Posters to make the case for fairer votes

By Stuart Bonar, on Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Take Back Parliament, the group campaigning for a YES vote in next May’s fairer votes referendum, is a real grassroots effort. When they needed to come up with ideas for campaign posters, they didn’t go to some swish London advertising company, but instead ran a competition to crowdsource ideas from amongst their own supporters.

I entered, submitting a whole raft of different poster designs: take a look here, here and here.

I didn’t get first prize, but the campaign is still going to use my poster ideas, which is great news. The group campaigning for fair votes in Canada has even been in touch asking if they can adapt some of the designs for use there too.

The case for change is overwhelming. Take, for example, the fact that no MP was elected in either of Devon’s two cities with much more than about one in three votes. Oliver Colvile, the Conservative who unseated Labour’s Linda Gilroy in the Plymouth Sutton and Devonport seat, for example, secured just 34 per cent of the vote – meaning that two-thirds of voters wanted someone else to represent them.

Of the MPs representing South Devon constituencies, only Gary Streeter in South West Devon secured more than one in every two votes.

Looking across the entire country, the lowest vote share of any MP was just 29 per cent, meaning more than seven in every 10 voters backed another candidate. And while I am a Lib Dem, this isn’t a party-political point as the MP in question is a Lib Dem!

In May next year you’ll get a chance in a referendum to back a switch from the system we use right now to elect MPs – first-past-the-post – to a system called the Alternative Vote (AV). Under AV, every voter gets the chance to rank candidates in order of preference – 1, 2, 3 – meaning no more need to vote tactically. You can vote with your heart as well as your head.

Best of all, the winner must ultimately win at least half of the votes. That means parliamentary candidates will have to work harder to win over many more voters than they need to right now. That is good news for democracy.

If you support a switch to AV then visit the Take Back Parliament website and sign up – there are groups forming in Devon right now.