What would UK elections look like using a different electoral system? (opens in new tab)

(2021)

> STV sits in the electoral system sweet spot, meeting nearly all of the ideal voting system criteria to a high degree.

Nearly all? What about the criterion that people don't want their MP to live two cities away because they were elected as part of a larger region? What about the criterion that people don't want to learn a new way of filling out their ballot (and have to worry about how/whether to rank candidates they've not heard of, or that seem equally good)?

The problems are even worse when it comes to the process of counting the votes. Not only do you have to explain to people what a Hare quota is, you have to justify why the counting process is now many times slower and more expensive. At a time when the validity of elections are subject to so much FUD, anything that increases that attack surface is a retrograde step. And let's not find ourselves needing to trust electronic counting machines in order to get a timely and accurate result.

I also think that STV has some rather subtle biases which might be seen as features rather than bugs to the Lib Dems and the ERS, who are the main proponents of this particular reform. By setting the size of these super-constituencies to some "optimal" number, it is possible to maximise the seats for third parties while minimising the success of fourth and fifth parties.

The article even admits that "STV can be hard for small parties that are just starting out." and hints that the Greens, for example, might not benefit as much. In fact, their level of success would be highly dependent on how these gerrymandered and (to coin a phrase) gerrymagnituded super-constituencies were drawn. It's also debatable whether independent local candidates would ever win enough of a vote share across a super-constituency to actually win one of the seats, which again favours the large existing (third) parties.

That's not to say I'm against STV, though, and would support it replacing FPTP in any polity that was considering it. I just worry that picking such an easily-attacked proposal would fail, and then further poison the well against voting reform, like the unsuccessful 2011 Alternative Vote referendum did.

For example, using proportional representation, in 2015 UKIP's 12.6% of the vote would have netted 82 out of the 650 seats in parliament. Instead they got only one seat [1]. But there's very little complaint about this form of gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, at least from the usual suspects.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results