Proportional representation won't magically cure all of our country's political ills. But a switch from First Past the Post to a more proportional system would have some profound effects.

EVERYONE COULD VOTE FOR THE PARTY THEY SUPPORT

One of the worst things about FPTP is that it encourages tactical voting - people vote not for the party they support, but for the party they think is most likely to beat the party they hate the most.

In a PR voting system, everyone would have the incentive to make a positive choice for the party whose policies they support. No more voting for a candidate that you know is going to lose anyway, and no more voting for a party you don't support because you have no other realistic choice.

It's not hard to understand why turnout tends to be higher in countries that use PR, than in countries that use FPTP.

Under a list system, everyone has a clear incentive to vote for the party they support.

Under AMS, people might vote tactically at constituency level, but everyone would have a chance to vote honestly at regional level. Under STV, people are free to vote according to their preferences: if they vote for a candidate that doesn't get elected, their second choice vote will count.

EVERYONE'S VOTE WOULD COUNT

Under FPTP, your vote is effectively wasted if you:

  • voted for a candidate who didn't win
  • voted for a candidate who won by a large majority (ie, a candidate who won, but didn't really need your vote in order to win)
  • didn't bother voting because you knew in advance that your vote wouldn't count
  • and arguably, your vote is also wasted if you voted tactically for a candidate you didn't fully support

Under FPTP, the only votes that really count are votes cast in a small number of marginal seats. The political parties know this, and focus their policies and their campaigning efforts on voters in these marginal seats.

In a democracy, it's a no-brainer that every vote should count. This isn't some outlandish concept - it should be every citizen's most basic and fundamental right.

No voting system in the world can ensure that absolutely everyone's vote counts. Wherever you live, if you vote for a party that only gets about 10 votes, your vote is will be wasted. But a good PR system ensures that virtually all votes count.

Imagine waking up on the morning of polling day and knowing your vote would count as much as everyone else's vote, no matter where you live.

  • Everyone would have an incentive to get out and vote
  • Parties would have to campaign in all parts of the country, not just marginal constituencies
  • Local parties would be energised - there would be no "dead zones" where campaigning is condemned to be fruitless
  • List systems do best at ensuring that everyone's vote counts equally - though they don't have the constituency link that many British people like
  • AMS systems with a large number of top-up MPs do very well at ensuring that all votes count equally. AMS systems with fewer top-up MPs do less well. But any AMS system does better than FPTP
  • STV may be less proportional than some other systems, if it is used in small electoral areas and if proportionality is measured on the basis of first-preference votes. But STV really comes into its own by ensuring that  even if a person's first-choice candidate or party didn't win, their second or subsequent preference will be taken into account

FEWER RIGHTWING GOVERNMENTS

Over the past 100 years, FPTP has given the UK about twice as many Tory as Labour governments. At some of those elections, more people voted for left-of-centre parties than for right-of-centre parties; on those occasions, a PR voting system would have given us left-of-centre coalition governments.

Research shows that on average, PR systems produce fewer rightwing governments than FPTP systems.

We can't say for certain what the outcome of a particular election would have been under a PR voting system, because many people would probably have cast their votes differently. For example, many more people would have voted for the Greens under PR, than actually voted Green under FPTP. But most experts agree that the UK would almost certainly have had more leftwing governments under PR, and fewer rightwing ones.

GOVERNMENTS THAT A MAJORITY OF PEOPLE VOTED FOR

As Labour supporters, we know what it feels like to wake up on the morning after a Conservative election victory, knowing we have to put up with the Tories for another five years. And what makes it worse is that most Tory governments have been elected when most people in the country voted for a left-of-centre party.

If we switched to PR, rightwing governments would still sometimes be elected. But these would be governments that had gained the support of a majority of voters on election day. They would have won fairly. As Labour voters that may not be the outcome we'd want, but it's one we'd be able to live with.

PARTIES WOULD CAMPAIGN FAIRLY AND HONESTLY

Are you sick of seeing leaflets and posters proclaiming "Lib Dems winning here", or "Only the Lib Dems can beat the Tories here"? These captions, (often entirely untrue) are attempts to get people to vote tactically. Under PR systems, they would all but disappear.

Are you sick of Labour Party campaigns attacking parties like the Green Party and the Lib Dems, whose policies are in many ways pretty close to Labour's own policies, rather than attacking the Tories and UKIP? This is particularly common in local campaigns, and it happens because each party has the best chance of winning if it attacks its most dangerous rival - which could be a party with a similar programme.

And are you sick of safe seats being all but ignored at election time, while all the parties' resources are poured into key marginals? In a PR system where all votes counted equally, parties would have to make their campaigns relevant to people in all parts of the country and to all demographic groups.