I would like to see a policy introduced to limit the manipulation of the voting system in all elections but especially Local.
Often candidates are put forward as Paper Candidates, meaning they have no intention of canvassing, winning or doing the job. This is done with the sole purpose of taking votes away from other parties and causing confusion.
We cant expect people to come out and vote if the system can be manipulated so easily.
I have no idea what the answer is and would be interested to hear other peoples ideas.
I always take the chance to boost my proposals, so here it is, my proposal for a fix to the voting system.
Basically, the proposal is AMS with a “second mandate” system, whereby your constituency candidates who don’t get elected make up your additional member list. This means that you don’t want paper candidates (because they might accidentally get elected!) and that even if your candidate does not win, your vote can help to get someone from your preferred party elected.
I don’t think that there is a better solution here. Mostly because any other system would see the state determining who is and is not worthy of standing for election, and that would be very dangerous.
Having read through your proposal I feel we might need a slightly simplified version in plain English, because although it is fascinating stuff, the parliamentarian language makes it heavy going. However, I must say that what you propose has checks and balances that we do not have.
May I at this point make a suggestion that occurred to me in an idle moment and I suspect has a flaw just about big enough to fit in a supertanker?
When we vote and a candidate wins, they are effectively only representing a percentage of the population. Those of the same political persuasion. Suppose each constituency could have several members, but each with a mandate equal to the number of votes they received. (There would need to be a minimum number of votes to qualify). Therefore a vote in Parliament would not be on a one vote to one MP basis, but on the number of voters that MP attracted. With such a system all votes (well 90%) will carry some weight.
