Croydon13013 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:52 pm
But even with pure PR the same issue occurs, just less so. There's going to be a range of numbers that result in the same number of seats. And exactly the same number of votes can get a party a different number of seats depending on how the rest of the vote is split.
True, but I would say "very much less so". Without going into the disadvantages of PR (every system has its pros and cons), it will at least result in a distribution of seats which quite closely reflects the views of the public.
I've been wondering whether some form of split membership might have advantages for the UK: most of the seats being constituency ones won on an FPTP basis as now (but fewer of them), but in addition a smaller number of seats allocated to parties on a straight PR basis, possibly with a 10% qualification requirement. One option is that the voting might be split, so that the public would have one vote for a constituency member, plus another vote for a party. So if there were 100 such party seats, a party which won 10% of the popular vote would be given 10 seats. That would address, to some degree, the problem of the representation of smaller parties with an even spread of support across the country.
It really comes down to what kind of governance we want. The present system is designed on a "winner takes all" basis, which has a number of problems, especially if the two major parties are very different in their polices and philosophies, leading to frequent and drastic policy changes as the government changes hands. The UK experienced this effect in the 1960s and 1970s - my formative years, and the gross inefficiencies caused by the frequent policy changes turned me against the system ever since (the newly elected government spends the first half of its tenure in undoing the work of the previous government, and the second half putting in place measures which will be undone by the next government). Another consequence is that our traditional parties only think of winning total control and are hopeless at negotiating the compromises needed in multi-party systems, as recent history has shown.