Electoral Reform Petition

[squern]

So you would welcome National Socialists, white Supremacists, radical Islamists, and any other party associated with violence, repression and persecution?

[sidthelamp]

So you would welcome National Socialists, white Supremacists, radical Islamists, and any other party associated with violence, repression and persecution?

we are already repressed , the point of electoral reform would see a fairer representation of the peoples views , by people who people have chosen not whole sale dominance by 3 or 4 establishment parties , if white supremacists get votes then there views would be represented not suppressed, suppression of opponents = no dialogue ,hate,mistrust the very things we should be trying to avoid,

a bigger mixture of all peoples views would see the ruling elite have to practice true democracy they would actually have to work for a living to represent all peoples views and find a third way, rather than suppressing a large part of the population.

[astral276]

So you would welcome National Socialists, white Supremacists, radical Islamists, and any other party associated with violence, repression and persecution?

Any electoral system can allow such if enough people vote for them. Raw PR can give such more voice, but most countries that run PR elections also have a minimum threshold to gain a seat, which keeps out the most extreme parties. While that does mean that some votes are still wasted, the level the threshold is set at can strike an acceptable balance between that and more representative government.

PR can make government more difficult, but that is a problem for already well paid politicians to work through; it is not a problem for the electorate.

[westlondoncarparts]

It is likely that extremist parties associated with violence, repression and persecution would be proscribed organisations and therefore not eligible to participate in elections.

The Conservative Party received approximately 37% of the vote in the election last week. That raises the question of how many of the 63% of the rest of the electorate who voted are truly represented by the Conservative Party given that they now have a majority in the House of Commons and will be able to push through all the new legislation that they wish for unless there are rebellions by back benchers or rejections by the House of Lords? It is likely that some of the UKIP vote (around 13% of the election vote) are basically Conservative people but voted for UKIP as it had a harder line on the EU. But even so, it is still difficult to make the case that the new Government is broadly representative of the majority of the electorate. And that is profoundly undemocratic.

To rub salt into the wounds, British military personnel got sent to Iraq and died there on the basis that the Iraqis would benefit from the introduction of a democratic political system – yet we do not have a truly democratic system back here in the UK. Who is going to invade the UK and come to our rescue to bring democracy to these shores?

And to put things truly into perspective, although we are now back in a new Cold War with Russia with the Western propaganda machine really cranked up into overdrive spewing out all sorts of untruths about Russia and President Putin, it was President Putin who changed the electoral system in the Russian Federation to make it more democratic by requiring that all seats in the Russian Parliament equivalent of our House of Commons are elected by proportional representation (with a minimum 7% voting threshold to qualify). So despite all of David Cameron’s rhetoric about political governance in Russia, the Russian Parliament is far more representative of the Russian Federation electorate than the UK Parliament is of the British electorate.

And, as an aside and going slightly off topic, the Russian equivalent of our House of Lords is made up of representatives from the individual Russian Federation constituents (Republics, Oblasts, City States, etc.,). These appointments to the Russian Second Chamber are therefore more representative of the real world than the equivalent appointments to the British House of Lords.

Although President Putin has more extensive executive powers than a British prime Minister, I wonder how David Cameron would react if President Putin started to lecture him about democracy and started campaigning internationally for improved electoral representation for the British people?