Day 1969: Conservatories: We Don't Want to Win!

Thursday:


The nice people at the Electoral Reform Society have done a report into the local elections and have discovered that people did not get who they voted for.

This should hardly come as a surprise since we already know that the system of elections is skewy-whiff. Didn't anyone notice Lord Blairimort getting a "mandate" last year with the real support of only a bit more than a third of the people who could actually be bothered to go out and vote for him?

What is a surprise, is that the response of the Conservatory Party (prop. Dave mate of the honest man) manages to be EVEN MORE BARKING than the actual result!

Commenting on the ERS report, Oliver Heald, shadow secretary for constitutional affairs, said:

"Proportional representation would lead to the wrong people being elected.

"Under such a system, candidates can be elected on a small proportion of the vote, while the most popular one can lose.

"This opens the door to extremists like the BNP, and those with a questionable democratic mandate."

This man clearly needs his head examining, because what the ERS report actually SAYS is that under our CURRENT system, the barmy FIRST PASS THE PORT method:

candidates are elected on a small proportion of the vote

e.g. in Newham Labour won 90% of the seats with less than 42% of the vote

and the most popular ones lose

e.g. in Barking, the BNP gained 12 councillors to the Conservatives' one, even though the Tories won more votes.

So this literally opens the door to extremists like the BNP, and those with a questionable democratic mandate


The Conservatory spokesperson on democracy thinks that Proportional Representation is VERY VERY BAD because he THINKS it would do EXACTLY what the current system ACTUALLY, DEMONSTRABLY does do.

On this LOGIC, he presumably wears EXPLODING TROUSERS because of the danger of ordinary trousers SUDDENLY EXPLODING!


I mean, if the BIG benefit of First Pass the Port is that it keeps out the British Nasty Party… it is SERIOUSLY broken! It may seem that a fair votes system would make it easier for Nasties to get elected, but it CERTAINLY makes it much harder for them to hit the JACKPOT the way they have in Barking.

Under an STV system, the Nasties would still have got a lot of vote – so their first placed candidate would have a pretty good chance of getting elected. BUT their second place candidate would have a whole lot of SECOND preferences so it is more likely that the next best placed candidate on the FIRST preferences would get elected ahead of them – in Barking that would have meant a Conservatory.

But, it would seem, that Conservatories do not want to WIN!

It is very clear that FIRST PASS THE PORT gets the WRONG PEOPLE elected – you could hardly get more wrong than Mr Heald!



But if you look at the councillors won in total, you can see the Conservatory reasoning: they won 41% of the council seats with only 39% of the vote. Goodness gracious great fluffy me.

Opus Dave like the current system because it CHEATS in their favour.

Today's challenge for Mr Balloon: does he support CHEATING?