By inviting disgruntled voters to spoil their ballot paper (‘Don’t like voting options? Then spoil paper’, The Voice, May 4) South Holland Council leader Gary Porter is completely missing the point.
In the division in which I stood for election on May 4, Spalding Elloe, voters could choose from six candidates representing parties from left to far right and everything between, plus an independent.
The turnout was a miserable 29 per cent. People stay at home, not because there isn’t sufficient variety of candidates, but because under our first-past-the-post system the outcome of elections in areas like ours is so mind-numbingly predictable.
Characteristically, the Tories get half the votes or less, and walk away with nearly all the seats. No wonder people say on the doorstep, ‘What’s the point? My vote doesn’t count for anything anyway.’
Tories always respond to calls for electoral reform by saying, ‘When we had a referendum in 2011, the people of the United Kingdom chose the first-past-the-post system.’
They didn’t, of course; they rejected the Alternative Vote system which no-one was asking for, and which is manifestly not a system of proportional representation. A modern democracy needs a voting system where results reflect the will of voters, and almost everyone apart from Conservative leaders now recognises this.
We already have forms of proportional representation in use in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and for the London Assembly; why should the rest of England remain stuck in the dark ages?
I would therefore call on Coun Porter, if he’s serious about giving disillusioned voters a reason to re-engage, to join other Conservatives who are backing the cross-party and non-party campaigns trying to change our voting system. They at least realise that the present system, even though it favours their party, is unsustainable and must be replaced.
So how about it, Coun Porter? Will you join us in trying to get people interested in politics once more?
Martin Blake
South Lincolnshire Green Party
Rose Leigh Way
Spalding
