The ‘right moment’ to write this piece seems to have been ever-present over the last year. However, with Labour recently backing PR, then the absolute temerity of The Conservative Party threatening to return Boris Johnson to power, now is the time.
In this brief elucidation, I hope to show that PR is only a first step towards Britain becoming a decent, modern democracy. My choice, when possible after the Conservatives are side-lined, it would be my hope to see all this written into a UK constitution, ratified by parliament.
Following the advent of a system of PR being in place, ideally the single, transferrable vote, I would wish to see the advent of the compulsory vote (although this should include the option of voting for no-one in all elections), alongside the permanent vote. I would also advocate for voting age to be lowered to 0 and for the introduction of a negative vote as a useful safeguard against people like Johnson, Truss and Rees-Mogg, all currently examples, maintaining office. However, these would be addendums to a compulsory, permanent vote.
A breakdown of voting proposals are shown below:
Compulsory Vote: Literally everyone must place a vote, although this could be a decision to back no-one and effectively opt out of the voting process.
Permanent Vote: Why have electoral cycles? The permanent vote, through a national intranet system, would allow anyone to change their vote, anytime and for changes to be implemented locally, regionally, nationally on the first Monday of each month. Intuition says that this would lead to unstable governance. When we consider all governing organisations are likely to be coalitions and vote changes occasional for the majority of the population, the evolution of elected people will be ongoing and incremental, usually, on a small scale.
0 voting age: Children’s voices are completely disenfranchised in our system and their rights and involvement in politics shunned. Although they may not be political candidates all children should get a vote that is cast for them by a responsible adult who is expected to cast votes in their interest. I would set the standard transfer from responsible adult to be on the 10th birthday (local), 12th (regional), 16th, (national). There may be times when this happened at the agreement of responsible adults earlier or, in cases of mental disability for example, later or not at all.
Negative Vote: The negative vote would usually only be a part vote but could also be split several ways. One could choose to split it equally between all the candidates one didn’t back, against a particular candidate one has political difference with, or generically against a party or parties. The disadvantage of the negative vote could be that it leads to bland politicians, lacking in personality, charisma, and dynamism. The advantage would be more collegiate, agreeable, and balanced political figures emerging less likely to be offensive to large minorities within the public.
Richard Clark is a educator and Compass member. If you would like to discuss his ideas further, you can follow him on Facebook @GreenRichard01 and Twitter @PrimeNumero