PARLIAMENTARY arithmetic, personal compatibility and shared ideas all played their part in bringing the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats together in a coalition government last May. But the compromise without which the deal might not have happened was the Tories’ offer to hold a referendum on the Lib Dems’ cherished goal of electoral reform. Scheduled for May 5th, the plebiscite will ask whether Westminster’s first-past-the-post voting system (FPTP) should be replaced by the alternative-vote model (AV). It could be the most fraught single issue to face the coalition in 2011, and perhaps in the whole five-year parliament.
The proposed reform itself is fairly modest. Under FPTP, voters can only back one constituency candidate at a general election. Under AV, they would rank the contenders according to preference. If no candidate won 50% of first preferences, second and subsequent preferences would be tallied until somebody did. This is not the proportional representation of Lib Dem dreams. Indeed, some experts say AV would sometimes be less proportional than FPTP, if the make-up of the resulting parliament is measured against the first-preference votes cast for each party.
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