The crossparty backbench attempt to elect the Greater London Assembly by First Past The Post does strike me as retrograde, doomed, and a waste of parliamentary time.
But I am fairly agnostic as to electoral systems in general.
I cannot for the life of me see how anything other than the current one could work in, say, Copeland. Or, indeed, in this constituency.
Some Scottish municipal wards are now larger than Luxembourg.
I voted Yes in the AV referendum. But I could just as easily have voted No, and I did not weep at the result.
It is not disenfranchisement to vote for an unsuccessful candidate. It is just voting for an unsuccessful candidate. Disenfranchisement is having no vote at all.
The thing that makes some people's votes count far less than others' is not how those votes are cast or counted.
It is that some people are far richer, and thus some people are far poorer, than others.
The power of enormous wealth, and the powerlessness of extreme poverty, make universal suffrage effectively meaningless.
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