I’m sure everyone was so thrilled at the announcement this morning that they will get to vote not once, but twice this year! First in local council elections (4th May) and the second time in the snap general election just called for 8th June. We may not have had another referendum but May has thrown us a bone with more voting nonetheless.
I know alot of people are tired of voting after the past few years of referendums and elections so I’m not going to go on about whether or not this general election is a good thing. I’m sure there is plenty of people out there who are better qualified than me already clacking away at their laptops as I type.
What I want to discuss instead is the voting system known as the Single Transferable Vote (STV). The reason I want to do this is because my partners postal vote came through and we noticed that for our council elections, Scotland uses the STV. This is a form of proportional representation (a voting method I personally favour) and is rather simple once it is broken down.
I won’t go into too much detail (The BBC explains it in much more depth) but basically you vote for your preference by putting a number next to their name. The votes are done in stages in such a way that no vote can be considered to be a ‘throw away vote’. This can allow smaller, more fringe parties to gain seats on local councils as people feel more comfortable putting them as a top preference because even if that person doesn’t hit the quota required, your vote will go to your next preference and so on and so forth.
I like this method. It isn’t difficult to understand and it allows for a fairer representation on councils. Parties like the conservatives and labour baulk at it because it would likely dilute their power in Westminster but with everything that has been going wrong over the past few years, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing?
Thoughts of a Millennial 