Published in Western Morning News (Saturday) 21 Nov 2020 – Letters Extra

by Andy Swain, Lib Dem Teignbridge District Councillor

FOUR years ago, the people of the United States elected Donald Trump as their president. The majority had actually voted for Hilary Clinton, but they use First Past The Post and block voting in the electoral college system.

A vote in Wyoming has three times more weight than one in California and it sometimes gives a winner that is less popular. This year is more hopeful. The popular candidate has won the FPTP system too. At the same election five US cities voted to bring in Ranked Preference Voting in their local elections and it looks as though Trump’s efforts at Voter Suppression will fail.

The story in the UK though is less hopeful. Our own FPTP election system is just as broken, Conservatives have a majority of the seats in parliament with a minority of the vote. They have almost nine times more MPs per 1,000 votes than the liberal democrats and 23 times more than the Green Party. We can elect candidate A when a majority prefer B (but some voted first for C, so they don’t count). It seems obvious we need a proportional and preference based system to restore faith and fix our broken democracy.

In the 2019 general election there were just 34 allegations of identity fraud at the polling station. Each attempting to gain just one fraudulent vote. This is a crime that isn’t happening, and doesn’t work anyway. In a 2019 pilot scheme, 740 voters were turned away and did not return. Rolling this out nationally could cost 0.4% of legal votes. That is 200,000 people, all because of 34 alleged fraudulent votes.

The common electoral fraud is campaign offences for example overspending. Dark ads on the internet and industrial misinformation campaigns aren’t adequately covered by current law.

Why is our government ignoring necessary reforms and pressing ahead with Voter ID? Could it be precisely because FPTP gives them more seats with less votes, because the dark ads have served them well, and because they think voters who can’t produce a driving license, passport or bank details will not be voting Conservative? This is our very own Voter Suppression.