The need for proportion

In case you didn’t notice, our English-speaking friends across the pond are in the midst of one of their tightest national elections in half a century. For the first time in a long while, the two main political parties,the Labour (which most Americans will know as being the party of Tony Blair, although Gordon Brown is the current prime minister) and the Conservatives, are facing a serious challenge from the Liberal Democrats.

In the United Kingdom, the two main political parties, the Labour and Conservative parties, are polling at 28 and 33 percent, respectively, about a week before their upcoming general election.

The Liberal Democrats, usually a distant third, are polling at an impressive 30 percent.

It may be surprising to know, however, that a party that is predicted to get at least 30 percent of the vote (the prediction keeps rising) will probably receive less than 13 percent of the seats.

That’s simply unfair and undemocratic.

The Liberal Democrats are projected to come in either first or second place, certainly ahead of the Labour party and possibly also in front of the Conservatives.

Paradoxically, however, they are not likely to get more than 80 seats in the 650 member House of Commons.

Why is this?

Because the U.K., like the United States but unlike the rest of Europe, does not use proportional representation.

It should be noted that almost everywhere except in the United States the word “liberal” simply means that one is in favor of classical ideas about the inherent freedoms and rights each individual is born with, and  the term is not analogous with being left-wing — although the Liberal Democrats do happen to be slightly to the left of the other two parties.

The Conservatives are slightly right-wing — although less so than the U.S. Republican Party — and Labour is fairly moderate, although it used to be quite leftist.

In countries that use proport­ional representation, the total number of votes for each party in the nation directly corresponds to the number of seats that each party receives. Pretty straightforward.

It makes perfect sense why countries that use proportional representation have consistently higher voter participation rates than countries like the U.S. and the U.K., who do not.

When the results of an election do not at all reflect the way the voters actually voted, as is often the case in the U.S. (George W. Bush versus Al Gore, for example) and is almost always the case in the U.K., it makes sense why many eligible citizens would not even bother to vote.

Proportional representation is simply more inherently democratic than systems like the one used in the U.S. and the U.K.


E-mail: zammerman@indiana.edu