Wednesday 11 May 2011

Brighton and Hove City Council - Electoral reform could start here, now.

Brighton Councils largest party is the Greens - a party committed to Proportional Representation.
The votes across for the council totalled up as Green 33%, Labour 31% and Conservative 28%.
However the seats/councillors are split Green 23, Labour 13 and conservative 18.
Voting in the council could immediately be made to reflect the proportion of votes cast by the voters of Brighton and Hove (and Portslade and The Deans) if 5(*) Green councillors voted with Labour.
If Proportional Representation is a a matter of principle for the Greens (and not just supported for party advantage), I can see no reason that they could not adopt this as policy immediately - giving the People of Brighton and Hove the council they really voted for!
Come the next election, maybe all three parties could commit to continuing this arrangement until true PR is implemented...
--
(*) As the conservatives are slightly over represented, on occasion it may be more representative for only four greens to vote with labour.

1 comment:

  1. Nice idea, but the problem is that people would vote differently with PR and parties would campaign differently with PR.

    But I'd be interested to know what it would take to enable us to change from block voting to STV in local elections.

    ReplyDelete