With a general election coming up it has got me thinking about voting and voting systems. I am not going to get into the debate about whether postal voting is works or whether it's possible to make an electronic voting system that works and is reliable. What I am most interested in with this idea is addressing the fact that a large number of votes are wasted. Wasted in this sense means a vote that was used to try and elect a candidate that didn't get in. In the UK we use the first past the post system that while not necessarily rewarding the larger parties seriously penalizes the smaller parties. The small parties get about 5% of the vote across the country but they win very few seats when they should hold some thirty or so seats. Most people understand the first past the post system well enough that they know to not bother voting for any party other than one of the big three even if they don't really realize why (or why it doesn't have to be like that). I imagine if we moved to a fairer voting system we would see the number of votes for what are now minority parties rocket.

A fairer system is called single transferable vote which allows each party that runs in an area to win a number of seats that is a much closer representation to the percentage of the number of people that voted for it. The problem though is that STV requires large voting areas with many seats if it is to be fair (if you have only one seat it is essentially the same as FPTP) and the vote counting system is quite involved (it's certainly much harder to follow than FPTP). Ideally we would have STV deployed across the whole country but that won't work as it would require a voting card about two miles long!

My Solution

Note: This might be a known voting system – if it is I don't take credit for it but I have never heard of it so I will explain it here. If it is know I would appreciate knowing more about it as I think it is quite a simple and fair system.

Voting

Firstly, everyone will vote for a party and it's manifesto rather than a person. This shouldn't be a particular hard switch to make as I believe most people already vote for a party rather than a person. If you want evidence for this ask someone what party their local constituency is and then ask them the name of their MP. Most people could probably answer the first but not the second question confirming that they care more about the party (or at least it's policies). There are situations where people vote for a particular person but they are normally votes in protest against another person rather than because they particular want the person they are voting for (for instance the election of Martin Bell).

Parties

A political party must register with an independent body and must have a minimum of ten core members. The party must have a leader and none of the core members may be members of any other party or vote for another party. A minimum of 50% of the core members must meet at least once a quarter and no core member may miss more than two meetings out of five. Registration is free and may not be restricted in anyway other than by the requirements stipulated above – in particular it may not be restricted by payment of any kind as the current system is. Payment for this registration body comes from the public coffer. Parties may be registered up three months before a general election. A party must publish it's manifesto at least three months before a general election and may not change it in the three months before the general election.

The ten core member requirement is to help stop a flood of people registering similar parties with little or no hope of election and because running a party is not a trivial task and should not be under taken lightly. If ten people can find one another and agree enough to form a party then there is a chance they will garner at least some support across the country. It is important that we allow everyone their chance at representation even if we disagree with their views. However, while it would be nice if we could allow everyone a chance to form a party it is, I feel, important that we place some minor restrictions on forming a party in an effort to stop a minority of people trying to spoil the system for others by registering thousands of one person parties. I feel the above restrictions (and the ones following on voting) are sufficiently easy to meet that anyone with a real desire to have their views represented in parliament will be able to meet them. The meeting requirement is difficult to enforce but failure to meet it should cause de-registration of the party with a two year ban on the leader forming another party – again this is to stop trivial registrations by people that aren't really interested in running the country.

Political Campaigning

Only a registered political party is allowed to campaign.

Election Time

Election time is where the largest changes will be seen. Political terms will be set at five years with a set date being chosen for the election, for instance I would recommend the first full week in June. I suggest a date in the summer so that visiting the polling station is as pleasant an experience as possible. Polling will last for a week rather than a day so that as many people have a chance to visit as possible – if you are working it is often difficult to get to a polling station on a particular day so being able to visit at the weekend should help turn out. Forced term lengths take the guess work out of the system and help to stop a dominant party manipulating the system for their own ends. Since I believe this system will produce a parliament that generally doesn't have a strongly dominant party deciding on an election date may prove difficult, fixing one at the outset would solve that problem. I would also like to place the restriction that no one party can hold more than 45% of the house.

One year before the general election all registered parties may start registering supporters with the independent election overseeing body. A fixed number of registered supporters are required before the party is listed on the ballot card and thus open for general voting. Once a supporter has registered for a given party their vote is automatically cast for that party at the time of the general election. A supporter may withdraw their support for a party, and thus get their free vote back, at any time up to one month before the general election. If a supporter doesn't withdraw their vote it is fixed. While I realize that this system removes the voting anonymity of some people I believe that any party with enough support to win a seat should be able to find enough people to cast a supporters vote. Further more, the independent election oversight body would be the only people with the records and simple legislation would ensure that those records are kept away from all other state or private bodies.

That leaves the choice of a number of supporters votes before a party is placed on the ballot card. I suggest making it a percentage, for instance 10%, of the number of votes required to get a seat in the house. The number of seats in the house should be fixed at 500. Assuming that there are 40 million voters in the country that means that 80000 votes are required to win a seat if there is 100% turnout. For a party to be placed on the ballot card it would therefore need 8000 supporter votes. Obviously these figures may need tweaking but the basic idea is sound I think. The reason for requiring supporter votes is simply to make sure that only parties that actually have popular support appear on the ballot paper thus keeping it to a manageable length and hopefully minimizing spoilt votes. Voters are asked to choose their top three parties rather than just one party.

After votes have been cast seats are divided up in basically the same way as is done in the STV system where votes that would have been wasted are actually cast for the second choice. Alternatively points could be assigned to the preference rating with a party getting a number of seats based on their point score. There are many methods for dividing up the seats and the fairest should be chosen. As the voting system itself is fair even a simple one to one mapping will produce quite a fair representation but might leave the house a little short of the designated 500 seats.

Any party that fails to register the required number of supporter votes is excluded from the ballot paper and hence the election. The people who have registered as supporters are informed of the parties failure and given their free vote back (hence the requirement of fixing the support vote at one month before the general election). The core party members of failed parties do not get to vote as their party failed to make it on to the ballot paper – this is a final measure to ensure only dedicated people (those who believe in their cause) run a party. It is expected that the number of people that are excluded from voting for this reason is very small compared to the total number of voters.

That just leaves me to say that I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this voting system. I am particularly interested if you can find any flaws in the fairness of the system.