h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How would people feel if rather than voting for their preferred winner, they voted for the person they disliked/distrusted the most. The winner could take little consolation from being the least disliked - a negative compliment if ever there was one. Would more people vote?

Also, something that was mentioned in one of the UK Broadsheets last week:

Why is it that the government have the power to call the next election and within a certain time frame? If the oposition could call an election when they felt they were in the stronger position, it would mean that the government would have to keep its wits about it a great deal more.

As I said, worth a thought and I apologise if I've plagiarised!

If taken to its limit, as it is in some countries, the Single Transferable Vote system of proportional representation allows voters to indicate who their least favoured candidate is. That system involves voters choosing a first choice, second choice, third choice and so on until either they have no more preferences or they've "rated" all the candidates.
Then, if no candidate has over 50% of first choice votes, the candidate with least first choice votes drops out and the second choices of those who voted for the eliminated candidate are added to the other candidates' totals.
If there's then still no candidate with over half of the total poll, then the one with the second lowest total is eliminated and their votes redistributed, until someone gets past the 50 per cent mark. Complicated, but it does tend to produce a winner who not too many voters hate.
A more limited version of that system was used in last year's London mayoral election. Voters indicated a first and second choice. Then, when no candidate had over half the first-choice votes, all except the two best supported candidates (Ken Livingstone and Stephen Norris) were eliminated. Votes for the other candidates on which either of the top two were named as second choice were then added to their totals. That produced a pretty convincing majority for Mr. Livingstone, and I thought it was a pretty good voting system - certainly better than simple first-past-the-post.
As for the choice of date for the election, I agree that leaving it up to the sitting government gives them an unfair advantage; but then giving the same power to the main opposition party would give them the same unfair advantage. It would also give the opposition the power to bring down the government every time it proposed anything the opposition really disliked, which could lead to a lot of elections!
I don't know why we don't just do what most other countries do, and have fixed intervals between elections - say, one every four years, as in the USA. But maybe that's just too simple for British politics!

I'm beginning to sound like a scratched record but it all sounds a bit like the Constitutional Peasant sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail ...

"We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major ..."



I've never been particularly au fait with the whole voting thing have decided that this year I'm going to be a lot more objective and see what the others have to offer.

I'm sorry, I don't understand the last bit. Which "others" do you mean?

Well I've always voted the same way as my family and the majority of my contemporaries basically because they have more or less the same values as myself.

It's generally been a case of "better the devil you know than the devil you don't", but I'm going to pay more attention this time so that I know what I am voting for and actually make a conscious decision rather than just following blindly. Easier said than done, I suspect.

So by "others" I mean the other parties who I have previously ignored.

Good for you.
I wish we had the Single Transferable Vote system here, I must say. The constituency I live in is a Labour-Tory marginal, so to vote for any other party seems pointless and self-indulgent. It would be nice to have the option of voting for the Lib Dems or the Greens but with my favourite out of the "big two" as a second choice. That way I could register a protest vote for one of the smaller parties, while knowing that my vote would go to one of the serious contenders after my first choice was eliminated.
As previously discussed, there has been a bit of tentative edging towards proportional representation in local elections in recent years, so perhaps there'll be more movement in that direction in future. But it's hard to blame the government for not wanting to change the rules of a game at which they seem to be doing so well!