Thanks to the continued use of the outdated First-past-the-post voting system, Reform UK was given over two thirds of the seats on May 7 in St Helens, even though they polled only just over one third of the vote.
The majority of voters did not get the representation they wanted
A majority of those who voted did not support Reform UK, so the political makeup of St. Helens Council does not reflect how people voted. This can be seen from the table below based on the percentage vote cast for the parties in each ward in St Helens:
Reform UK did well, but nowhere near well enough to warrant walking off with most of the seats at the expense of other parties – Labour and the Green Party in particular – who were cheated out of their fair share of the seats by the voting system.
It is legal, but feels dodgy
Here are the points I consider ‘dodgy’, even though the process was 100% legal:
- Of the 48 winners, 31 were elected with a minority of the vote;
- The St. Helens turnout was 38.5%, meaning a majority of eligible residents didn’t vote;
- 14 of the 18 wards were monopolised entirely by one or other of the parties with the result that, in Windle Ward for example, 39% of ward voters now have 3 councillors of their political persuasion, while 61% have none at all.
- Of the 133,660 votes cast in St Helens (most voters each had 2 or 3 votes to cast), only 63,782 (48%) were effective in electing a councillor while 69,878 (52%) were ineffective.
Given that over 6 out of 10 of St. Helens voters did not participate, it can rightly be claimed that a majority in St. Helens did not vote and, of the minority who did, a majority failed to elect anybody. What sort of democracy is that?
These results are a disgrace. This was not what the residents of St. Helens voted for on May 7th.
A Victorian system which has no place in modern day Britain
The reason for this lies with continued use of the Victorian First-past-the-post voting system, an outdated steam age device which wastes many, if not most, of the votes shovelled into it, while producing a distorted result with the remainder. Moreover, outcomes are neither consistent nor certain.
First-past-the-post is past it. Continued use of this museum piece makes about as much sense as having Stephenson’s Rocket haul trains on HS2.
We need proportional representation
We need to replace First-past-the-post with a system of proportional representation (PR) which awards seats to parties in proportion to the votes cast for them so that, say, if Labour won 4 out of 10 votes, they would be awarded 4 out of 10 seats. First-past-the-post is not designed to achieve this. Not only would this voting reform deliver more accurate representation, there would be no need for tactical voting and there would be no more safe seats, as every vote would be keenly contested. More choice would revitalise interest and participation in local politics, with everything for everyone everywhere to compete for.
St Helens Council could offer to pilot PR
Only Westminster can reform the local election voting system, but all is not lost: St. Helens Council could pass a resolution calling for the Government to reform the outdated voting system. The Council could even offer up St. Helens as the location for a pilot exercise for a fairer voting system before it is rolled out for use in the rest of England.
Supervote
While colleagues in the voting reform movement tend to concentrate on elections for Westminster, the Supervote Project focuses on council elections, in the belief that far more damage is being done to the fabric of our democracy at the grassroots by the continued use of the First-past-the-post voting system in local elections. Drawing from the dozens of undemocratic council election results in England on May 7, the Supervote Project is currently calling out one “dodgy democracy” at the rate of one council a week.
More information can be found on the Supervote Project’s website
Please do what you can to help promote the cause of voting reform.
Bylines Network & No One Above
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NOA and Bylines Network are collaborating to make sure those voices are heard by the decision-makers who can remove the roadblocks to justice and address systemic failures of accountability.
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