P.R.

I am not generally in favour of proportional representation (see post of 16/4/08), but the concept has suddenly come to the fore again as part of the general discussion on reform of Parliament, so I thought I ought to mug up on just how it works - and I have to tell you, my head hurts! Let's start with the simplest idea - ATV or the Alternative Transferable Vote. The idea here is to ensure that the elected candidate is the choice (not necessarily the first choice) of at least 50% of those who voted. The way it works is - when you go into the booth to vote, instead of putting a cross by the candidate of your choice, you rank the candidates in order of preference - putting a "1" by your first choice candidate, a "2" by your second choice candidate, and so on. You don't have to rank all the candidates - only those you are prepared to let your vote go to. When the votes are counted, if any candidate has more than 50% of the votes cast, he or she is elected. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the votes cast for that candidate are redistributed on the basis of the voters' second choices. So if you voted for candidate A as your first choice, and candidate B as your second choice, and candidate A is eliminated, your vote now goes to candidate B. If this produces a candidate with more than 50% of the votes cast, then they are elected, if not the process is repeated and so on until somebody does get more than 50%. Obviously if you get down to just two candidates then, unless there is a tie, one of them must have more than the necessary 50%. And this, as I said, is the simplest method!! Of course, it doesn't really produce proportional representation, and we'll come back to that later - if indeed I can get my head round it!