Saturday, 3 July 2010

The "constituency link"

Iain Dale has said:

Several commenters in the previous post have taken issue with my assertion that Proportional Representation, and most especially the STV system, weakens the constituency link - and this is the reason why I cannot support it. Let me explain.

[...]

The trouble is, that in 3, 6, 8, 10 or 12 member constituencies no one would really know who their MP is, just in the same way that no one now knows who their MEP is.

Of course in this day and age that is quite simple to fix, for the internet crowd it already is via WriteToThem where you can "Contact your Councillors, MP, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs for free". For those not internet enabled it wouldn’t be difficult or that expensive to set up constituency post office boxes; you would always write to one address no matter who was elected and in multi-member constituencies it wouldn’t be a huge logistical effort to give each member a copy.

He also said
Can we also dispel the myth that AV is in any way proportional.

Which is perfectly true, but it is what we are being offered at the moment, it is a stepping stone and I don't think we can get to any of the better systems beyond it without jumping on this one.

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