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| Written by Gordon Prentice | |||
| Monday, 05 July 2010 13:05 | |||
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The BBC's World at One tells me Nick Clegg is to make a statement on electoral reform this afternoon. We are told the referendum will be held next May. But will there be a threshold? Would we feel comfortable agreeing a change to something as fundamental as our voting system on, say, a 49% turnout where 51% opted for AV and 49% stuck with the status quo? You think such a turnout fanciful? The referendum on the North East Regional Assembly in 2004 had a 47% turnout but a huge majority (78%) didn’t want this white elephant. So the plans were scrapped. In 2004, my Referendum (Thresholds) Bill proposed a 50% threshold for a referendum to be valid. Alas, the Bill got nowhere but the issue is still out there, waiting to be addressed. And, by the way, it is not a simple or straightforward matter to persuade voters to change the voting system. Two recent attempts in Canada, in 2005 and 2007, failed. Despite heroic attempts to explain the proposed new proportional systems, voters in British Columbia and in Ontario decided to keep First Past The Post. The Alternative Vote is, of course, a lot easier to explain. Just point to what can happen under FPTP. The late Lord Russell Johnston, the Liberal MP for Inverness, won the 1992 election on 26% of the vote. I suppose FPTP can tolerate a few extreme examples like that one. But not too many. 
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| Last Updated on Monday, 05 July 2010 16:45 |