Alternative Voting System in Parliamentary Elections Essay - 1

Alternative Voting System in Parliamentary Elections - Essay Example UK has seen in many such reforms that have made it a modern democracy with elected representatives, from being a monarchic state (Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, 2007, 9). My article will examine the current electoral changes that have been proposed, which signal the ushering in of the Alternative Voting system (AVs). This topic has been in debate in the UK parliament for quite some years, and is currently under review, in the House of Lords and the Parliament. My article will explore to find out whether the changes in the electoral processes that will bring in use of the Alternative Voting System or AVs in parliamentary elections, would actually work towards improving democracy in United Kingdom. What is AV: â€Å"AV represents a very simple change to our current First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) voting system. The principle behind AV is a no-brainer: the winner in an election should need the support of a majority of the people. AV makes this happen with ‘preference voting’. All that means for voters are swapping the ‘X’ on the ballot paper for numbers, so voters can rank the candidates in order of preference 1, 2, 3†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Electoral Reform Society, Introducing the Alternative Vote). Fig 1: (Source: Electoral Reform Society, Introducing the Alternative Vote). In this figure, we take an example of a voting centre, which has 4 candidates A, B, C and D, standing for an election, while the number of voters is taken to be 100. In the present electoral process that is known as the First-Past-the–Post or FPTP, Candidate ‘A’ has garnered the maximum number of votes, and is the clearly the winner, though he hasn’t received even 50% of the total vote share, that is, majority of the voters are not backing him.