of the first-past-the-post system we have, and it’s deeply unfair and results in huge majorities for parties that consequently does not represent the will of the people.

I would dearly like to see a better electoral system, at the very least one whereby voters are able to rank their preferences. More often than not, I know who I do not want to win, but I’m forced to make decisions about who I should vote for with that in mind. If I vote “carelessly”, I get a much worse result than I’d like – such as a vote for Labour would be in my home town constituency of Wells. Note that almost 30,000 people did not want Heathcoat-Amory – only 23,000 people did. Yet he’s elected. How can that be right?

I still think that constituency based representative democracy is better than proportional, party-list based systems where party sycophants are placed higher. But the sad reality is that, now Blair is returned for a historic third term, the last thing that will be on his agenda is electoral reform. After all, winner-takes-all in our system, and it’s in his political interests to ensure the status quo continues. But all the talk of “engaging with the electorate” and “listening to their views” has an hollow ring to it if they are not prepared to give the electorate a representative voting system that enables their true opinions to be heard.

Roger Darlington makes excellent points as to why it’s important to vote tomorrow. I’m certainly somewhat cynical in this safe Labour seat that my vote will make much difference but I will remain optimistic that enough others share my opinion. As Roger points out, it’s a civic duty to be involved in the process by casting a vote. To the friends I have who refuse to vote because they don’t like the options open, I generally suggest the very least they do is spoil their paper. I still think it’s a waste, better to choose the “least worst”, or – if you really dislike the options available – stand yourself.

Not voting, as Ben suggests in my earlier post would lend more weight to those who do vote, and don’t share my opinions. I’m thinking the single policy extremists such as the BNP, Veritas and their ilk. It’s also a sad fact that the older vote is receiving so much more attention in this election than ever before simply because they are over 400% more likely to vote. If more younger people voted, I’m sure some of the policies they cared about would get the attention it deserved.

I’ve voted at every election I’ve been able to, with the exception of last years European elections, because we were travelling at the time and had no way of getting postal votes to us or allocating a proxy who would be able to vote in our place. I thoroughly enjoy the process of participating in a democratic election, despite the likelihood I will see my choice prevail (I’ve only ever once voted for a winning candidate, and that was Ken Livingstone in the first Mayoral election). I’m bemused by the “make it easier” arguments for such flawed ideas as SMS voting: The few minutes it takes to cast a vote is a small price to pay for a democratic process. That the process we have is itself flawed is no reason to abstain: Work for change from within is the best course of action, and I for one will be making my opinions known on the matter to the successful candidate here.

Much to Frances’ bemusement, I love the late-night election night process as the country is quite literally able to profoundly change in the course of a few hours. Only something as important as Bremner, Bird and Fortune on Channel 4 tomorrow night will take me away from the BBC coverage (the national programme is moved to BBC2 here in Scotland).

But it doesn’t end there. I think participating in democracy requires letters to be written to MP’s and councillors, ensuring your opinion is known to our representatives. They are after all representing us, and I’m sure the policies that were put forward would change to reflect the will of the people if more of the people actually took the time to make their opinions known.

So far, I’ve had a grand total of one election leaflet through my letter box (an SNP one at that put out by the local councillor). Whilst the close I’m in has a temperamental entry system, I’m feeling rather left out regarding the electioneering that may not – for all I know – actually be happening in this constituency. All that I’ve seen for even the incumbent are some of those god-awful plastic sign-post posters that will no doubt still be stuck to the lamposts in six months time. Oh, and a few Scottish Socialists in the centre of town shouting at people as they walked past doubling my conviction that it’s a party that’s got the wrong end of the stick in more ways than one.

Compare this to Duesseldorf, which I recently visited. There are local elections going on there, and it was nice to see some campaigning in the centre of town (free balloons for the kids, drinks for the adults, leaflets for those of us trying to pass by), including well organised wooden signs that straddled the lamposts, could be reused (the posters were attached to the wood panels), and easily removed. For all I know they may even have been organised by the local authority itself to prevent the sort of campaigning litter we see up here.

A junction not that far from here, on Haggs road, was until recently positively awash with the A4 sized plastic “posters”. I noted yesterday as we drove past that a lot of them had disappeared, and had been replaced by SNP versions. A spot of late-night poster rigging perhaps?

On the subject of curious silence, so far I’ve not received even one letter from any party. I was under the impression that parties were able to write to every constituent in some way (I’m not sure of the detail), but so far nothing. Presumably the demographic of the location I’m registered in is such that no party feels it’s worth contacting me directly. But it’s not limited to just a lack of political lettering. Far more troubling is that – with only one more delivery before election day – I have not yet received my voting details (I confirmed I’m registered to vote back in February), so I don’t even know where I can go to cast my vote. I’ll guess it’s the local school, but for the (I guess) large numbers of people with less interest in politics than I, I wonder if they’ll even notice an election is going on?

All said and done, I’m stuck getting my political fix from the television and newspapers, and feeling – I have to say – rather left out by it all. Some might think I’m being perverse in my whinging here, but I think it reflects atrociously badly on the political system in place here that not one campaign team has knocked on our door and left an election leaflet, other than a small A5 piece of paper from the local councillor.

I’m left thinking that if the politicians don’t care to even ask people for their vote, it’s only more likely that the electorate won’t bother to cast it.

I fear that apathy is likely to be the big winner in the forthcoming election. I say this not having gone through my own detailed analysis of the voting intentions of the population, but from my own growing unease at the way the political debate in this country is proceeding.

I’m a political junkie. I put current affairs and politics down as interests, and not only because I enjoy it, but because I believe it’s the civic duty of every citizen to ensure that the politicians they elect are doing their job properly. Once my vote is cast, I feel I’ve not only stated my opinion as to who should represent me, but also – in a wider context – I have stated my intention to remain vigilant and involved.

But this morning, listening to Alan Milburn, and on Monday Jack Straw on Today, I was struck by the sheer single-mindedness of today’s politicians to get their message across and only their message across. There was no interest on the part of either politician to answer the questions. Granted, John Humphreys et al take deliberately provocative lines of questioning, but to hear – repeatedly – these senior politicians ignore the interviewer and repeat ad nausium, the party mantra, was nauseating in the extreme. Ok, you might ask where have I been if I didn’t realise that’s what politicans do? But I disagree, that’s not what politicians should do. They are supposed to be justifying to me, the voter, why I should cast my vote in their direction. But (so far) all the major politicans have manifestly refusing to do so.

Listening, time and time again, to this painful soap opera, I’m left frustrated by – perhaps surprisingly – the complete lack of any apparent political debate occurring. Channel 4 demonstrated this brilliantly on Monday evening, when they demonstrated that voters are unable to distinguish the policies of the three main political parties – from their “pledges” alone. If Joe Public can’t distinguish the difference between the supposedly Socialist Labour Party, centre-left Liberal Democrats, and centre-right/right Conservatives, what hope do we have?

It’s all further complicated by the horrifying fact that only a few hundred thousand voters in this country have the power to actually affect change. Most voters are stuck in a constituency that hosts a “safe” seat with only one real alternative. The first past the post voting system in effect here rewards parties with large numbers of such seats, and penalises parties without. Look at the “heartlands” of the Conservatives (generally rural areas) and Labour (generally urban areas). Only the Liberal Democrats don’t have an easily identifiable “heartland” beyond maybe the South-West and parts of Scotland, and surprise surprise they’re stuck in the opinion polls in a catch-22 situation with voters not believing they can form a Government, and so not actually voting for them.

The campaigns are also so ruthlessly efficient they leave me asking where the heart is? I actually welcome the sign of humanity that Charles Kennedy showed when he fluffed his Council Tax question: It’d be nice to see such things from the other senior politicians. If campaigns are micromanaged, down to the seating plans of journalists, asking the supporters stay quiet at the back, and spun so effectively for the cameras, us voters are left asking what the politicians themselves believe in, as we just see the varnish and not the woodwork.

So what can be done about it? I’d like to see:

Until there is some improvement along these lines, to in the end ENGAGE with the electorate rather than treat us like fools who can’t think through our own decision and remember (in most people’s case) both the previous Conservative and Labour governments. We’re perfectly capable of drawing our own conclusions about how they faired, but what we need is facts, honest debate, and proper power in our hands: All things that seem to be heavily missing in this campaign so far.