Or the ‘Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill 2010-11’ to give it its proper title. is that it’s trying to do more than one thing. That’s why its likely to get into trouble when Westminster Parliament resumes in September. If it was just concentrating on a change to the Westminster voting system it would attract support from the Labour Party – who back the AV system – and would be passed.
However, it’s also trying to amend Westminster Constituency boundaries to reduce the number of MPs elected. This is where the real trouble lies where the Tories are accused of trying to ‘gerry mander’ the electoral system to suit themselves.
Of course, the whole problem could be done away with by a move to a different voting system – STV – using multi-member constituencies. Using STV to elect 5 or 6 MPs to represent a much larger constituency is less likely to require future boundary changes. Why? Well, once the new constituencies are created, and if there are very large shifts in the population that make up that constituency, you just change the number of MPs to be elected up or down. No need to change the boundaries. “simples”
