A chorus of politicians are once again calling for electoral reform after the UK’s 2019 election.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
arrive at the Commonwealth Heads of Government 2018 meeting in Windsor, England, in April 2018. New Zealand moved from the first-past-the-post electoral system in 1993 to a system that helped put Ardern in power.
(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
Unlike Canada’s newly elected House of Commons, New Zealand’s parliament reflects the will of voters. So do other proportional representation systems. Canada has plenty of choice.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes his way to a news conference at in Ottawa on Oct. 23, 2019. What would the election results look like if Canada had proportional representation?
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Senate voting is pretty complicated. Here’s how preferential voting and proportional representation work – and how to make sure your vote is counted on election day.
South Africans go to the polls on 8 May, 2019.
EPA/Nic Bothma
Politics in Lesotho can look incredibly complicated, with a mish-mash of competing political parties and repeated military interventions. It’s a mess, but it’s not that hard to unravel.
While Green Party candidates win elections and make policy in Germany, here the Green Party barely registers. Why? Contrasting electoral systems, and the fact that U.S. Greens run as purists, not as politicians.
Without democratic reform, the time ahead for both Britain and the EU looks bleak indeed.
Gary Knight/flickr
The Brexit vote was the outcome of the disillusionment and disengagement that have permeated the UK. Many Europeans share that mood, which is why both the UK and EU need radical democratic surgery.
Those bewigged Lords during the opening of parliament.
Ray Collins/PA
The UK election made an irresistible case for proportional representation, but a Conservative government is not likely to play ball. The upper house might be a compromise, though.
Will the system be different by 2020?
Peter Byrne/PA Wire
Labour, UKIP and the Greens all gained much bigger swings than the Conservatives, but were election losers. The first-past-the-post system let the Tories pick up a swag of seats with a 0.8% swing.
Keeping the faith: 2010 protest in favour of proportional representation.
Rob Brewer
With 63% of the country not voting Tory, the result throws up its own question of legitimacy.
The UK general election could go either way. The one certainty is that the numbers of seats won won’t match the votes for each party.
AAP/Newzulu/Stephen Chung
This week the “mother of parliaments” faces a general election in the UK. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system means we can’t predict the result with certainty, nor expect it to match the vote.
The proportion of female and minority artists in films and television ranges from 1/12th to one-half of their population…
Preference deals and a propensity for people to vote ‘above the line’ gives microparties like Rise Up Australia a greater chance of being elected to the Senate.
AAP/Julian Smith
The record large Senate ballot papers have probably already annoyed many early voters. Their great length - over a metre in NSW and Victoria – will soon annoy many more voters. However, the real annoyance…