I think using single transferable vote instead of first past the post would help these constituencies be more representative, but I don't think it will ever happen because that would probably hurt the conservatives and labour
STV still leads to two-party governance because you end up with 2 generalised opposition parties. The problem is that you realistically need to separate local and National government and allow national government to be proportional and local government to be majority based.
I don't like STV. I like alternative vote/ranked ballot. Only because it is easily verifiable. Humans can do the counting. With SVT we need computers which can be backed and messed with. Foreign a tors can steal data about how people vote and can vandalize the system creating chaos. With ranked ballot, you have paper ballots which can be counted by hand, by candlelight if need be. Redundancy and verifiability is important in elections. SVT doesn't offer that. AV does while still delivering a more representative and more consensus results.
The referendum a while back showed that the British electorate doesn't really understand STV (although I think it would be a good idea) I think a New Zealand style system of half the house being elected via FPTP and the other half being elected via PR so that Parliament reflects the views of the people. This would keep the benefits of FPTP with Parliament still being representative.
The main problem is that any voting change will diminish the power of the Conservatives and Labour. Most Goverments are elected with between 30-40% of the national vote, infact in some years the party with the most votes didnt get the most seats and the less popular party nationally got to govern!!! Why would these guys ever change the rules to make it fairer? Plus, remember when we got to vote of AV about 10-15 years ago? The press goes hard into discrediting alternate solutions and we’ve seen how easily influenced many voters are by press lies. Unless we get a super principled Prime Minister (I thought maybe Corbyn had a chance) and he/she forces it through fptp wont go anywhere for a while.
The problem there isn’t FPTP so much as the number of available seats for any locality. You’re always going to end up with a candidate that is the preferred pick of the minority but more local seats mean you have more wiggle room to get a more representative local assembly.
@@Bushflare FPTP and one-seat constituencies are one and the same; a constituency with more than one seat is no longer FPTP (with the notable exception of the USA grand electors who, despite being many, are all assigned to one winning party. But in any remotely normal country it is not the case) Edit: a correction: one-seat constituency need not be FPTP (could also be STV), but FPTP is always one-seat constituency (could be more but it is pointless)
@@NAYRUthunder99 "one-seat constituency need not be FPTP (could also be STV)" No, Single Transferable Vote is a system used for multi-winner seats. You might be thinking of the special case of STV where n=1, which is more properly called Instant Runoff Voting.
+C H also worth noting that with FPTP, _even if there are only two candidates_ in each electorate a party can form Government with barely over 25% of the votes. With three candidates per seat, you can win with 17%, and with four candidates, less than 13% of the total vote is required to form Government. You get full control of Government with only 326 seats, and you can win those seats by just 1 vote each.
@@NAYRUthunder99 well, no. Because IRV is a system with single-seat electorates. You just had the terminology slightly wrong when you said STV. STV is a sort of mostly-proportional system. IRV is like FPTP, but with preferences so that at least each electorate's winner gets a majority.
Nothing wrong with first past the post, it means a government can be totally replaced if they go against the public. The problem is not the party systems as the party system is not really part of first past the post. We could have Westminster full of independents but with human nature they would quickly form groups.
@Robert Mc There are so many videos on why FPTP is ridiculously bad as a voting system as it is mathematically proven to nearly always result in a two-party system. Try looking it up one day.
@@user-op8fg3ny3j CGP video was not very accurate, fptp is not the problem we have always had it, the only problem is as Robert Mc said, its the parties are to blame, we used to not have parties and it was all independent mp's who would band together around ideas and for a government but mp's would switch parties at a whim, the problem is the parties
@@ProfessorTenebrae I vote in the two party system for Westminster and the proportional system in the N Ireland assembly. The first past the post system over here in N Ireland returns from 18 total seats. DUP, Sinn Fein, Alliance party, SDLP and before the last election the UUP. So in total it returned 4 parties in the last election and 5 in the election before that. Not a single seat for the Tory or Labour parties. So as you can see the two part system is not in effect in N Ireland and if you look at Scotland the SNP has displaced the two party system you claim. The real problem is that English voter are only voting for the two large parties. They are making a choice that is returning these parties to government. It is not the first past the post system, it is not the parties or the voters fault. They are not at vault for the choice they make in their voting choices. Some times you don't get who you voted for, that is not the fault of the system. That is the system.
Proportional voting is why you never get what you vote for, and all you get is corrupt politicians in each others pocket making bad deals. Sorry Democracy is about one side winning, not giving everyone a medal for participation. You don't have Democracy in Europe, you have a sham in which all the politicians are in each others politics.... First Past the Post is actually Democracy...because someone can actually win. 2 party systems are better than a no party system with fake divisions. Because you ACTUALLY get a choice.
In Croatia, all people are immediately registered by the state when they are 18 years old, and we are using the proportional system with open lists (1 regional constituency = 14 seats in parliament, voters vote both the party and people in the party). Anglosphere way of doing politics and voting has so many flaws and problems, which they never solve.
agreed. the tories wont do anything to limit their chances of winning. labour stupidly think it helps them so wont go against it, even tho they barely ever get in power!?
It's only Westminster elections that are fucked. Holyrood and Senedd elections are proportional. It's not that we don't know how to do it better, it's that those in power have no incentive to try to do it better.
A proportional system works in countries that are completely United, but the UK is extremely fractured, and a proportional system would take power away from Scotland Wales and N. Ireland, which would result in an uproar from those countries, which is probably why the tories and labour don’t wanna do that.
Sorry to have to correct you, Bristol West is not the largest Constituency. That dubious honour goes to the Isle of Wight with an electorate of 113,021 in 2019. This is the reason the Isle of Wight is now included in the special category and will automatically get two seats.
Except that the Isle of Wight was designated an exempt constituency from the population rules and therefore Bristol West being the second largest becomes the largest when this is taken into account. At the next GE there will be 2 Isle of Wight seats.
Preferential voting systems really do help hold MP's to account by allowing independents to run and people can vote for them without the fear they are wasting their vote.
If we had STV that followed local government or old county areas there would be very little boundary changes just changes to the number of MPs we elected. STV of course being the only preferential voting system that give a proportional result
My preferred is Tax choice, where some portion of your tax (say 10%) you get to choose where it goes bypassing the government, limits the power / reach of the government.
@@benfarmer-webb1016 Mauritius, where I'm from, uses the STV system and each constituency on the main island has 3 MPs with Rodrigues island having 2. It's more or less the same kind of parties in power back and forth between each other. Good thing is that there is more or less political stability, as there's no really wide differences between the political parties' agendas. The big thing recently was the light metro project. That's it. The prime minister is voted by majority from 70 MPs in parliament (we only have one house).
A note about the UK census you mentioned. This year's census is in fact only taking place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish census has been postponed till 2022.
I never understood why you'd have to register in order to vote. In Germany, everyone elegiable to vote gets a letter and can then show up at the poll with that (or just your ID card if you lost or didn't receive the letter)?
The UK because of privacy concerns does not accept a system like the German Einwohnermeldeamt where every inhabitant has to be registered. This creates some of the problems with ID cards, passports and voter registration. It is very strange that on the other hand the UK has a extended video surveillance system and a very intrusive secret service (GCHQ) which both in Germany would be unconstitutional.
Germany has automatic registration. The UK does not. It is very easy to register in the UK (especially compared to, say, many US states) but it is not automatic like most European countries.
The UK has no register of who lives in what house. So the govt has no clue on many issues. I should point out that the last time I voted I had my “voter card” with me and no one cared.
In Poland, you go with a citizen ID - which only citizens (over 18, there's also optional minor ID but children don't vote) can have as the name suggests and which you should always have with you outside the home, and you go vote in an electoral outpost in your municipality, that's it. No letters or registrations.
I remember telling Labour voters who were complaining about this been done in England. That the Labour party had been doing the exact same thing in Scotland by absorbing rural constituencies into towns and cities to ensure they benefited from boundary changes, but they didn't want to hear it.
considering how clueless the average voter here is its not a bad thing. voters are only good when they are informed, when most here are brainwashed by murdoch's rags
@@kanedNunable Agreed! However I would guess that the large number of ill-informed people is countered by the power the smarter people naturally accumulate over time. It all kind of balances out. At least that's what I tell myself to keep myself crying all the time.
@@kanedNunable I think the thing with optional voting though is that the people who turn out are the ones who have really strong opinions about it, which better fits that category of being brainwashed. They vote for extreme candidates who in turn convince them they have to vote next time or their opponent will do something scary and the cycle continues. In Aus our leaders can't be too crazy or they will scare away a lot of moderate voters who only turn up because they're forced to.
In the 2018 proposal they left parts of my town in a tory safe seat and moved a load of villages from said safe seats into the marginal town seat. The redrawing seemed suspicious to say the least, including villages miles away while leaving out estates that were in the town itself.
You have to vote to be part of a democracy. What would be the practical use of taking into account hundreds of thousands of people who wont even participate? All in all it works out the same, a smaller number of registered voters deciding on behalf of a larger number of citizens. At least this way it fairly represents the voters, the other way its unfair to voters AND non-voters.
@@Aspartame69 In Croatia, all people are immediately registered by the state when they are 18 years old, and we are using the proportional system with open lists (1 regional constituency = 14 seats in parliament, voters vote both the party and people in the party). Anglosphere way of doing politics and voting has so many flaws and problems, which they never solve.
@@Aspartame69 because people might not feel like they know enough to make a decision. But if they start to get engaged and something happens to make them care then they need an equal say! Some areas are treated better than others different areas have different times where they will care about different issues and have different quantities of people registering to vote.
@@bigbad25 In 2010 it was seen as consistent with requiring austerity in the rest of the public sector as well. Reducing govt expenditure is not quite the same priority for Boris as it was for Cameron. Of course the fiscal deficit (before the pandemic) was a lot lower than it was in 2010. Not cutting the numbers made it easier to get past backbenchers, esp Conservative ones.
Doesn't stop Wales from being left out and forgotten when it comes to infrastructure development and policy though does it? Population aside as one of the 4 supposedly equal nations of the UK we're now looking at having only 32 seats out of 650. We have virtually no voice in parliament
Fact check: Bristol West is actually the second largest constituency with 99,000 voters, the Isle of Wight is by far the largest with 113,000 constituents.
Except that the Isle of Wight was designated an exempt constituency from the population rules and therefore Bristol West being the second largest becomes the largest when this is taken into account. At the next GE there will be 2 Isle of Wight seats.
Really? Didn't you notice the vast difference in the parties that provided MEPs and those that provide MPs? 24% of the vote for UKIP gave them zero seats. FPTP is anti-democratic.
personally, i'd bet STV would be better as a compromise so as to keep local representation. PR only works for small countries such as Israel (just look at Weimar Republic)
I think J.J. has used confusing wording. I think he ment to say 'if PR was in use, this boundary change exercise would not be required'. If that's not the case, I apologise.
@Sebastian Sato "there are some countries that use multi-winner constituencies elected by PR instead of using PR nationwide" as far as I knew, that was STV in a nutshell. but i must be misremembering; i'll be back after I go watch some old school CGP Grey.
As a 16 year old, people below 25 on average have no idea about the country or how politics work, so it doesn’t matter if they aren’t included. If anything the voting age should be upped to 21
You're not wrong about the ignorance of under-25 year olds, but I think you're a tad optimistic about the over-25 year olds - they generally don't have a clue, either.
I agree with you but the Tories aren't going to abolish it anytime soon, as this system keeps them in power. The way Labour has performed in the last couple of months, I don't think they are in the position to win the next election either. The UK politics needs a complete overhaul, the two parties are not fit for the job, they are old and tired.
Neither Labour nor Tories will back it so with regard to getting a reasonably fair representative system anytime soon, we're a bit stuffed. Is it time? It's always been time. Will it happen? Not without a truly massive and disruptive grass roots movement.
The last two general elections were two of the most unrepresentative in UK history. The number of voters who got a result they were happy with is *significantly* less than half. How can that happen in a democracy? It can't, is the answer. Because FPTP is not really democracy. FPTP is dictatorship lite. IRV would improve things considerably, but using STV or MMP would be even better.
@@JimCullen "IRV would improve things considerably, but using STV or MMP would be even better." We had a referendum on that and the people voted it down sadly. We'd need a decades long campaign to educate people and have them put pressure on the government - only to have them renege like Labour did in the past or Canada under Trudeau. Electoral reform puts people to sleep. It has to be elite led and pushed by the government or there has to an election(s) which is super unfair to put the issue on the map. A crappy govt that is returned by it might serve to fire people up more. IRV might be what we get if there is outrage as that is the least drastic change for them. STV & MMP would take extraordinary political will.
@@theuglykwan "or there has to an election(s) which is super unfair to put the issue on the map" 2015 was that election. It still didn't help, sadly. But you're right, there needs to be a massive groundswell campaign. People like you and I can be a small part of that. Hopefully TLDR will be as well, and frankly it was disappointing that they did not once mention the poor representation the current system brings, nor the existence of alternative voting systems, in this video.
Constituency based voting like first past the post seems daft. Why should my vote not matter because my neighbours vote differently from me? Proportional representation is much more fair.
It's the natural result of an electoral commission drawing out boundaries, there was some pretty serious gerrymandering in 2010 and during the New Labour years.
@@vanmantalks And create so many more as by having constituencies it allows for someone to be responsible in the region and it gives them a stronger mandate as it was them specifically voted on. Of course yes, the voting issue is still a problem but you can't solve everything in one step.
I'd back that - MPs up and down the country do a lot of valuable work for their local constituencies, so I think it is important to have those representatives in parliament, BUT it's silly that governments can win a minority of votes and yet still win 100% of the power
I don't know. Any system where the party chooses the MP for you is open to abuse. Even if it's just a portion of the MPs. First past the post has the huge benefit of every MP being directly accountable to their constituency. If they mess up, they risk byelection. A candidate that's on top of a voting list could've gotten there though favouritism or some shady deals and promises. At best they end up on the list by being "Yes" men or women to the party leader.
Fun fact, Scotland already uses MMP (or AMS as it is known there) for the Scottish parliament, so it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to extend this to the UK parliament as well
@@rad8825 I agree, I'm not really a fan of party-list proportional systems. But there are other ways of doing it. For example, the top-up seats could be given to the members of the party who were the _closest_ to winning in their own seats.
@@rad8825 That is a valid concern. You can remediate that with open party list. Overall, I like how MMP works in Scotland for the devolved parliament. I'd go with that in a heartbeat or STV for the UK parliament.
From Australia it appears that there are 2 "England". London is one, the rest is the other. You either matter to London, or don't matter. How wrong is this perception?
@Spencer Middleton I was going to say the UK, but we don't see much about the wider UK to be informed enough. I guess that in itself supports your statement.
As a person in London, can confirm the London Lobbyist groups force this to be the case; Sadly even with us voting heavily for Labour little changes (Even when Conservatives had more power here it did not change.) So it's a Countrywide issue at this point.
They should abandon first past the post while they're at it and adopt the single transferable vote used in both Ireland and northern Ireland or the mixed member system used in wales and scotland
@@diafol666 Interesting, didn't know that. I more familiar with Germany, where a mixed system does seem to work, but I don't know if there are many differences between the German and the Welsh implementation.
@@venmis137 Very true and mixed member proportional is better than first past the post but it still means that you have representatives who have been elected without the support of the majority of electors
How so? They are getting an independent commission to redraw the lines so that everyone's vote holds equal weight not moving lines for no reason to help themselves
@@ryangrange938 May's govt actually tried to vote in the new lines but Conservatives like Boris were against it as he'd lose his seat. The commission is independent but the thing is both parties game the public hearings. It's better than no comission. The 50 seat reduction was a Conservative government desire that the commission had to abide by iirc. So it's not super clear cut. There is a veneer of legitimacy. So it is like Republican-lite. If you read the last Tory manifesto you will also find some voter ID and neutering the courts. These are also from the GOP playbook, they just aren't as aggressive about it, just as American parties took time to ramp it up.
Correction. There is not quite "free choice" when you drawing electoral map between population and registered voters. The rule is simple. If in considered country you are automatically registered as voter (when you get certain age or for example when you get your ID), then when the constituencies borders are drawn there is always used population. When the citizen have to do action by himself to register as a voter, then for boundaries drawing is used number of registered voters.
@@armadillito And what bearing does census data have to reality? It depends what people write down. It also includes children of less than voting age, and also non-British and non-Irish citizens who are counted in the census but not eligible to vote in national elections.
@@nicks40 it does ask you to state your citizenship etc and so eligibility to vote wouldn't be too hard to determine from the information given. How far you trust any form filled in by members of the public is an interesting question, but I suspect they are overwhelmingly honest; the greater risk is probably people who don't fill out the census.
People saying it will help Scottish independence might be right, but it's essentially a move towards being more democratic. It would be wrong to prevent such reform, even if it does give more power to the Tories.
@dougbound it's democracy but highly convenient. "Oh the system let's the other guy win even though I used to win with the same system in the past so let me complain about the system now that it delivered a different result".
@dougbound it is hypocrisy because you don't ask for change when the system was making you win but now you're losing its the system's fault and there needs to be change.
Nit pick. Bristol West is not the largest constituency by electorate. Rather that is the Isle of Wight which has 113,021 voters. Currently the Isle of Wight is not a protected constituency making it the largest. After the boundary changes it will be two smaller constituencies.
Really glad you put this out in such a fair way - I was ready to raise my pitchfork, but now you've explained it - I see the need for it. If there's any problem it's with our voting system, not the election map.
As a Swiss, I don't get why you would need to register for voting. If you are eligible for voting, you should be able to vote. I don't get why the UK and the US think voter registration isn't something that can happen automatically.
Voting fraud. For people to have faith and trust in a electoral system they need to believe only those eligible to vote do so. How that registration is achieved is open for discussion but in the UK it is voluntary.
20 states in the US have automatic voter registration, and there is a bill in Congress that would (among many other things) make automatic voter registration the law nationwide. Sure, it's not the whole country and there's still a long way to go with voting rights, but there has been significant progress made in the past few years on implementing reforms like automatic registration.
@@Willywin but the state already knows if you're eligible or not (otherwise they can't verify your registration), right? So why not simply register all eligible voters?
This sort of change should be done automatically. The US Constitution requires a Census AND redistricting every ten years. It prevents malapportioned Congressional districts. It was a response to the UK's notorious rotten boroughs. Districts are (relatively) equal with the exception of states that only have one Congressional district. The sort of uneven constituencies normal in the UK would be wildly illegal in the US.
That would cause less political diversity because then you only vote for a few parties rather than individual people. So we could instead use the shortest splitline method to draw the boundaries and send multiple representatives per voting region. Those multiple people would be chosen with preferential voting. And we could also ban all campaigning to give all people a chance no matter their wealth. This would also encourage political diversity which would better represent the people. Through removing money as a factor. Then people wouldn`t need to be in parties so they could think independently. And better represent the people.
Hey picrew with a the LGBT symbol who is likely American. FPTP is the only reason Labour ever won in Britain. They been the minority party ever since ww2 and ironically under proportional voting the UK would have been ruled constantly by a Conservative Liberal coalition. Its why in the UK their is a conflict on if they should do it on the left.
@@triplev-th2kw this will cause hung parliament, nothing will get done as too many people have a different idea, but that's not a bad thing either as there's likely to be less government regulation passed lol..
@@triplev-th2kw Yeah. Having to vote for 2 major parties bar a handful of regional interest parties (like in NI and Scotland) is much more "politically diverse" than having options ranging from far left, to left, to moderate left, to center, to moderate right, to right, to far right in a multiparty system with proportional representation. Something that will never happen in a FPTP government is the left and the right working together. They'll always try to get one over on the other to appease their base. Whereas in PR the parties closer to the center will always remain civil with eachother, because the outcome of a future election might be such that they'd prefer to form a coalition with moderates from the other wing than with extremists from their own. An adversarial government leads to a polarized society. A compromise-based government leads to mutual understanding and unity. Far-left pisses off the well-off, far-right pisses off the bottom of the pyramid. Logically speaking, you want to piss everyone off in equal measure by finding compromise in the middle.
@@aightm8 That doesn't necessarily equate to likability. Likability is more about personality. Approval also considers policy (e.g. stance on Brexit) which, whilst far more important, is a totally different thing. Boris Johnson is very likable but that doesn't mean I approve of him at all or am satisfied with him as a leader.
@@tenaciousdean6179 Corbyn overall was hated, except by his people even his own party thought he too left wing. His approval rating was lowest among opposition leaders albeit there were special circumstances like Brexit.
@@dkoda840 Again I think you're conflating personality with policy, although of course things like liability are incredibly subjective in the first place. A large reason why Hitler was elected is because of his likability and look where his policy took Germany...
The Isle of Wight has over 110,000 voters and has bean the most underrepresented place in the UK, and 5 times the population then the western Isles which is the smallest Scottish constituency.
@@dexstewart2450 'Wales' (and 'England' and 'Scotland' and the rest) has never had a vote for any kind of government. Only voters vote, and plenty of Welsh voters have voted for Conservative governments. You could say that England has never voted (or very rarely) for a Labour government, and yet they get 'lumbered' with one quite often. Just not recently.
No, but the Tories do. Without Scottish Labour and/or the SNP, where's the opposition? Keir Starmer? Yeah, right. The Border Commission might be non-partisan, but the decision to block a vote in the Commons isn't.
@@distant_planet7780 if all SNP seats went to labour then the tories would still have won so it’s not our fault that you lot can’t be arsed to vote for anybody else
@@ruairidhdavidson288 You are right - I'm running two issues together that are really separate. Having said that, a lot has changed since 2014. Scottish Conservatives seem to be shifting towards independence, and it's going to be harder to hold England and Scotland together post-Brexit. I'm willing to bet that Johnson's successor will be much more open to indyref2.
@@distant_planet7780 personally I don't think Scottish conservatives are shifting towards independence at all. The polls would probably be different if they were
@@lifewhatsoever my problem is that having a party choose mps removes any sense of representation and radicalises them because it’s the parties choice. I really like rank choice systems because not only do you vote for parties you like, you vote against parties you don’t. Prop Rep is a very simplistic system, but still a market improvement from FTPT.
@@Ueiksg That’s not necessarily how it works. There are many different PR systems. Ideally, we should have PR with rank choices but I’m not holding my breath.
it means more likelihood of tory winning the most seats tho. its not about who gets the most votes here. you can actually have more votes and lose in theory in the UK. its down to getting a certain % of seats
I love this discussion, as a citizen of uk & us (maybe Australia too as I was born there, not sure on the rules since I haven’t lived there in decades) the difference between us and uk redistricting is stark. Uk isn’t allowing politicians to draw their own lines to guarantee their re-election and there are fairly decent rules about size & population. Sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to register to vote I’m not sure you’re paying enough attention to civic life to count - it is a bare minimum requirement for gods sake. It would be different if authorities were making it difficult for people to register or worse, certain ethnic/race groups which is something republicans in the US do to great effect to disenfranchise minorities. Conservatives in the UK are very different than conservatives in many other western countries- they currently support what would be considered left wing ideas in most other Anglo countries such as nhs, gay rights/banning conversion therapy (tho on that one they are taking way too long), and state benefits our friends in other countries don’t even get to discuss as a serious option. Point is, they may get a few more seats but history shows that in the uk when a party has worn out its welcome the country on mass swings and votes them out - so clock is ticking and labour with or without lib dems will be in power eventually. Most importantly, it is vital politicians cannot control process of districts being drawn, they have to fight it out fairly and by and large that is something uk does relatively well. As for lords, I used to think it was a good idea to get rid of them but on reflection I actually think it’s a good idea to leave it alone. Another election for upper chamber would only poison well more, though it sounds good having them being elected they are really only able to serve as a brake on commons - it works as designed, they can draw attention to issues by blocking something and make the government explain itself but they are the weaker of the two as it should be - if the citizens representatives (MPs) want something done badly enough they can resubmit and force it through but it always draws a huge amount of attention. I’m actually not that worried by how democracy is functioning in the UK - my other citizenship, jesus, I am truly terrified by the current state of US democracy however.
It's not a case of 'not bothering to register to vote' as it's compulsory in the UK. The local authority sends us a letter every year to confirm who in each house is eligible to vote, and if you move house during that year you can ask to be registered in your new area so that the electoral register is as up-to-date as possible. It also includes 17-year olds who may turn 18 during the currency of that year's register, together with the date of their 18th birthday.
Good way to keep all the states in harmony when there's rumblings of independence in Scotland. Just remove seats from them and give to England. Makes sense to me...can't see how this will backfire at all
@thecazigan28 Pls let it go that way. England no longer needs the Scottish millstone around it’s neck and the Scots would prefer the leash be held by a different hand.
@@ea4966 lmao nah considering how desperate ultra nationalist and self centered brexit voters are for the glory days of the old British empire i highly doubt that their ego would let them .
It was funny a few years ago but now that star wars is woke trash, declaring jedi feels wrong. Happy to choose any other fictional religion though like Islam.
Makes me laugh that the government are concerned about Scottish independence and welsh independence so they think “what’s the best way to show them they have a voice in the Union that they are a vital part of it that we are better together? 8 less seats for Wales 2 less for Scotland and 10 more for England that’ll show them we value them!”
It's all dependant on the census results and if they are reducing the number of MPs, then the end result will be that areas who's population is stable will lose seats to areas who's population has increased. So long as England keeps increasing it's population it will continue to draw pollical power away from Wales and Scotland, N Ireland had a lower number of MPs due to our local government. If you look at the Number of MPs from 1922 in Scotland and England. You will see the number of MPs in Scotland fall as England's increased due to differences in population. Think of it this way, If Scotland's voting population was to increase by 20 million people and England population was to remain stable. Then The number of MPs in Scotland would increase while England's would decrease.
I don’t know for sure but wasn’t Scotland already over-represented? People will interpret this is England decreases Scotland’s voice but if they already had more of a voice than they should have this change is fair. Then again perspective is everything especially when talking independence movements.
@@grant6849 Scotland has devolved administration and huge over-representation in Westminster. I love The Jocks, but the electoral unfairness goes in one direction currently - Scotland's.
The Isle of Wight has one MP at the moment so have the western Isles. The population of the Isle of Wight is five times that of the Western Isles. Who's being screwed?
The boundary review can only be considered "fair" by ignoring the massive prerequisite that we use a highly unrepresentative voting system. Would have been worth mentioning that for instance in 2019 it took on average 864,743 votes to elect 1 green MP vs 38,300 votes per Conservative MP.
The funny thing is, one of the arguments people use against other systems is that they are "too complicated". First Past the Post is simple in the sense that it has very simple ballots and a very simple counting method. But it's complicated on a macro scale because there is such a big disconnect between how many votes each party gets and how many seats they win. Which means that the actual act of voting is simple, but using your vote effectively is very complicated. You have to think tactically instead of just voting for who you like the most.
I think the conservatives wouldn't be doing it if it didn't help them. The scottish nationalist will lose 2 and conservatives gain 8 that is so not fair
This is just correcting what Labour did to borders....It was so bad that the Tories had to be MASSIVELY ahead to win seats, because Liebour had distorted borders horrifically in their favour. Labour were abusing the system to massively increase their seats.
@@brokeandtired That's why the last election was so unrepresentative against the tories, who got far fewer seats than their share of the vote would suggest. No wait, the exact opposite of that. But it's still fairer because reasons.
I am a very outspoken critic of the conservatives but I agree with this we need to update our political system although I do live in a red wall constituency and I would hate for it to be redrawn horribly
Yeah not having an update in 20 years is unacceptable, like how is that not mandatory after a fixed number of years? Though using only registered voters is absolutely buck wild and stinks of voter manipulation.
@@warbler1984 voter registration may be difficult for some people who are eligible and then there are people like immigrants who aren't eligible to register. Just because someone can't or chooses not to register doesn't mean they shouldn't be counted when assigning districts. Everyone deserves representation.
@@evilgenius919 but if they aren't registered then there going to make no diffrence to which MP gets voted for any party... I mean I hear where you coming from but why take in consideration them if they aren't going to matter.
I was hoping for some juicy new revelation about how the UK was actually almost as bad as the US... And it turns out they are just being fair and reasonable. Oh well.
The Boundary Commision does this regularly. The latest recommended changes have been overdue for well over a decade. A pity though that the number of MPs isn't going to be reduced.
This is just correcting what Labour did to borders....It was so bad that the Tories had to be MASSIVELY ahead to win seats, because Liebour had distorted borders horrifically in their favour.
I think that using registered voters makes the most sense. That said it also makes sense to automatically register citizens to vote when they get their drivers license or other government I.D. (This is how it was done for me). This keeps areas with a large number of non-voters from diluting the will of the people.
@@paulfranklin8636 Well where I live if you're over 18 and stopped by police you are legally required to have a state issued I.D. "Within a reasonable distance" of yourself (This lets you do things like go to a hotel pool and leave your I.D. in your room, or things like that) so it's not something that is an issue here. If you don't get a license or Passport, you just get a state I.D. Most university I.D.s count as well since they're government funded. Honestly in this day and age if you don't have identification, you have bigger problems than not voting.
First past the post is just the worst. The boundary lines don't matter if different seats are worth different amounts of votes. We desperately need a more reflective form of electoral system so that Parliament can reflect the will of the people. It seems nuts to me that the Brexit process started with 52% of the electorate and Boris finished it with only 41% of the vote. The majority clearly didn't want the conservatives.
Strictly speaking having all votes be worth the same is terrible for a country because it leads to city-based domination. An example being how in one US blue state the cities voted for water that was needed for the farms to be diverted to the cities, leading the farmers to have to dig deeper and deeper wells as their water table continued to drop unsustainably. Democracy that is only concerned with the overall numbers and not with representing the needs of all parts of the nation leads to tyranny of the majority and the minority areas end up suffering quite terribly. Another good example is how the state of Oregon is facing a secession of constituencies who want to join Idaho because they just never get the government they vote for because of the overwhelming population of Oregon’s coastal cities, and California is facing similar concerns. Democracy is a system designed to better represent the needs of the people so sometimes marginalised voices get magnified and privileged voices get muted so that everybody’s needs can be heard.
@@Bushflare Even so I do not see why you would want FPTP, FPTP ends up with a two party system which barely ever really represents even the people who do vote for it. After all, why vote for a 3rd party? That 3rd party never gets in government at all, never gets to do wht you want to do. So you are unheard too the extremest degree. So then you have to pick between the two remaining parties. More a choice of which of these two do I hate the least rather than which one actually represents what I want? Too bring it back too america, most votes in america don't actually matter at all, how many states in america do not see a serious campaign presence or a candidate visit? Which states get mulitple visits? The ignored states are ignored because they are set in the FPTP system, we know which side they're swinging off the offset, so they just do not matter, they need not be listened too.
@@unfairlive2 Because fptp is a simple and effective system for filling a single seat which is what local governance generally boils down to. It may well not be the best option for handling local issues but it’s certainly an improvement over prop-rep in terms of delivering an effective local representative. I’m open to reform because it is sorely required but it’s a far more difficult minefield to navigate than most armchair philosophers initially imagine. Take the UK’s devolved Parliaments and Supreme Court as an example. Labour introduced devolved powers for Wales, Scotland, and N. Ireland where their representatives can vote on U.K. affairs but they also get local control over their own affairs. Sounds good but in practice it means these parliaments can vote on legislation that affects the English but not vice-versa and it also led to these devolved parliaments becoming hotbeds for tribalism and secessionism that don’t really do much good for their local states since it’s more effective for them to blame problems on Westminster than it is for them to solve them with their own powers and it’s hard for voters to tell who really holds authority over which problems. And our Supreme Court became expressly partisan within 20 years because we don’t have a codified constitution to hold them to. If the U.K. Supreme Court does what the US Supreme Court is currently doing we don’t have any real basis as to wether what they did was correct or not. So yeah... reform. Good in concept but nigh impossible in execution. Fingers crossed we get something good all the same though.
Why mention only Conservatives could gain more seats?... Looking at the map linked in the description many Labour strongholds in London are shown as too many voters for the constituency. Meaning both Labour and Conservatives could potentially gain more seats?
@@Damo2690 No Labour also. Like i said, Labour held London will be given more seats. Who controls the vast majority of London? Labour... So it goes both ways. This was my point, twisting the narrative to make it look like Torys are doing this for an advantage. When in reality they don't control this and it benefits both Lab and Con.
@@Damo2690 Seats are not drawn up based on previous election results, but on the numbers of people on the electoral register. Where this number is growing (because people are moving in and houses are being built) then more constituencies are created. Where this number is shrinking (because people are moving out and slums are being demolished) then constituencies are removed. The Commissioners drawing up the boundaries are legally obliged NOT to take any notice of how people have voted. As time goes by, the Labour party accrues an advantage as the seats they tend to represent lose population but still make up one constituency. Periodically this advantage is removed (or, shall we say, diminished) which makes it look like the Conservatives gain seats.
True it doesn't give a good representation of the voters. But if there is one thing that conservatives and labor agree upon its that they don't want competition. Might be a nice thing to change with a referendum.. I don't know not from the UK, good luck over there.
also dont forget how inflation in the military, fine, billions for infrastructure in NIreland to buy DUP votes, fine, more nukes, sure,,,,,, turns out when they want to shake it, the magic money tree totally exists
Exactly, if you didn't care enough to have a say before, why care now? (Probably because young people who often don't bother to vote, tend to vote labour)
How can you not be registered to vote? You have to fill in your form when it comes through your door, and if you miss that or move house you can tell the council to put you on the register.
In Germany, they use both systems (having fptp and transferable votes), which leads to a big parlament (over 700 seats) and we are automaticaly registered to vote but always have to provide an up to date address. Until a few years ago, the fptp seats gave the conservatives more seats then the representative vote gave them. A court decision however overturned that, saying that the representative vote is more important. To respect the fptp votes, the other parties get more representative seats until the seats match up the general vote. This lead the 698 (299 constituencies) parlament to become even larger. Every party has different ideas how to reduce the parliaments size and they just leave it be for the moment.
@@johnhandy3483 but the current system is open to manipulation, and having first past the post only ensure those with the majority have their voice heard, by votes the greens should have way more seats than they do, and if I could vote for them to actually have a chance at a seat I would and many others probably would
@@johnhandy3483 It won't make it more proportional. In the last election the Conservatives got 56% of the seats with 43% of the vote. If these changes would give them even more seats then it makes the results less proportional. The changes make it fairer in the sense that it will get rid of the advantage Labour has under the current boundaries. But the voting system itself is inherently not proportional, and this won't make it any closer to being proportional.
@@johnhandy3483 FPTP could only ever come close to proportional if you only allowed two candidates per constituency. With, say, 5 candidates it is theoretically possible for an MP to be elected on 20% + 1vote. The actual effect of this is to make it very difficult for new parties to emerge, as voters either side of the centre feel strong pressure to support the major party on “their side”. Here in NZ we get two votes. Half our MPs are elected to a constituency in the same way as Britain. Our other vote is a straight party vote which determines the overall composition of parliament. We changed from FPTP in 1996 have had coalition governments ever since, until 2020, when Labour won an outright majority. Generally, people seem to be happy with it. There seems to be a little more willingness to take aboard other points of view, and many people who previously felt completely un-represented (e.g. Greens) now have a voice in Parliament. There’s virtually no enthusiasm to return to FPTP.
@@q.e.d.9112 On the point of the straight party vote, who decides which people will go forward to Parliament given the numbers decided by the popular votes? And what happens if an MP so elected turns out to be a complete idiot or bastard?
I think using single transferable vote instead of first past the post would help these constituencies be more representative, but I don't think it will ever happen because that would probably hurt the conservatives and labour
We have that in Northern Ireland, and it works pretty well for us. It was voted on nationally a few years ago though wasn’t it?
STV still leads to two-party governance because you end up with 2 generalised opposition parties. The problem is that you realistically need to separate local and National government and allow national government to be proportional and local government to be majority based.
I don't like STV. I like alternative vote/ranked ballot.
Only because it is easily verifiable.
Humans can do the counting. With SVT we need computers which can be backed and messed with. Foreign a tors can steal data about how people vote and can vandalize the system creating chaos.
With ranked ballot, you have paper ballots which can be counted by hand, by candlelight if need be.
Redundancy and verifiability is important in elections. SVT doesn't offer that. AV does while still delivering a more representative and more consensus results.
The referendum a while back showed that the British electorate doesn't really understand STV (although I think it would be a good idea) I think a New Zealand style system of half the house being elected via FPTP and the other half being elected via PR so that Parliament reflects the views of the people. This would keep the benefits of FPTP with Parliament still being representative.
The main problem is that any voting change will diminish the power of the Conservatives and Labour. Most Goverments are elected with between 30-40% of the national vote, infact in some years the party with the most votes didnt get the most seats and the less popular party nationally got to govern!!!
Why would these guys ever change the rules to make it fairer?
Plus, remember when we got to vote of AV about 10-15 years ago? The press goes hard into discrediting alternate solutions and we’ve seen how easily influenced many voters are by press lies.
Unless we get a super principled Prime Minister (I thought maybe Corbyn had a chance) and he/she forces it through fptp wont go anywhere for a while.
2:19: It's worth noting that, in FPTP, this isn't necessarily the case. You can win a constituency with far less than half the votes.
The problem there isn’t FPTP so much as the number of available seats for any locality. You’re always going to end up with a candidate that is the preferred pick of the minority but more local seats mean you have more wiggle room to get a more representative local assembly.
@@Bushflare FPTP and one-seat constituencies are one and the same; a constituency with more than one seat is no longer FPTP (with the notable exception of the USA grand electors who, despite being many, are all assigned to one winning party. But in any remotely normal country it is not the case)
Edit: a correction: one-seat constituency need not be FPTP (could also be STV), but FPTP is always one-seat constituency (could be more but it is pointless)
@@NAYRUthunder99 "one-seat constituency need not be FPTP (could also be STV)"
No, Single Transferable Vote is a system used for multi-winner seats. You might be thinking of the special case of STV where n=1, which is more properly called Instant Runoff Voting.
+C H also worth noting that with FPTP, _even if there are only two candidates_ in each electorate a party can form Government with barely over 25% of the votes. With three candidates per seat, you can win with 17%, and with four candidates, less than 13% of the total vote is required to form Government. You get full control of Government with only 326 seats, and you can win those seats by just 1 vote each.
@@NAYRUthunder99 well, no. Because IRV is a system with single-seat electorates. You just had the terminology slightly wrong when you said STV.
STV is a sort of mostly-proportional system. IRV is like FPTP, but with preferences so that at least each electorate's winner gets a majority.
These new boundaries are actually fairer; the problem is First-Past-The-Post.
Nothing wrong with first past the post, it means a government can be totally replaced if they go against the public. The problem is not the party systems as the party system is not really part of first past the post. We could have Westminster full of independents but with human nature they would quickly form groups.
@Robert Mc There are so many videos on why FPTP is ridiculously bad as a voting system as it is mathematically proven to nearly always result in a two-party system. Try looking it up one day.
@@user-op8fg3ny3j
CGP video was not very accurate, fptp is not the problem we have always had it, the only problem is as Robert Mc said, its the parties are to blame, we used to not have parties and it was all independent mp's who would band together around ideas and for a government but mp's would switch parties at a whim, the problem is the parties
@@ProfessorTenebrae I vote in the two party system for Westminster and the proportional system in the N Ireland assembly. The first past the post system over here in N Ireland returns from 18 total seats. DUP, Sinn Fein, Alliance party, SDLP and before the last election the UUP. So in total it returned 4 parties in the last election and 5 in the election before that. Not a single seat for the Tory or Labour parties. So as you can see the two part system is not in effect in N Ireland and if you look at Scotland the SNP has displaced the two party system you claim. The real problem is that English voter are only voting for the two large parties. They are making a choice that is returning these parties to government. It is not the first past the post system, it is not the parties or the voters fault. They are not at vault for the choice they make in their voting choices. Some times you don't get who you voted for, that is not the fault of the system. That is the system.
Proportional voting is why you never get what you vote for, and all you get is corrupt politicians in each others pocket making bad deals. Sorry Democracy is about one side winning, not giving everyone a medal for participation. You don't have Democracy in Europe, you have a sham in which all the politicians are in each others politics....
First Past the Post is actually Democracy...because someone can actually win. 2 party systems are better than a no party system with fake divisions. Because you ACTUALLY get a choice.
In Croatia, all people are immediately registered by the state when they are 18 years old, and we are using the proportional system with open lists (1 regional constituency = 14 seats in parliament, voters vote both the party and people in the party). Anglosphere way of doing politics and voting has so many flaws and problems, which they never solve.
agreed. the tories wont do anything to limit their chances of winning. labour stupidly think it helps them so wont go against it, even tho they barely ever get in power!?
It's only Westminster elections that are fucked. Holyrood and Senedd elections are proportional. It's not that we don't know how to do it better, it's that those in power have no incentive to try to do it better.
A proportional system works in countries that are completely United, but the UK is extremely fractured, and a proportional system would take power away from Scotland Wales and N. Ireland, which would result in an uproar from those countries, which is probably why the tories and labour don’t wanna do that.
@@thelegend_doggo1062 What a load of bollocks
Even I’m registered to vote in Croatian elections and I don’t even live there, I think there is a diaspora mp representing me but I’m not sure.
Sorry to have to correct you, Bristol West is not the largest Constituency. That dubious honour goes to the Isle of Wight with an electorate of 113,021 in 2019. This is the reason the Isle of Wight is now included in the special category and will automatically get two seats.
Except that the Isle of Wight was designated an exempt constituency from the population rules and therefore Bristol West being the second largest becomes the largest when this is taken into account. At the next GE there will be 2 Isle of Wight seats.
@@russellwhite1581 But that hasn't happened yet and there is currently only 1 MP for IoW.
Thank you
Preferential voting systems really do help hold MP's to account by allowing independents to run and people can vote for them without the fear they are wasting their vote.
If we had STV that followed local government or old county areas there would be very little boundary changes just changes to the number of MPs we elected. STV of course being the only preferential voting system that give a proportional result
only with extremely prominent MPs with high name recognition. the vast majority of people vote based on party not on the individual MP.
My preferred is Tax choice, where some portion of your tax (say 10%) you get to choose where it goes bypassing the government, limits the power / reach of the government.
@@benfarmer-webb1016 Mauritius, where I'm from, uses the STV system and each constituency on the main island has 3 MPs with Rodrigues island having 2. It's more or less the same kind of parties in power back and forth between each other.
Good thing is that there is more or less political stability, as there's no really wide differences between the political parties' agendas. The big thing recently was the light metro project. That's it.
The prime minister is voted by majority from 70 MPs in parliament (we only have one house).
Yes it really helps politicians avoid direct personal accountability to the electorate.
A note about the UK census you mentioned. This year's census is in fact only taking place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish census has been postponed till 2022.
I wonder why 😂
@@AntonoirJacques Scottish independence is currently not the majorities favour, so I’m not sure why
I never understood why you'd have to register in order to vote. In Germany, everyone elegiable to vote gets a letter and can then show up at the poll with that (or just your ID card if you lost or didn't receive the letter)?
The UK because of privacy concerns does not accept a system like the German Einwohnermeldeamt where every inhabitant has to be registered. This creates some of the problems with ID cards, passports and voter registration. It is very strange that on the other hand the UK has a extended video surveillance system and a very intrusive secret service (GCHQ) which both in Germany would be unconstitutional.
Germany has automatic registration. The UK does not.
It is very easy to register in the UK (especially compared to, say, many US states) but it is not automatic like most European countries.
The UK has no register of who lives in what house. So the govt has no clue on many issues. I should point out that the last time I voted I had my “voter card” with me and no one cared.
In Poland, you go with a citizen ID - which only citizens (over 18, there's also optional minor ID but children don't vote) can have as the name suggests and which you should always have with you outside the home, and you go vote in an electoral outpost in your municipality, that's it.
No letters or registrations.
@@10hawell Yeah in Germany you can also show your ID instead of the letter
I remember telling Labour voters who were complaining about this been done in England. That the Labour party had been doing the exact same thing in Scotland by absorbing rural constituencies into towns and cities to ensure they benefited from boundary changes, but they didn't want to hear it.
Wasn’t it the SNP that did that?
@@AT-AT26 SNPeepeepoopoo
@Zefram Cochrane Glad to hear you Labourites don't actually care about democracy. No wonder the British people won't let you anywhere near power lol
I keep on forgetting that voting isn't compulsory in a lot of countries (I live in Australia).
considering how clueless the average voter here is its not a bad thing. voters are only good when they are informed, when most here are brainwashed by murdoch's rags
@@kanedNunable I think it should be mandatory here but there should be an abstain option for people who are clueless
Yeah, because getting uninformed people who don't give a shit to vote is very helpful to some parties. *Cough cough*
@@kanedNunable Agreed! However I would guess that the large number of ill-informed people is countered by the power the smarter people naturally accumulate over time. It all kind of balances out. At least that's what I tell myself to keep myself crying all the time.
@@kanedNunable I think the thing with optional voting though is that the people who turn out are the ones who have really strong opinions about it, which better fits that category of being brainwashed. They vote for extreme candidates who in turn convince them they have to vote next time or their opponent will do something scary and the cycle continues. In Aus our leaders can't be too crazy or they will scare away a lot of moderate voters who only turn up because they're forced to.
Man you should see the gerrymandering in Malaysia.. the largest seat is 10x larger than the smallest seat
"People moving about" is one of the reasons constituency-based voting doesn't work.
WHy not? So long as you periodically adjust the boundaries so that each constituency covers the same number of electors.
In the 2018 proposal they left parts of my town in a tory safe seat and moved a load of villages from said safe seats into the marginal town seat. The redrawing seemed suspicious to say the least, including villages miles away while leaving out estates that were in the town itself.
It seems hard to argue that this shouldn't be done based on eligible voters rather than registered voters or general population
You have to vote to be part of a democracy. What would be the practical use of taking into account hundreds of thousands of people who wont even participate? All in all it works out the same, a smaller number of registered voters deciding on behalf of a larger number of citizens. At least this way it fairly represents the voters, the other way its unfair to voters AND non-voters.
@@Aspartame69 In Croatia, all people are immediately registered by the state when they are 18 years old, and we are using the proportional system with open lists (1 regional constituency = 14 seats in parliament, voters vote both the party and people in the party). Anglosphere way of doing politics and voting has so many flaws and problems, which they never solve.
@@Aspartame69 because people might not feel like they know enough to make a decision. But if they start to get engaged and something happens to make them care then they need an equal say! Some areas are treated better than others different areas have different times where they will care about different issues and have different quantities of people registering to vote.
@@Aspartame69 it may fairly represent the 'voters' but it doesn't fairly represent the PEOPLE
@@Aspartame69 MPs still represent all constituents of their district in parliament, not just the registered voters.
boundary commission did not recommend reduction to 600 - it was in the tory 2010 manifesto
if that was the case it was intresting to note only a few short years later they rejected that option and made it them stick to 650.
Likewise, Clegg didn't veto it because it didn't contain Lords reform, but rather because his execrable Lords reform proposals had been rejected.
@@bigbad25 In 2010 it was seen as consistent with requiring austerity in the rest of the public sector as well. Reducing govt expenditure is not quite the same priority for Boris as it was for Cameron. Of course the fiscal deficit (before the pandemic) was a lot lower than it was in 2010. Not cutting the numbers made it easier to get past backbenchers, esp Conservative ones.
If it’s the “Boundary Commission for England”, how can that affect constituencies in Wales & Scotland?
Because, this itself is mainly about the General Elections and not about the regional assemblies as far as I know.
Because England is the uk to them at least
There's also a separate one for Scotland and Wales, in 2023 they'll all come together and make any changes under a UK review.
@@Alex-cy7wg thanks
Because those barbarians do not matter dear chap. Spot of tea?
Wales: Oh, you're gonna take away 8 of our MP's? Sure, whatever. It isn't like you haven't taken anything else of ours...lately...
First we take your seats, then we take your sheep.
Well, OK, but why should votes in Cardiff be worth 25% more than votes in Bristol? Wales has been hugely overrepresented up to now.
Doesn't stop Wales from being left out and forgotten when it comes to infrastructure development and policy though does it? Population aside as one of the 4 supposedly equal nations of the UK we're now looking at having only 32 seats out of 650. We have virtually no voice in parliament
Depopulation as everyone leaves for opportunities in England? How much of the population of Bristol West are Welsh?
Fact check: Bristol West is actually the second largest constituency with 99,000 voters, the Isle of Wight is by far the largest with 113,000 constituents.
Except that the Isle of Wight was designated an exempt constituency from the population rules and therefore Bristol West being the second largest becomes the largest when this is taken into account. At the next GE there will be 2 Isle of Wight seats.
It wouldn't matter if there was PR.
Really? Didn't you notice the vast difference in the parties that provided MEPs and those that provide MPs? 24% of the vote for UKIP gave them zero seats. FPTP is anti-democratic.
personally, i'd bet STV would be better as a compromise so as to keep local representation. PR only works for small countries such as Israel (just look at Weimar Republic)
It kinda would.
Tories likely wouldn't have won 2017 for one
I think J.J. has used confusing wording. I think he ment to say 'if PR was in use, this boundary change exercise would not be required'. If that's not the case, I apologise.
@Sebastian Sato "there are some countries that use multi-winner constituencies elected by PR instead of using PR nationwide"
as far as I knew, that was STV in a nutshell. but i must be misremembering; i'll be back after I go watch some old school CGP Grey.
As a 16 year old, people below 25 on average have no idea about the country or how politics work, so it doesn’t matter if they aren’t included. If anything the voting age should be upped to 21
You're not wrong about the ignorance of under-25 year olds, but I think you're a tad optimistic about the over-25 year olds - they generally don't have a clue, either.
21 is too lenient. It should be 25. It's scientifically proven that ages younger than this have not got to full mental maturity.
@@harisadu8998 No. No one should vote at all. Autocracy=Stability
ABOLISH FIRST PAST THE POST.
It's time.
I agree with you but the Tories aren't going to abolish it anytime soon, as this system keeps them in power. The way Labour has performed in the last couple of months, I don't think they are in the position to win the next election either. The UK politics needs a complete overhaul, the two parties are not fit for the job, they are old and tired.
Neither Labour nor Tories will back it so with regard to getting a reasonably fair representative system anytime soon, we're a bit stuffed.
Is it time? It's always been time. Will it happen? Not without a truly massive and disruptive grass roots movement.
The last two general elections were two of the most unrepresentative in UK history. The number of voters who got a result they were happy with is *significantly* less than half. How can that happen in a democracy? It can't, is the answer. Because FPTP is not really democracy. FPTP is dictatorship lite.
IRV would improve things considerably, but using STV or MMP would be even better.
@@JimCullen "IRV would improve things considerably, but using STV or MMP would be even better."
We had a referendum on that and the people voted it down sadly. We'd need a decades long campaign to educate people and have them put pressure on the government - only to have them renege like Labour did in the past or Canada under Trudeau. Electoral reform puts people to sleep. It has to be elite led and pushed by the government or there has to an election(s) which is super unfair to put the issue on the map. A crappy govt that is returned by it might serve to fire people up more.
IRV might be what we get if there is outrage as that is the least drastic change for them. STV & MMP would take extraordinary political will.
@@theuglykwan "or there has to an election(s) which is super unfair to put the issue on the map" 2015 was that election. It still didn't help, sadly.
But you're right, there needs to be a massive groundswell campaign. People like you and I can be a small part of that. Hopefully TLDR will be as well, and frankly it was disappointing that they did not once mention the poor representation the current system brings, nor the existence of alternative voting systems, in this video.
Constituency based voting like first past the post seems daft. Why should my vote not matter because my neighbours vote differently from me? Proportional representation is much more fair.
I believe that would be best for the House of Lords. As I can talk my representative for help and to represent my interests.
Your one vote means diddly-squat in both voting systems..
@@jamesgiles6134 To be honest in some constituencies the elections can be really tight, a handful of votes does make a difference
Both combined are possible, if you look over to Germany
@@aetheldan In those cases, FFTP would make your vote count for more than PR
It’s about time! So pleased that it is going to be done by an independent body and politicians don’t get to vote on the final result.
It's the natural result of an electoral commission drawing out boundaries, there was some pretty serious gerrymandering in 2010 and during the New Labour years.
I’ve heard this before in America.
Thanks, you two
Well played 😂😂
Its not gerrymandering if it makes the votes more fair.
@@yungstallion2201 it's not gerrymandering but it's not fair if they only count registered voters.
@@yungstallion2201
Technically it’s still gerrymandering.
Ten years ago (2011) in the UK there was a referendum on changing the current system and a clear majority voted to keep the current system.
The tories delibrately offered the shittiest possible alternative so they wouldn’t lose their advantage of fptp
Because just like Brexit there was a great volume of advertisements that convinced people that Alternate Vote was a terrible system
Please just get rid of districs and just vote propotionally.
It would solve so many problems
@@vanmantalks And create so many more as by having constituencies it allows for someone to be responsible in the region and it gives them a stronger mandate as it was them specifically voted on. Of course yes, the voting issue is still a problem but you can't solve everything in one step.
@@somerandompersonidk2272 those people are called councils, party members just vote with their party 99% of the time anyway
@@samuelthornton9179 I doubt there are more than 500,000 party members (of ALL parties) in a population of 70,000,000.
The perfect (and only) example of pure proportional representation, where the whole country is one district, is Israel.
Just in time for my morning coffee, another great video as always guys
Britain should adopt NZ’s MMP. No wasted votes.
I'd back that - MPs up and down the country do a lot of valuable work for their local constituencies, so I think it is important to have those representatives in parliament, BUT it's silly that governments can win a minority of votes and yet still win 100% of the power
I don't know. Any system where the party chooses the MP for you is open to abuse. Even if it's just a portion of the MPs. First past the post has the huge benefit of every MP being directly accountable to their constituency. If they mess up, they risk byelection.
A candidate that's on top of a voting list could've gotten there though favouritism or some shady deals and promises. At best they end up on the list by being "Yes" men or women to the party leader.
Fun fact, Scotland already uses MMP (or AMS as it is known there) for the Scottish parliament, so it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to extend this to the UK parliament as well
@@rad8825 I agree, I'm not really a fan of party-list proportional systems.
But there are other ways of doing it. For example, the top-up seats could be given to the members of the party who were the _closest_ to winning in their own seats.
@@rad8825 That is a valid concern. You can remediate that with open party list. Overall, I like how MMP works in Scotland for the devolved parliament. I'd go with that in a heartbeat or STV for the UK parliament.
From Australia it appears that there are 2 "England".
London is one, the rest is the other.
You either matter to London, or don't matter.
How wrong is this perception?
I would say that's fair
@Spencer Middleton I was going to say the UK, but we don't see much about the wider UK to be informed enough.
I guess that in itself supports your statement.
As a person in London, can confirm the London Lobbyist groups force this to be the case; Sadly even with us voting heavily for Labour little changes (Even when Conservatives had more power here it did not change.) So it's a Countrywide issue at this point.
yeah, i live in the east midlands and we are always forgotten.
@@kanedNunable me too so can relate
They should abandon first past the post while they're at it and adopt the single transferable vote used in both Ireland and northern Ireland or the mixed member system used in wales and scotland
As Farage had once nervously said when asked the question on transferable voting:
"I don't now how you can turn two into three"
No mixed member. Here in Wales we're considering getting rid of it as it's only slightly better than FPTP
@@diafol666 It should only be rid of if a better alternative is present. Otherwise it's effectively regression.
@@diafol666 Interesting, didn't know that. I more familiar with Germany, where a mixed system does seem to work, but I don't know if there are many differences between the German and the Welsh implementation.
@@venmis137 Very true and mixed member proportional is better than first past the post but it still means that you have representatives who have been elected without the support of the majority of electors
As a UK citizen, our electoral system is dumb and needs serious reform
Why in the world is registration necessary for voting? Seems kinda sus to me tbh
Never registered to vote, but I've voted in every election since I reached voting age. Automatic registration should be the norm.
Because it's administrated by the local authority you live in and each local authority acts differently.
Nooooo, please, we don't need gerrymandering!
Looks like the Tories are reading the same textbook as the Republicans!
How so? They are getting an independent commission to redraw the lines so that everyone's vote holds equal weight not moving lines for no reason to help themselves
@@ryangrange938 May's govt actually tried to vote in the new lines but Conservatives like Boris were against it as he'd lose his seat. The commission is independent but the thing is both parties game the public hearings. It's better than no comission. The 50 seat reduction was a Conservative government desire that the commission had to abide by iirc. So it's not super clear cut. There is a veneer of legitimacy.
So it is like Republican-lite.
If you read the last Tory manifesto you will also find some voter ID and neutering the courts. These are also from the GOP playbook, they just aren't as aggressive about it, just as American parties took time to ramp it up.
Excellent video, looking forward to seeing the new map
And pouring over the details, naturally
Devon wall completely ignores the cultural and national identity of cornwall
Slowly but surely walking into a one-party state.
Pretty much is
Only Boris Johnson can be that thick to say “OK, it’s March 2020 - now I’m free. Nothing special to do”
It was being planned pre-Covid
@@elliotwatson3754 so was his private island holiday. True leadership. Lots of clarity as well.
Time to leave England to itself
Correction. There is not quite "free choice" when you drawing electoral map between population and registered voters. The rule is simple. If in considered country you are automatically registered as voter (when you get certain age or for example when you get your ID), then when the constituencies borders are drawn there is always used population. When the citizen have to do action by himself to register as a voter, then for boundaries drawing is used number of registered voters.
"When you get your ID"? That is only going to work in countries that suffer from ID. The UK isn't one of them.
@@martinkeegan270 Exactly that's my point. That's why UK more or less have to use number of registered voters.
@@PJTakeda you're probably not far off, but they could try using census data or other sources.
@@armadillito And what bearing does census data have to reality? It depends what people write down. It also includes children of less than voting age, and also non-British and non-Irish citizens who are counted in the census but not eligible to vote in national elections.
@@nicks40 it does ask you to state your citizenship etc and so eligibility to vote wouldn't be too hard to determine from the information given. How far you trust any form filled in by members of the public is an interesting question, but I suspect they are overwhelmingly honest; the greater risk is probably people who don't fill out the census.
People saying it will help Scottish independence might be right, but it's essentially a move towards being more democratic.
It would be wrong to prevent such reform, even if it does give more power to the Tories.
Basically, what I'm seeing in the comments is that as soon as you lose in a particular system, it needs to be changed.
@dougbound it's democracy but highly convenient. "Oh the system let's the other guy win even though I used to win with the same system in the past so let me complain about the system now that it delivered a different result".
@dougbound you have the right to speak and I also have the right to call you a hypocrite for it. So yes, I'm pointing out hypocrisy.
@dougbound it is hypocrisy because you don't ask for change when the system was making you win but now you're losing its the system's fault and there needs to be change.
@dougbound Having this conversation on a loop. I've made my point, if you don't get it, I can't do anything further.
At least it keeps Labour out of power.
i agree hahaha
Nit pick. Bristol West is not the largest constituency by electorate. Rather that is the Isle of Wight which has 113,021 voters. Currently the Isle of Wight is not a protected constituency making it the largest. After the boundary changes it will be two smaller constituencies.
Really glad you put this out in such a fair way - I was ready to raise my pitchfork, but now you've explained it - I see the need for it.
If there's any problem it's with our voting system, not the election map.
As a Swiss, I don't get why you would need to register for voting.
If you are eligible for voting, you should be able to vote. I don't get why the UK and the US think voter registration isn't something that can happen automatically.
As a Swede, I concur.
Voting fraud. For people to have faith and trust in a electoral system they need to believe only those eligible to vote do so. How that registration is achieved is open for discussion but in the UK it is voluntary.
20 states in the US have automatic voter registration, and there is a bill in Congress that would (among many other things) make automatic voter registration the law nationwide. Sure, it's not the whole country and there's still a long way to go with voting rights, but there has been significant progress made in the past few years on implementing reforms like automatic registration.
@@Willywin but the state already knows if you're eligible or not (otherwise they can't verify your registration), right?
So why not simply register all eligible voters?
@@SwissSareth I can equally ask - why not leave it to the individual?
Boundary Commission for England, also changes boundaries in Scotland and Wales.
I think they do English local and he whole of the UK then the other ones do it for like Scottish parliament elections and stuff
Yes, "For England", i.e. for England's benefit ;) Perfidious Albion!
Scotland and Wales have their own Boundary Commissions and they all work together to come up with a new constituency map.
omg it's May...
I'd totally forgotten about her xD
This sort of change should be done automatically. The US Constitution requires a Census AND redistricting every ten years. It prevents malapportioned Congressional districts. It was a response to the UK's notorious rotten boroughs. Districts are (relatively) equal with the exception of states that only have one Congressional district. The sort of uneven constituencies normal in the UK would be wildly illegal in the US.
you're not genuinely saying that US congressional districts aren't gerrymandered are you
if we had a proportional voting system these boundary changes wouldn't be a problem
That would cause less political diversity because then you only vote for a few parties rather than individual people. So we could instead use the shortest splitline method to draw the boundaries and send multiple representatives per voting region. Those multiple people would be chosen with preferential voting. And we could also ban all campaigning to give all people a chance no matter their wealth. This would also encourage political diversity which would better represent the people. Through removing money as a factor. Then people wouldn`t need to be in parties so they could think independently. And better represent the people.
Hey picrew with a the LGBT symbol who is likely American.
FPTP is the only reason Labour ever won in Britain. They been the minority party ever since ww2 and ironically under proportional voting the UK would have been ruled constantly by a Conservative Liberal coalition. Its why in the UK their is a conflict on if they should do it on the left.
Yeah but it would also mean we'll always have hung parliaments
@@triplev-th2kw this will cause hung parliament, nothing will get done as too many people have a different idea, but that's not a bad thing either as there's likely to be less government regulation passed lol..
@@triplev-th2kw Yeah. Having to vote for 2 major parties bar a handful of regional interest parties (like in NI and Scotland) is much more "politically diverse" than having options ranging from far left, to left, to moderate left, to center, to moderate right, to right, to far right in a multiparty system with proportional representation.
Something that will never happen in a FPTP government is the left and the right working together. They'll always try to get one over on the other to appease their base. Whereas in PR the parties closer to the center will always remain civil with eachother, because the outcome of a future election might be such that they'd prefer to form a coalition with moderates from the other wing than with extremists from their own. An adversarial government leads to a polarized society. A compromise-based government leads to mutual understanding and unity.
Far-left pisses off the well-off, far-right pisses off the bottom of the pyramid. Logically speaking, you want to piss everyone off in equal measure by finding compromise in the middle.
I didn't even know about this. Thank you TLDR.
I think the Queen should just take charge
1:36 The boundary Commission used the census data from 2000 - no, it used the electoral register from 2000, and the census was in 2001 anyway.
Labour is really awful at picking likeable leaders
Corbyn was very likeable. Labour won't have someone likable to the general public though until the papers decide to give them some good press.
@@tenaciousdean6179 Lowest approval rating of any opposition leader in 50 years
@@aightm8 That doesn't necessarily equate to likability. Likability is more about personality. Approval also considers policy (e.g. stance on Brexit) which, whilst far more important, is a totally different thing. Boris Johnson is very likable but that doesn't mean I approve of him at all or am satisfied with him as a leader.
@@tenaciousdean6179 Corbyn overall was hated, except by his people even his own party thought he too left wing. His approval rating was lowest among opposition leaders albeit there were special circumstances like Brexit.
@@dkoda840 Again I think you're conflating personality with policy, although of course things like liability are incredibly subjective in the first place. A large reason why Hitler was elected is because of his likability and look where his policy took Germany...
Absolutely brilliant idea. I fully support this.
The Isle of Wight has over 110,000 voters and has bean the most underrepresented place in the UK, and 5 times the population then the western Isles which is the smallest Scottish constituency.
Hmmm...Wales has never voted for a Tory government - and guess what we get lumbered with ?
@@dexstewart2450 er, a fucking lunatic who wants to impose a curfew on men?
@@dexstewart2450 'Wales' (and 'England' and 'Scotland' and the rest) has never had a vote for any kind of government. Only voters vote, and plenty of Welsh voters have voted for Conservative governments. You could say that England has never voted (or very rarely) for a Labour government, and yet they get 'lumbered' with one quite often. Just not recently.
Oh how times change...
Does the UK just want us to leave at this point🤣
No, but the Tories do. Without Scottish Labour and/or the SNP, where's the opposition? Keir Starmer? Yeah, right. The Border Commission might be non-partisan, but the decision to block a vote in the Commons isn't.
@@distant_planet7780 the Tories are the main unionist party so I don't get your logic
@@distant_planet7780 if all SNP seats went to labour then the tories would still have won so it’s not our fault that you lot can’t be arsed to vote for anybody else
@@ruairidhdavidson288 You are right - I'm running two issues together that are really separate. Having said that, a lot has changed since 2014. Scottish Conservatives seem to be shifting towards independence, and it's going to be harder to hold England and Scotland together post-Brexit. I'm willing to bet that Johnson's successor will be much more open to indyref2.
@@distant_planet7780 personally I don't think Scottish conservatives are shifting towards independence at all. The polls would probably be different if they were
FPTP is undemocratic. We need Proportional Representation.
No we don’t but we do need a new system. Prop rep isn’t the only other system.
@@Ueiksg No, but it’s the best system.
i live in a small town so why should large cities dictate my local MP
@@lifewhatsoever my problem is that having a party choose mps removes any sense of representation and radicalises them because it’s the parties choice. I really like rank choice systems because not only do you vote for parties you like, you vote against parties you don’t. Prop Rep is a very simplistic system, but still a market improvement from FTPT.
@@Ueiksg That’s not necessarily how it works. There are many different PR systems. Ideally, we should have PR with rank choices but I’m not holding my breath.
Just change to a more sensible voting system and you won't have to worry about gerrymandering ever again.
We've never had to worry about gerrymandering. Malapportionment on the other hand ...
IN USA they call it gerrymandering.
Changing constituency lines means nothing if First Past The Post is not also changed.
it means more likelihood of tory winning the most seats tho. its not about who gets the most votes here. you can actually have more votes and lose in theory in the UK. its down to getting a certain % of seats
@@kanedNunable thank you for agreeing that FPTP needs to change
5:30
Seems like wales country is "very well represented"
Same here in Scotland, eventually we won't have any say while England has 1,000 seats. It's a joke.
I love this discussion, as a citizen of uk & us (maybe Australia too as I was born there, not sure on the rules since I haven’t lived there in decades) the difference between us and uk redistricting is stark. Uk isn’t allowing politicians to draw their own lines to guarantee their re-election and there are fairly decent rules about size & population. Sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to register to vote I’m not sure you’re paying enough attention to civic life to count - it is a bare minimum requirement for gods sake. It would be different if authorities were making it difficult for people to register or worse, certain ethnic/race groups which is something republicans in the US do to great effect to disenfranchise minorities. Conservatives in the UK are very different than conservatives in many other western countries- they currently support what would be considered left wing ideas in most other Anglo countries such as nhs, gay rights/banning conversion therapy (tho on that one they are taking way too long), and state benefits our friends in other countries don’t even get to discuss as a serious option. Point is, they may get a few more seats but history shows that in the uk when a party has worn out its welcome the country on mass swings and votes them out - so clock is ticking and labour with or without lib dems will be in power eventually. Most importantly, it is vital politicians cannot control process of districts being drawn, they have to fight it out fairly and by and large that is something uk does relatively well. As for lords, I used to think it was a good idea to get rid of them but on reflection I actually think it’s a good idea to leave it alone. Another election for upper chamber would only poison well more, though it sounds good having them being elected they are really only able to serve as a brake on commons - it works as designed, they can draw attention to issues by blocking something and make the government explain itself but they are the weaker of the two as it should be - if the citizens representatives (MPs) want something done badly enough they can resubmit and force it through but it always draws a huge amount of attention. I’m actually not that worried by how democracy is functioning in the UK - my other citizenship, jesus, I am truly terrified by the current state of US democracy however.
the republicans disenfranchise certain ethnic/race groups? you have drunk too much of the democrat cool aide.
It's not a case of 'not bothering to register to vote' as it's compulsory in the UK. The local authority sends us a letter every year to confirm who in each house is eligible to vote, and if you move house during that year you can ask to be registered in your new area so that the electoral register is as up-to-date as possible. It also includes 17-year olds who may turn 18 during the currency of that year's register, together with the date of their 18th birthday.
The conservatives are slowly privatising the NHS, don't be fooled
Good way to keep all the states in harmony when there's rumblings of independence in Scotland. Just remove seats from them and give to England. Makes sense to me...can't see how this will backfire at all
@thecazigan28
Pls let it go that way. England no longer needs the Scottish millstone around it’s neck and the Scots would prefer the leash be held by a different hand.
@@Bushflare lol Scotland just wants to get rid of the cancer thats called England
@@alizaidi2893 I guarantee you if you held a referendum in England to kick out Scotland from the union, Scotland would be gone in a fortnight
@@ea4966 lmao nah considering how desperate ultra nationalist and self centered brexit voters are for the glory days of the old British empire i highly doubt that their ego would let them .
@@alizaidi2893
You've got a comfortable little world-view going for you there, don't ya?
Talking about the census, let's show the government the force is strong with the religion of Jedi. May the force be with you
It was funny a few years ago but now that star wars is woke trash, declaring jedi feels wrong. Happy to choose any other fictional religion though like Islam.
@@kekistanihelpdesk8508 😂
For those wondering, at 5:56 they showed the 12000 km^2 slide (5:50) for a split second
Makes me laugh that the government are concerned about Scottish independence and welsh independence so they think “what’s the best way to show them they have a voice in the Union that they are a vital part of it that we are better together? 8 less seats for Wales 2 less for Scotland and 10 more for England that’ll show them we value them!”
You've equivocated government and boundary commission. Watch video again for overview.
@@0w784g it’s true but this makes the union even more unfair than it already is by giving England even more power now. The union is done
It's all dependant on the census results and if they are reducing the number of MPs, then the end result will be that areas who's population is stable will lose seats to areas who's population has increased. So long as England keeps increasing it's population it will continue to draw pollical power away from Wales and Scotland, N Ireland had a lower number of MPs due to our local government. If you look at the Number of MPs from 1922 in Scotland and England. You will see the number of MPs in Scotland fall as England's increased due to differences in population. Think of it this way, If Scotland's voting population was to increase by 20 million people and England population was to remain stable. Then The number of MPs in Scotland would increase while England's would decrease.
I don’t know for sure but wasn’t Scotland already over-represented? People will interpret this is England decreases Scotland’s voice but if they already had more of a voice than they should have this change is fair. Then again perspective is everything especially when talking independence movements.
@@grant6849 Scotland has devolved administration and huge over-representation in Westminster. I love The Jocks, but the electoral unfairness goes in one direction currently - Scotland's.
10 extra Tory MP’s will be bad for the country.
This screws Scotland over abit and majorly screws wales over
Imagine Welsh and Scottish votes being equal to English ones? Truly oppressive.
The Isle of Wight has one MP at the moment so have the western Isles. The population of the Isle of Wight is five times that of the Western Isles. Who's being screwed?
Well, the Tories winning is better than Labour winning.
@@kamanashiskar9203 how? The tories only care for the rich
@@joshuacarre06 The poorer you are, the more likely you are to support the Conservatives. Funny, but there you are.
Is this UK wide or just england?
UK-wide. Each part of the UK has its own Boundary Commission, but each is working to the same rules now.
The boundary review can only be considered "fair" by ignoring the massive prerequisite that we use a highly unrepresentative voting system.
Would have been worth mentioning that for instance in 2019 it took on average 864,743 votes to elect 1 green MP vs 38,300 votes per Conservative MP.
You think thats bad on average you need 3.9 million votes to get a ukip mp.
Popular though she undoubtedly is in Brighton, I'm sure Caroline Lucas didn't accrue anything like 864,743 votes.
@@nicks40 That figure is the national Green vote share. It's just divided by 1 as the Green's only gained 1 MP.
@@TheTrackRecord Yes, I know, but on that basis UKIP needed an infinite number of votes to elect an MP as their haul was zero.
It has also been based on electoral roll rather than census
This whole over complicated system is still so alien to me, a Xenomorph makes more sense.
The funny thing is, one of the arguments people use against other systems is that they are "too complicated". First Past the Post is simple in the sense that it has very simple ballots and a very simple counting method. But it's complicated on a macro scale because there is such a big disconnect between how many votes each party gets and how many seats they win. Which means that the actual act of voting is simple, but using your vote effectively is very complicated. You have to think tactically instead of just voting for who you like the most.
No change is ever made to serve the people.
I think the conservatives wouldn't be doing it if it didn't help them. The scottish nationalist will lose 2 and conservatives gain 8 that is so not fair
This is just correcting what Labour did to borders....It was so bad that the Tories had to be MASSIVELY ahead to win seats, because Liebour had distorted borders horrifically in their favour. Labour were abusing the system to massively increase their seats.
@@brokeandtired That's why the last election was so unrepresentative against the tories, who got far fewer seats than their share of the vote would suggest.
No wait, the exact opposite of that. But it's still fairer because reasons.
I think the first past the post is a dreadful voting system anyway . I am Australian and we use the preferential voting system, much more fair
92 people noted the Americanism of "fill OUT a form"
I am a very outspoken critic of the conservatives but I agree with this we need to update our political system although I do live in a red wall constituency and I would hate for it to be redrawn horribly
Yeah not having an update in 20 years is unacceptable, like how is that not mandatory after a fixed number of years?
Though using only registered voters is absolutely buck wild and stinks of voter manipulation.
@@evilgenius919 maybe they should register then...?
Only Boris Johnson can be that thick to say “OK, it’s March 2020 - now I’m free. Nothing special to do”
@@warbler1984 voter registration may be difficult for some people who are eligible and then there are people like immigrants who aren't eligible to register. Just because someone can't or chooses not to register doesn't mean they shouldn't be counted when assigning districts. Everyone deserves representation.
@@evilgenius919 but if they aren't registered then there going to make no diffrence to which MP gets voted for any party... I mean I hear where you coming from but why take in consideration them if they aren't going to matter.
Until the mainland U.K. starts using something other than first past the post elections here will always be a joke
I was hoping for some juicy new revelation about how the UK was actually almost as bad as the US... And it turns out they are just being fair and reasonable. Oh well.
@Jake I'm highly educated, if that's what you mean
The Boundary Commision does this regularly. The latest recommended changes have been overdue for well over a decade. A pity though that the number of MPs isn't going to be reduced.
This is just correcting what Labour did to borders....It was so bad that the Tories had to be MASSIVELY ahead to win seats, because Liebour had distorted borders horrifically in their favour.
@@brokeandtired and even then neither of them actually need you know, a majority to get the majority in parliament, FPTP is dumb
@@totemictoad4691 ... but possibly better than the other systems.
I think that using registered voters makes the most sense. That said it also makes sense to automatically register citizens to vote when they get their drivers license or other government I.D. (This is how it was done for me).
This keeps areas with a large number of non-voters from diluting the will of the people.
All EU countries automatically register their voters. The UK was exempt from this.
and if you don't get a drivers licence or passport???/ what then
@@paulfranklin8636 Well where I live if you're over 18 and stopped by police you are legally required to have a state issued I.D. "Within a reasonable distance" of yourself (This lets you do things like go to a hotel pool and leave your I.D. in your room, or things like that) so it's not something that is an issue here.
If you don't get a license or Passport, you just get a state I.D. Most university I.D.s count as well since they're government funded.
Honestly in this day and age if you don't have identification, you have bigger problems than not voting.
@@VME-Brad I live in the UK and we are not required to have ID, and there is no state-issued ID unless you want one (such as a passport).
First past the post is just the worst. The boundary lines don't matter if different seats are worth different amounts of votes. We desperately need a more reflective form of electoral system so that Parliament can reflect the will of the people. It seems nuts to me that the Brexit process started with 52% of the electorate and Boris finished it with only 41% of the vote. The majority clearly didn't want the conservatives.
Strictly speaking having all votes be worth the same is terrible for a country because it leads to city-based domination. An example being how in one US blue state the cities voted for water that was needed for the farms to be diverted to the cities, leading the farmers to have to dig deeper and deeper wells as their water table continued to drop unsustainably.
Democracy that is only concerned with the overall numbers and not with representing the needs of all parts of the nation leads to tyranny of the majority and the minority areas end up suffering quite terribly. Another good example is how the state of Oregon is facing a secession of constituencies who want to join Idaho because they just never get the government they vote for because of the overwhelming population of Oregon’s coastal cities, and California is facing similar concerns.
Democracy is a system designed to better represent the needs of the people so sometimes marginalised voices get magnified and privileged voices get muted so that everybody’s needs can be heard.
@@Bushflare Even so I do not see why you would want FPTP, FPTP ends up with a two party system which barely ever really represents even the people who do vote for it. After all, why vote for a 3rd party? That 3rd party never gets in government at all, never gets to do wht you want to do. So you are unheard too the extremest degree. So then you have to pick between the two remaining parties. More a choice of which of these two do I hate the least rather than which one actually represents what I want?
Too bring it back too america, most votes in america don't actually matter at all, how many states in america do not see a serious campaign presence or a candidate visit? Which states get mulitple visits? The ignored states are ignored because they are set in the FPTP system, we know which side they're swinging off the offset, so they just do not matter, they need not be listened too.
@@unfairlive2
Because fptp is a simple and effective system for filling a single seat which is what local governance generally boils down to. It may well not be the best option for handling local issues but it’s certainly an improvement over prop-rep in terms of delivering an effective local representative.
I’m open to reform because it is sorely required but it’s a far more difficult minefield to navigate than most armchair philosophers initially imagine.
Take the UK’s devolved Parliaments and Supreme Court as an example. Labour introduced devolved powers for Wales, Scotland, and N. Ireland where their representatives can vote on U.K. affairs but they also get local control over their own affairs. Sounds good but in practice it means these parliaments can vote on legislation that affects the English but not vice-versa and it also led to these devolved parliaments becoming hotbeds for tribalism and secessionism that don’t really do much good for their local states since it’s more effective for them to blame problems on Westminster than it is for them to solve them with their own powers and it’s hard for voters to tell who really holds authority over which problems.
And our Supreme Court became expressly partisan within 20 years because we don’t have a codified constitution to hold them to. If the U.K. Supreme Court does what the US Supreme Court is currently doing we don’t have any real basis as to wether what they did was correct or not.
So yeah... reform. Good in concept but nigh impossible in execution. Fingers crossed we get something good all the same though.
Glad to see this country further circling this drain 🙃
How does this show that. It's litterly making voting more fair
@@harrynimbley8901
Something something it’s wrong when the Tories do it.
Something something fuck Israel.
@@Bushflare oh shit yeah my bad forgot the conservative party is litterly the embodiment of Satan
@@harrynimbley8901 by not including all eligible voters, and reducing the political voices of an already marginalized voting constituency? Lmao
the census is next year in scotland not this year
Long over due. The northern cities have small constituacys.
The should have reduced the numbers.
Gerrymandering at its perfection.
Tories get more chances?
Moving the goalposts to their advantage.
Who would have thought it ?
Why mention only Conservatives could gain more seats?... Looking at the map linked in the description many Labour strongholds in London are shown as too many voters for the constituency. Meaning both Labour and Conservatives could potentially gain more seats?
The way the new seats are divided is tory benefit only
@@Damo2690 No Labour also. Like i said, Labour held London will be given more seats. Who controls the vast majority of London? Labour... So it goes both ways. This was my point, twisting the narrative to make it look like Torys are doing this for an advantage. When in reality they don't control this and it benefits both Lab and Con.
@@r_c1048 The way the seat will be divided, based on last election results. Only the tories gain seats
BOTH SIDES
@@Damo2690 Seats are not drawn up based on previous election results, but on the numbers of people on the electoral register. Where this number is growing (because people are moving in and houses are being built) then more constituencies are created. Where this number is shrinking (because people are moving out and slums are being demolished) then constituencies are removed. The Commissioners drawing up the boundaries are legally obliged NOT to take any notice of how people have voted. As time goes by, the Labour party accrues an advantage as the seats they tend to represent lose population but still make up one constituency. Periodically this advantage is removed (or, shall we say, diminished) which makes it look like the Conservatives gain seats.
This is why MMP is so much better. You don't even have to worry about having constituencies be evenly sized.
It won't make a huge difference unless we get rid of First Past The Post and end the cycle of most MPs being elected strictly by a plurality.
True it doesn't give a good representation of the voters. But if there is one thing that conservatives and labor agree upon its that they don't want competition. Might be a nice thing to change with a referendum.. I don't know not from the UK, good luck over there.
@@notmyrealnameify Not a great position on Labour's part, Espoo previously when you consider how much more fragmented the UK Left is.
Oh so they can adjust how much they can spend and account for inflation there but they can't account for inflation for the NHS. Absolute joke
also dont forget how inflation in the military, fine, billions for infrastructure in NIreland to buy DUP votes, fine, more nukes, sure,,,,,, turns out when they want to shake it, the magic money tree totally exists
if u arent registered to vote - dont complain
Exactly, if you didn't care enough to have a say before, why care now?
(Probably because young people who often don't bother to vote, tend to vote labour)
How can you not be registered to vote? You have to fill in your form when it comes through your door, and if you miss that or move house you can tell the council to put you on the register.
@@nicks40 bcoz racism bruv innit
The people who are calling this 'gerrymandering' should have a look at how it's done over in the United States, now thats actually gerrymandering.
Actually the Scottish census doesn't occur until next year. So the UK minus Scotland is doing the census this year.
You always do things different to the rest of us ... no matter what 😂🇬🇧
Ry Edwards, of course we do, we're a different Country about to excerpt ourselves as an Independent Nation. 😛
@@johnscrimgeour4888 i wouldnt say anytime soon mate , 52% remain and 48% leave with a decline for yes voters
@@johnscrimgeour4888 different country ayeee ... same people ayeee 😂 but no chance! wee cranckie and the snp are done rule Britannia marra !
In Germany, they use both systems (having fptp and transferable votes), which leads to a big parlament (over 700 seats) and we are automaticaly registered to vote but always have to provide an up to date address. Until a few years ago, the fptp seats gave the conservatives more seats then the representative vote gave them. A court decision however overturned that, saying that the representative vote is more important. To respect the fptp votes, the other parties get more representative seats until the seats match up the general vote. This lead the 698 (299 constituencies) parlament to become even larger. Every party has different ideas how to reduce the parliaments size and they just leave it be for the moment.
We need proportional representation, I hate boundaries that can change here and there's its election rigging
Isn't that the point of moving the boundaries? To make it more representative and proportional?
@@johnhandy3483 but the current system is open to manipulation, and having first past the post only ensure those with the majority have their voice heard, by votes the greens should have way more seats than they do, and if I could vote for them to actually have a chance at a seat I would and many others probably would
@@johnhandy3483 It won't make it more proportional. In the last election the Conservatives got 56% of the seats with 43% of the vote. If these changes would give them even more seats then it makes the results less proportional.
The changes make it fairer in the sense that it will get rid of the advantage Labour has under the current boundaries. But the voting system itself is inherently not proportional, and this won't make it any closer to being proportional.
@@johnhandy3483
FPTP could only ever come close to proportional if you only allowed two candidates per constituency. With, say, 5 candidates it is theoretically possible for an MP to be elected on 20% + 1vote. The actual effect of this is to make it very difficult for new parties to emerge, as voters either side of the centre feel strong pressure to support the major party on “their side”.
Here in NZ we get two votes. Half our MPs are elected to a constituency in the same way as Britain. Our other vote is a straight party vote which determines the overall composition of parliament. We changed from FPTP in 1996 have had coalition governments ever since, until 2020, when Labour won an outright majority.
Generally, people seem to be happy with it. There seems to be a little more willingness to take aboard other points of view, and many people who previously felt completely un-represented (e.g. Greens) now have a voice in Parliament.
There’s virtually no enthusiasm to return to FPTP.
@@q.e.d.9112 On the point of the straight party vote, who decides which people will go forward to Parliament given the numbers decided by the popular votes? And what happens if an MP so elected turns out to be a complete idiot or bastard?
Hey tldr, im scrapping the use of youtube, are you guys on any other platforms?
Got to love gerrymandering, one of those things in politics that should be cheating but is considered ok
But it's the first past the post system that is the real problem and allows for gerrymandering
@@jamesquaine6264 fair enough, gerrymandering is like a symptom of first past the post. Proportional representation is better but not perfect.
Who decides what is cheating?
That's the real cheat code.
We need electoral reform. First past the post is the worst democratic system imaginable.
Your thumbnail says Brexit explained even though this has nothing to do with Brexit
Oh havent you heard the news the whole of the uk has been named to brexit