Proportional representation would make Weymouth and Portland elections truly democratic (From Dorset Echo)

Proportional representation would make Weymouth and Portland elections truly democratic

9:20am Monday 15th December 2008 in

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Your old warhorse Ian Bruce has certainly picked up some creative accounting tricks during his political career (November 28).

For the 2008 elections, by using the votes of each of the opposing parties separately as a base mark, he is able to create for the Conservatives large enough percentage increases over them to claim that the majority of the electors want Conservatives to take complete control.

The normal comparison would be to look at the percentage of the total votes gained by each party which was Conservatives 40, Liberal Democrats 32 and Labour 21.

So, in fact, they represent only two fifths of those voting, and as only 45 per cent of the electorate voted that would be less than one fifth of the electorate!

If we go further and compare the votes for the last three elections, the results of which created the present council, then the percentages we get are Conservatives 37, Liberal Democrats 32 and Labour 23. So much for their claim to represent the majority of the electorate!

It is worth noting that whilst the Conservatives and Labour tend to stand a candidate everywhere (often a 'paper' one) in order to maximise their total vote, the Liberal Democrats with little funding available from rich or trade union donors did not have a candidate in 14 of the 37 contests at these last three elections.

Their supporters therefore either did not vote or transferred it to enhancing the total of one of the other candidates!

However, the fact is that 'share of the vote' and 'number of seats gained' under our antiquated first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system bear no relation to each other, as witness the fact that since the war every government has reigned supreme on less than half the popular vote.

With the growth of parties like the Liberal Democrats, Greens, UKIP it has reached the stage where the Blair-Brown duo have ruled on not much more than one-third of the vote, and the chances are that the Bullingdon twins could well do the same after the next election.

When are we going to become a real democracy and introduce proportional representation (PR) into all our elections.

A good start might be to accept Labour's proposal for another all-seat council election, but elected under PR!

Ken Milward, Spa Avenue, Weymouth.