PR, STV, AMS, SV, AV -- what's it all about?

Do you know the difference between STV and SV? Or is PR just a list of incomprehensible initials? Tony Dale, Manchester Central CLP, produced this guide to the different forms of proportional representation.

Labour's General Election manifesto promised a referendum on PR for Parliament and different systems are being introduced for the Euro elections, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Greater London Authority.

Next year's elections to the European Parliament are to be run on a Party list system. Britain is to be divided up into regions and voters will vote for a Party list. The regional seats will be distributed according to the percentage vote of each party. Party list systems are quite common in Europe. The voter will not be able to give preference to specific candidates as the parties will have control of the order of the list. This system gives enormous power and patronage to the party machine.

The most accurate PR system would have a single country-wide constituency where each party got the same percentage of seats as percentage of votes. While this system gives the purest result, MPs would have no link to an area and therefore no possibility of accountability. Only Israel and Holland use a national list system. Only under this system would, for example, the Socialist Labour Party have gained seats in the last election.

PR systems can be tested against exactly how proportional they are, but democracy is not just about getting an accurate distribution of seats. It must also mean creating a structure to hold elected representatives accountable and giving voters a real choice.

The Additional Member System will be used for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and the Greater London Authority. Here people get two votes: they vote for a representative and cast a second vote for a party list. The parties' total votes across the region are compared to the number of candidates elected. Disparities are balanced out by giving parties additional seats. AMS produces the odd situation where those elected locally can boast a strong personal mandate and those elected regionally can claim to represent a broader constituency across the region. Party machines can exercise considerable power by controlling the regional party list.

The Alternative Vote system is very like the present electoral system. Voters rank candidates 1,2,3 etc. in single seat constituencies. Candidates with the lowest votes are eliminated and their votes redistributed according to the voters' second preferences until one candidate gets over 50% of the votes. The Australian House of Representatives is elected by AV. It is also similar to the exhaustive ballots used in many internal labour movement elections.

Peter Mandelson supports AV. While this would seem good enough reason to reject this system there are other deeper problems. First, the results of AV elections are not very proportional. Secondly, it will create an unhealthy political situation as the campaign in many constituencies would be dominated by a battle to win the Lib Democrats second preferences.

The Supplementary Vote is a close relation to the Alternative Vote except the 1,2,3 preference voting is dispensed with. A SV ballot paper has an additional column to vote for a second preference. A variant of this system is used in France where voters return for the "second Sunday" to vote between the highest placed candidates if no candidate has won 50% of the votes in the first round.

The Single Transferable Vote is used in the Irish Republic and in many N.Ireland elections. Elections are run in multi-member constituencies with voters ranking candidates in order of preference. Existing constituencies would be combined to create new constituencies returning on average 5 MPs. STV delivers a broadly proportional outcome while maintaining a local link for MPs. Also, it avoids party lists and allows voters to prioritise a specific candidate over another candidate from the same party. It could allow Labour voters to choose between voting for a left winger or a Blairite. Many in the Labour leadership want any system but STV!

The big argument against PR is that PR will inevitably lead to coalitions. The last election would still have produced a majority Labour government under STV, AV or Supplementary Vote systems.

It is also important to bear in mind the shortcomings of the present first past the post electoral system. This system was devised to simplify and minimise the choices for a largely illiterate electorate. It consistently fails to accurately reflect the views of the electorate, Thatcher's famous 1983 landslide 144 seat majority was achieved with under 43% of the vote. The present system has the ability to throw up bizarre results. In 1951 the Labour Government was ejected from office despite winning a quarter of a million more votes than the Tories. The present system has helped Blair and Mandelson to use electoral expediency to justify ignoring Labour's core vote.

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