ral fairness
p1-0 Miss Enid Lakeman.
,2 afraid I must add yet another v '"Y record of letters, partly to agree tleIll'at strongly with Humphry Berkeley need a strong parliament, and to disagree equally strongly with n'oa that this could be achieved by e alternative vote. He says this would enfranchise "six million people who have effectively been disfranchised because of their perverse desire to vote Liberal." What about the nine million people who were equally effectively disfranchised by voting Conservative or Labour in constituencies where those parties' candidates could not win? Any method of election in single-member constituencies must leave anything up to half the votes cast ineffectively for losing candidates. Also, the alternative vote would not add at all to the number of people represented by the candidate they most wanted; it would enable some of them to contribute to the election of a second-best instead of a worst. Under PR, on the contrary, that is to say with the single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies, the, great majority of those who vote will find themselves represented not only by the party they most favour but also in most cases by the candidate whom they prefer to other candidates of the same party.
Mr Berkeley asks "can anybody say what would have happened in Bexleyheath or Basildon if the alternative vote had been the rule?" This is an admission that the alternative vote is extremely uncertain in operation. To take an extreme example, suppose the three major parties were nearly equal in every constituency and suppose that most Conservative and Labour voters would give their second preference to the Liberal, the effect of the alternative vote could be to give the Liberals anything between all the seats and none according to whether their condidate was just second or just third on first preferences. With multi-member constituencies, there could be no such uncertainty; any party getting about one-third of the first preferences would be bound to win about one-third of the seats. There is also a great difference between the two systems in the matter of selecting candidates. It is quite true that in the event of a dispute over a candidature the alternative vote would enable the party concerned to refer the final choice to the voters; when the vote is transferable, even if only in a single-member constituency, a party can safely run two or more candidates without risk of splitting the vote. In practice, however, this very seldom happens. In a multi-member constituency, on the contrary, any party large enough to have hopes of winning more than one seat must in any case run more than one candidate; a choice between candidates therefore becomes normal. In actual elections under this system, the voters most often choose to show their confidence in recognised party leaders, but they also not infrequently reject someone whom the party is known to favour and elect some 'rebel' in his place.
Enid Lakeman Director, The Electoral Reform Society, 6 Chancel Street, Southwark, London, SE!.
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