>>25012

I'm in favour of AMS personally.

>>25012

STV with a 60% minimun.

It's not topical. We could get AV, but probably won't. The status quo is here to stay whether you like it not.

>there's the old one about coalitions being toothless.
Don't they work in a lot of European countries?

If there is a referendum on voting reform who votes - MPs or the public?

>>25016

Yes, and we see how useful they all are on the world stage.

>>25017 Because they don't get involved in other people's wars? Germany has PR and is one of the world's economic powers.

>>25016 A public referendum is in the works.

>>25018
>worlds economic powers

That doesn't change the fact that they're completely absent internationally.

>>25019
They have more seats than we do in the European parliament. Why take over militarily if you can do it peacefully?

>>25019

Are you implying that being absent internationally and boosting your own economy is a bad thing?

>>25019 Can you give some examples of how Germany is absent internationally, compared to the UK or America? If you are only talking about wars, I don't see how it reflects poorly on coalitions at all.

Last I heard, it's the EU that provides most of the world's aid. That's a pretty major impact on the international scene. Far better than blowing stuff up, but not the kind of thing that makes the front page.

Er, let's not forget that this is GERMANY that is absent from fighting wars.

I'm pretty sure that it's written in their constitution that all they're allowed is a small defence force nowadays, similar to Japan.

>>25026

So because our army is bigger we should be sending them into warzones? That are currently war zones because of the actions of people who were in power years ago?

Perhaps we should have written that into our own constitution at the end of the war...

>>25026

Nope, they have an army, air force and so on - but they're not allowed to deploy their forces outside their borders.

>>25028

Either way, the point still stands - Germany can't be active on the international warfront.

Probably for the best, given their WC team.

First Past the Post, and a second chamber partially elected by pure PR, and part religious, hereditary, etc..

>>25012
I think this cartoon sums up the flaws in AV quite well.

>>25047
It may just me, but I don't get it. What flaws are being illustrated?

>>25047

Remove 1 and 2 altogether, and minus two from every number between three and seven, and there you have British Politics.

I'm in favour of FPTP, it'd be perfectly fine if people understood the system and didn't harp on about wasted votes.

Before the election, I wanted to vote libdem. I voted labour because round my way it was them or the tories. I couldn't stand the idea of the tories getting in. After the election, I regretted my choice. I think with PR or AV people would be more likely to vote for who they actually want, rather than against the people they hate the most.

Millions of people vote in this way. Surely, any system where people feel they can't vote for the candidate they want is not working properly.

>>25051
>wasted votes
Where I live my options are:

1) Vote Labour
2) Take a gigantic shit on my ballot paper

#2 would be just as effective as voting for any of the other parties.

>>25051
Except that if you live in a marginal seat, you end up with somebody winning the seat on -- potentially -- less than half of the vote. Which means that more people voted against them than for them.

My own seat is safely Labour, but even my MP only got about 42% of the vote, because there were three other parties in the election.

>>25051
> I'm in favour of FPTP, it'd be perfectly fine if people understood the system and didn't harp on about wasted votes.

Agreed. Localised self determination is a good thing. Seems the main problem is that most people's headspace is almost entirely filled by the mass media, leaving precious little space for their own thoughts. Politics is therefore all about pandering to the media and not about good governance.

So in essence, the root of the problem is that people are fucking stupid. Who'da thought it?

>>25062 I disagree with you both. I agreed that FPTP was the better system before the election, but the way the vote occured in my local area just really opened my eyes to the necessary need for electoral reform.

I voted for a Lib Dem who lost by a mere hundred and something votes. Now ok he lost, that's how it goes. But where I live there's two constituencies for one city. Liberals got more than double the vote for the two constituencies combined, yet there was one Labour and one Tory MP.

No one can sit their and say that is representative of the populace. Ostensibly, because good governance is the governance that benefits the many over the few, it is logical to link a poorly representative legislature to poorly run government in the eyes of the people.

Now I don't believe proportional representation is a good idea. We need governments that can make decisions effectively. However, in democracies, we should always strive to improve representation and AV clearly would be a good hybrid of both viewpoints.

You can use the strong government fallacy if you want, but let's be honest, some of the most achieving governments in history have been dictatorships. Indeed some of the worst too. But it is undeniable the strongest government whether good or bad would be a dictatorship simply from a management perspective ....that doesn't mean we should have it. (if you're thinking "what about Mugabe" you've missed my point here. I'm talking from a decision making, management viewpoint).

>>25074
>and AV clearly would be a good hybrid of both viewpoints.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8644480.stm
While there is likely to be some error in the 'voting system calculator' on the link provided, I think that it shows fairly well that AV isn't fantastic, and, even if it benefits a third party, it does little to really open up a level playing field for all and sundry.

>>25074

You can combine the vote of any number of congruent constituencies and get whatever result you want, so anecdotal evidence it useless. I think you're the same person I had an argument with before, are you Oxfordfag (and by extension, a poster on Krautchan?)

>>25077 I have had a fairly reasoned argument on here about the Oxford result before, but I'm not the only one from Oxford that has (it's come up a few times) and I don't post on know sausagefest boards so no.

I'd argue you can take the Oxford result together because of boundary changes for one, two it's the same city, three it politically is the same area of the country. You can't say put Henley next door in with Oxford as politically it's a totally different area. It isn't close enough in actual effect and has had no boundary changes in with those two constituencies. In short, it cannot be justified to be representative that the same city have one Labour MP and one Conservative MP when most of the city voted for another party. No one can tell anyone else this is representative of that major area as it isn't

Whoever you argued with before obviously didn't put the case forward well enough.

>>25075 It shouldn't really. I'm not agreeing with PR approach, but then on a local level, MP's should be chosen in a more representative manner. Every person's vote should count so that a majority of the local population are happy.

>>25080

So you want PR on a local scale?

>>25080

Oxford is a Labour area because of the Leys and Cowley votes (and the students in Headington), isn't it? I haven't lived there in a few years, but from what I remember, those were hugely Labour areas - Summerhill and Jericho were the Tory/LibDem areas, but they have fewer people living there.

>>25082 Yes I would like to see a form of a single transferable vote system in current boundaries, as opposed to FPTP at current boundaries. PR at a national level would mean an allocation of x number of MPs to whichever party gets x number of votes down the country. In a list form almost. This of course isn't representative of an area in parliament merely who got the number of votes country wide. I think the voting system used for local elections for general elections would be preferable

>>25084

Additional Member System get?

>>25085 Whatever does the job I've said is cool. Someone get on it plz kthxbai

>>25086 There's no escaping it. We need a directly elected Prime Minister, or 'President', if you will. I now feel dirty and will go and take a bath.

>>25097
No. Perhaps it would make people like you happy, but it's not a necessity, or, in my books, particularly desirable.

>>25098

This.

shitpost, sage.

>>25101 Yeah people can make their own mind up on whether a post is shit or not boooiiii! and like the other guy, what a great contribution you made too. fucking donkey.

>>25097 Why? Did the presidential style Blair leadership make you want more? Well...maybe he did. Apart from foreign policy, he was arguably a reasonably good PM.

>>25097
I think everyone here knows who the best man for the job would be.

>>25102 But Blair wasn't directly elected. He just greased his way to the top of the party. During Blair's regime, we had the worst of both worlds. A president who was unelected and unaccountable to the electorate.

Just imagine; President Livingstone. Fuck the parties.

Inb4 OMG Livingstone is XYZ. Why don't you suggest a president instead.

>>25122

Nick Griffin would make an excellent president.

FptP was effective when we only had two large parties. Today you'll often have a choice of candidates from 5 or 6 national parties, and these other parties are getting a higher and higher proportion of the vote. Rarely enough to win a seat, but enough that most MPs are now elected on just over a 1/3 of the vote, and it gets worse at every election.

So we need to move to a more complex system one that ensure that if not the favourite of a majority, but is at least the one preferred by a majority to the other leading candidate(s). So once again our MPs can be said to represent a majority in their constituency.

This is is not about being good or bad for any one party. It is about representation.

>>25122

I don't want a president.

The Northern Irish system and Scottish systems are good. Some of the suggestions for changing it actually offer even more of a two-party system and less representation than we already have.

First past the post was only really effective in the early days when we had no parties at all. Now it is all about party politics, dealing with that reality is the sensible thing to do.

>>25165
You're right... voting for or against AV?

http://www.youtube.com/v/NSUKMa1cYHk

Sums it up pretty well. You can't harp on about "strong, decisive governments" until you first admit that under FPTP, we're not living in a democracy. I seriously hope that people won't get taken in by fearmongering Tory (and to a lesser extent, Labour) press come the referendum. That said, AV is a bit shit and won't change much, but it might make coalitions just that bit more likely in future so there's hope there.

Overall, Lib Dems fucked up with this coalition. They could have held out for STV at least, then no other conditions would have mattered because they would have held the balance of power in future coalitions. But they bottled it.

The great flaw in the argument against changing the voting system, that it would prevent "strong, decisive governments", is that what that really means is bouncing from one extreme to the other. Every time the government changes from blue to red absolutely millions must be spent as the new lot reverses all the stuff that the old lot did that they don't like.

Home information packs are a good example. All those people who trained up to do surveys for them and set up businesses providing them have been well and truly fucked by the new government. That isn't to say that they were wrong to get rid of them though. The point is that if the views of society were more properly represented in Parliament we wouldn't end up with schemes getting started and cancelled all the time. I'd much rather have a Government in the middle which can't push through whatever crap it has come up with this week. That is why I will be voting yes but some form of proper PR should be the ultimate aim.

>>25199
PR wouldn't solve this. My partial solution is that part of the House of Lords should be directly elected, with elections coinciding with local elections, meaning that the elected portion is constantly changing to reflect public opinion, rather than being totally cleared out every four years (that being the outcome of any alternative scheme to have a partially elected second chamber).

>>25199
Yes, I think preserving schemes that shouldn't exist is a great way of running a country.

Enjoy your static nation.