EVENT DESCRIPTION

316 seats so safe they can be called before election day, over 22 million votes ignored, and one in three voters opting for a tactical vote. The 2019 General Election was business as usual for Westminster’s dysfunctional electoral system.  

As voter and party dynamics change in the UK, First Past the Post is turning voter choices into increasingly volatile and unfair results.  

What’s going wrong and how can it be fixed?  

Dr Jess Garland will be our Zoom session guest on July 29th at 19:00 (BST), and will be exploring some of the many ridiculous idiosyncrasies of our FPTP electoral system. These will include:

• Safe seats
• Wasted votes
• Skewed results

Jess is Director of Policy and Research at the Electoral Reform Society. A former Senior Political Adviser to a Shadow Cabinet Minister, Jess has several years' experience working in Westminster. She has a PhD in Politics from the University of Sussex and holds a Research Masters (MRes) in Government, Policy and Politics from Birkbeck, University of London, and a BA (Hons) in Philosophy from UCL.

Here are some nuggets from the ERS.

Before the election the ERS correctly predicted the outcome in 316 ‘safe seats’. ERS research before the election found that on average it was 42 years since a UK constituency last changed hands with 192 seats being held by the same party since at least 1945.

Almost 14.5 million people (45.3%) of all UK voters cast their vote for a losing candidate. Voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland fared even worse with the choices of 53.7% of voters in Scotland and 55.1% of voters in Northern Ireland ignored.

The number of votes necessary to return an MP:

BACKGROUND READING

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/media-centre/press-releases/new-research-one-in-six-seats-in-the-commons-effectively-unearned-under-warped-voting-system/

FORMAT

Ian Glenister, a member of the Labour Party and co-editor of the GET PR DONE! blog In Proportion, will interview Jess for the first 25 mins or so of the session as she shares some of the findings of ERS research.

Then we will open up the session for Q & A with the Zoom audience.

HOUSEKEEPING

GET PR DONE! is a cross-party and no-party campaigning group seeking commitment to Proportional Representation (PR) from the main UK political parties. We believe that persuading the Labour Party to make PR-specific electoral reform part of its next manifesto is our most useful mission at this time.

GPRD! is a member of the 11-member alliance, Labour for a New Democracy.

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