Proportional Representation vs Electoral Collages

by Simon 109 Replies latest jw friends

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  Simon

  The craziness of first-past-the-post elections ...

  We'll no doubt have to now live through the Scotts demanding another referendum, because we may take their lands, but we will never take their FREEDOM! And so they want to be free of the UK, where they have a disproportionate influence in parliament, and be a little dot that's part of the EU. Yup, freedom.

  But anyway, as it stands right now they have 48 seats after getting 1.2m votes

  Pretty good eh? But them the Liberal Democrats got 3x that many votes yet only 11 seats

  But it gets worse. The Unionists in NI get 8 seats with 245k votes, Sinn Fein 6 seats with 160k votes and the National Consonant Party, Plaid Cymru, get 4 with 150K.

  The Brexit party got more than all those combined, 642k votes, but zero representation.

  Heck, the Green party, as much as I think they're knobs, got 860k votes and a single seat.

  Labour only got 10x that many votes but 200x as many seats.

  It's the tyranny of the majority, systems that favour concentrations of voters, particularly in large cities. Yet at the same time the electoral system also prevents the alternative - a few small highly populated areas deciding everything. How long would it be before they decided that government policy was what suited them specifically at the expense of everyone else?

  We'll hear the Scotts whine non stop until they have another referendum, but the reality is they have disproportionate influence and power, all the minority regions do, they would be mad to piss that away and everyone else would be mad to try and stop them.

  https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2019/results
  
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  slimboyfat

  Scots voted to stay in the EU but are being dragged out against our will. Scots voted to remove Boris Johnson as prime minister but he will return with a huge majority from England. Where is the power? Scotland has no influence in the UK.

  Scotland doesn’t need or want power in over the rest of the UK. It should have the power to choose its own future, no more and no less. There is something wrong with a system where a country always votes for a left of centre government but it must have a right of centre government becuase its larger neighbour outnumbers it. If England wants to be out of the EU and have Boris Johnson as prime minister it should be allowed to do so. Scotland also has a right to have a say over its own future in a referendum the SNP won a mandate for in four elections now in 2016, 2017 and twice in 2019. If elections mean anything then Scotland has a right over its own future, which it has voted for 4 times in three years.
• 

  road to nowhere

  Big problem with a bully majority not considering minority rights. Comes from both sides
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  minimus

  Looks like the Scots will have to grin and bear. It could be a lot worse.
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  Simon

  Scots voted to stay in the EU but are being dragged out against our will.

  So do individuals get to leave the EU? Maybe at the street level? Or town?

  They are part of a country and it was a country-wide referendum.

  Scots voted to remove Boris Johnson as prime minister but he will return with a huge majority from England. Where is the power? Scotland has no influence in the UK.

  Don't they get to vote in the UK parliament? If so, why do they get so many seats? Why do they get to vote policies in for themselves that they don't pay for?

  Scotland doesn’t need or want power in over the rest of the UK. It should have the power to choose its own future, no more and no less.

  And they chose to give that choice to someone else, even further away with less interest in them doing well.

  There is something wrong with a system where a country always votes for a left of centre government but it must have a right of centre government becuase its larger neighbour outnumbers it.

  LOL, wait till you're a tiny dot part of Europe, see how much autonomy you have.

  If England wants to be out of the EU and have Boris Johnson as prime minister it should be allowed to do so. Scotland also has a right to have a say over its own future in a referendum the SNP won a mandate for in four elections now in 2016, 2017 and twice in 2019. If elections mean anything then Scotland has a right over its own future, which it has voted for 4 times in three years.

  People voted to be part of the UK. If you now don't like the decisions that the UK made, in one single election, then what do you think being part of the EU will mean?

  You'll be their bitch. You'll be a place to dump immigrants. Which means there will end up with a border between the rest of the UK
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  slimboyfat

  Ireland has a veto over any deal the EU makes with the UK. Scotland has no veto over any deal the UK makes with the EU. So which union respects its member state more?

  So do individuals get to leave the EU? Maybe at the street level? Or town?

  Scotland is a country not a street. In 1707 Scotland voted to for a union of Scottish and English parliaments. It didn’t cease to exist as a county. Until 2016 all UK governments including even Thatcher accepted the right of Scotland to decide its own future. If Johnson now says Scotland has no right to decide its future it changes the nature of the union from consent to coercion.
  
  
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  LoveUniHateExams

  @SBF - the problem for the SNP and Scots who want to leave the UK is that they've had that referendum in 2014 and voted to remain in the UK.

  Scotland has decided its future. You're moaning because the referendum didn't go the way you wanted.
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  slimboyfat

  If Labour won the election in England then England would have had another referendum on the EU. The SNP has won four elections in Scotland since 2016 to have a referendum on independence. This is second class democracy. Yet it is still told a vote from 2014 counts more than the fresh mandate for a vote on our future.

  Scotland has voted four times to have its own say on its future. Is there ANY democratic mandate for an independence referendum in Scotland that the UK would respect? Is this a democracy or not?
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  LoveUniHateExams

  Is there ANY democratic mandate for an independence referendum in Scotland that the UK would respect? - how often do you want UK independence referendums?

  Every 5 years?

  If Scotland had a second UK indy ref and chose again to remain in the UK, would you and Wee Jimmy Krankie accept the result and shut up about it?

  The 2014 UK independence referendum was marketed as a once in a generation event.
  
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  slimboyfat

  People should be able to get a referendum if they vote for one. England voted against having another EU referendum and Scotland voted in favour of having another independence referendum. Simple as that.

  If Scotland wanted no further say on its future it could have voted accordingly. It is for Scotland to decide if it wants another referendum because of the new circumstances. Will the election result be respected or not?

  The Tories in Scotland said vote Tory to stop another independence referendum. They lost more than half their seats and the SNP won a landslide. If you believe in democracy that settles the matter of whether there should be a referendum.