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Comment by narag | Hacker News Reader

Electoral systems are very difficult to change. The party with enough votes to lead the change isn't going to be interested, because it's the system that put them in that position.

Edit: So we're talking electoral systems, referenda have a big caveat. Usually you vote a goal, but you don't vote how it's going to be implemented. The brexit was sold as a measure against Brussels' regulation and taxes...

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The Uk had a referendum in 2011 to change the system and voted fairly conclusively to stick with first past the post.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternat...

That referendum was poison pilled with the “alternative vote” and sold to voters as a easy path to the BNP getting elected.

It was just as much party politics as the Brexit vote, not a genuine attempt at direct democracy.

And also the adverts of sick babies who would not get the funding they needed if the money was spent on implementating proportional representation. A similar lie was used to sell Brexit.

> And also the adverts of sick babies who would not get the funding they needed if the money was spent on implementating proportional representation

Proportional representation and ranked choice voting are orthogonal concepts. A referendum for ranked choice voting doesn't necessarily implement proportional representation.

No, but it would likely be more proportional than the current system in the UK where the last time a single party won a majority of the popular vote was 1931 and yet parties usually have a majority in parliament. Proportionality is not a binary thing. You can have more or less proportional systems of government based on the selection / election mechanic chosen.

Two points of note to add:

1. regulations around referendums (compared to general elections) are very poor and the "no to AV" campaign exploited this by running an extremely dishonest campaign [1]

2. turnout was < 50% of the electorate so one can somewhat facetiously imply from the result that the majority of the electorate don't care what the system is.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/no-to-...

Worth remembering that the Tories only allowed the vote as part of the coalition deal, and then actively campaigned against it. The whole thing was a damp squib, and was designed to be

There was a referendum to change the voting system to Alternative Vote.

It's important to remember that the change on offer was itself deeply flawed. It was trying to apply a reasonable system for electing one person to elect a whole Parliament. However AV is not a form of proportional representation and would probably have resulted in an even less proportionate cohort of MPs at the following general election had the referendum result been the other way.

Some people were arguing at the time that it was a useful first step to establish popular support for the principle that FPTP had to go but others were arguing that AV was a poisoned chalice and voting for it implied that it was an acceptable alternative and would end the debate for a generation without really fixing the problem.

A lot of people who wanted PR saw the Alternative Vote referendum as a poison pill and voted against it. It's one of the reasons support for the Lib Dems subsequently crashed, as they were seen to have fundamentally sold out.

In any case, a referendum on whether to keep a fundamentally undemocratic electoral system is in itself undemocratic - there is no legitimate case for keeping an electoral system that effectively disenfranchises a substantial proportion of the electorate.

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