Elections

Each constituency returns one member of parliament;

Each party may nominate only one candidate in each constituency;

Voters have only one vote each;

Whichever candidate wins teh largest number of votes is declared elected. This is known as gaining a simple majority

Winning parties usually win a higher proportion of seats than votes;

- Which is shown by the conservative party winning 36.9% of the vote but 53.4% of the seats in the recent 2015 election

It shuts out smaller parties;

- The Greens won 1 seat despite getting 3.8% of the vote

- Yet SNP got 4.7% of the vote and 56 seats

MPs are usually elected with less than half of the seats in their constituency

- Daniel Zeichner Cambridge 36%

Votes are not of equal value as whether it changes anything depends on whether you live in a swing seat or not

- Lewisham East Safe Seat Heidi Alexander

Many issues in the UK parliament effect only England yet Scottish MPs get to vote on them

Universal Suffrage;

- Prisoners do not have the cote though despite the European High Court of Human Rights ruling that they should

Anybody may form a political party and compete for election provided their aims are lawful;

There is free information and free media;

- Only advocating the overthrow of the state and criminal activity is barred

Normally elections give the governing party a democratic mandate;

- Not in 2010, arguably not in 2015

UK elections are free from corruption

General Election results are disproportionate;

- 2015 is the most disproportionate election results ever

Governments are usually elected on a minority of the popular vote meaning they can be argued to be illegitimate;

Large parties have disproportionate amounts of funds to contest elections

Systems in which an overall majority must be won in order to win an election

- London Mayoral Elections, first and second choice

- French Presidential Elections, second election with top two from the first

- Alternate Vote, first and second choice

Systems where the winning candidate must only get more votes than the other candidates

- First Past the Post, the UK and the US

Systems where votes and seats are connected in a broadly proportional way

- Single Transferable Vote, more than one member is returned by a constituency as MPs need to gain a quote of votes to gain a seat and the citizens rank their candidates and once a quota is achieved the rest of the votes on that ballot are redistributed this is used in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland for local elections. Chosen for NI on the Good Friday Agreement which would stop the abuse of power from the unionist protestant majority

- List systems, voter chooses which party list they want to cast a vote on and then choose a party candidate from that list, in the regional list system used in the European Parliament elections in the UK voters only choose which list and then the percentage of candidates is given to the list

- Additional Member System, a proportion of the seats are awarded through FPTP and a proportion through Regional Lists Systems, used in Scotland and Wales where two thirds are FPTP and one third is Regional List which is adjusted to counterbalance the disproportionalities of the FPTP section

Broadly proportional 30% of the votes went to the DUP in 2011, 35% of the seats went to them

Represents the different political grouping, DUP, UUP, SDLP, and Sinn Fein

Under FPTP the Conservates and Liberal democrats would have been insignificant parties gaining only 3 and 2 seats respectively but AMS gave the another 20

LAbour 26% of list votes and 29% of the seats

SNP 44% of the votes and 53.5% of the seats

UKIP 24 MEPs

Labour 20 MEPs

Conservative 19 MEPs

Green 3 MEPs

SNP 2 MEPs

1979 95.8% of seats won by two largest parties

2010 86.9%

2015 86.6%

1979 80.8% of votes won by two largest parties

2010 65.1%

2015 67.3%

1979 13.8% of votes won by a third party

2010 23.0%

2015 12.6%

To ensure representation in parliament accurately reflects the range and strength of political opinion among the voting population;

To ensure that people will feel they are effectively represented within a political system;

To ensure that every vote is of equal value;

To give voters a fair choice in their preferences;

To ensure that an effective government can emerge from the result of the election

Governments are being elected with a minority of the votes;

The fact that governments are claiming a mandate on a minority of votes calls into question the democratic legitimacy of the system;

The house of commons does not represent the range of political opinion in the UK;

Too many votes are wasted;

Voters are given a very narrow choice;

Tactical voting rises from the wasted nature of votes;

It is almost impossible to create a new political party from modest roots;

Declining voter turnouts due to disillusionment with the electoral system

Results are rather unpredictable;

It is possible, though difficult, for one party to dominate;

It tends to produce a multi-party system;

It remains difficult for small parties to win any representation

The UK would be a multi-party system that would enhance representation of smaller parties

Smaller parties would be able to win a significant number of seats;

The nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales would gain considerable ground;

Independents and representatives of very small parties would win a handful of seats;

Coalition governments would be inevitable

Voters would be given more choices;

The value of votes would be highly equalised;

Voters could have the opportunity to choose between candidates of the same party;

Results would be more accurately representative of the views of the electorate;

Current system places too much power into the hands of a single party that does not enjoy majority support;

May restore respect for the political system;

The political system would become more dynamic;

Every other country in the EU uses a different electoral system;

The experience of the use of PR within the UK has been positive

The referendum campaign alerted many people to the drawback of alternative systems;

The 'No' referendum campaign was highly effective;

The fact that the 2010 general election resulted in a hung parliament and a coalition government may have reduced the electorate's appetite for change;

The main supporters of the reform (the Liberal Democrats) had become unpopular by 2011 and so support for one of their main policies also decline

The FPTP system had comfortable produced single party majority governments for 60 years;

The current system delivers a government with a clear mandate;

- Under any other system the problems of forming a coalition would be repeated every five years