Each party is allocated all the votes that were cast for them, whether in places where they won or where they lost, and shares them among their MPs. So all the Green votes in (say) Hartlepool or Falkirk are bundled up and (in this parliament) Caroline Lucas casts all 1,157,613 of them.
This would mean that, in this parliament, a Conservative MP gets to wield a vote worth 34,244, a Labour MP’s vote is worth 40,290, and Douglas Carswell gets a hefty 3,881,129. Now, I hate the idea of Carswell having four million votes, but his party won those votes, and those voters deserve to have their voice heard. If they are not heard, the system is maximising the utility of people who support establishment parties. For the greatest happiness of the greatest number, our utility function must include the happiness of UKIP supporters.
Why do I hate the idea of one MP – whether Carswell or Lucas – representing the interests of a million or four million supporters? In one sense it’s no different from sharing that job across a dozen or a hundred or three hundred MPs. Except that, of course, having three hundred MPs means that extremists within a party don’t get things all their own way, they are moderated by their moderates. A single person wielding four million votes may be swayed by some idée fixe - or by lobbyists, or by misunderstanding, or by money – and just press on regardless in a way that a member of a larger party can’t.
What we have here is an inevitable contradiction. Proportional representation, combined with retaining the one-constituency-one-member link, unavoidably means that an underrepresented party has to have more power per MP than an over-represented party.
If we want to prevent some consequences of a system, we should look at what laws, and what transparency, will produce the effect we want. The arguments for getting money out of politics (including state-funding of parties) are well-known. I won't go over them here.
Overall, WV has all the benefits of other PR voting systems; but it still maintains the constituency link, doesn't require voters to learn a new system, doesn't create two classes of MPs, and enforces near-perfect proportionality . In WV the constituency link can be kept, because the power of a party in parliament is not governed by how many MPs it has, but by how many votes it has. This also reduces the importance of boundary changes and encourages honest (i.e. non-tactical) voting. As long as the party you support can get at least one MP, your vote counts.
(What if a party can't get even one MP? I would propose that a small party could do a deal with a slightly larger one that allows them to allocate their votes to that party’s MPs, though both TUSC and Britain First might have problems finding anyone willing to be associated with them. More about this in a later post.)
But, crucially (for me) WV means that the temptation to campaign only to floating voters, in marginal constituencies, is greatly weakened. The touchstone of electoral success would become the greatest happiness of the greatest number, not the greatest happiness of the most fickle.
For example, at the moment there is no benefit to the Labour Party in getting more people in Barnsley to vote Labour. Dan Jarvis already gets 55% of the vote, and would actually only need 33% to still win and be the MP, because of how the other parties divide up the vote. But with WV, it makes sense to get your voters out in numbers. Just edging it is not enough, you want the weight. The result is that candidates are competing for everyone's vote, not just their main opponent's soft fringe. Voters get wooed. Hard.
And, knowing that their vote has an effect, voters will be more likely to turn out. A Labour Party supporter in Maidenhead (Conservative majority of 29,000) has very little incentive to turn out and vote, other than as a slightly ineffectual protest. But under WV, their vote is just as useful (in terms of electing a government) as that of a Labour Party member in Gower (Conservative majority of 27). All those people, of whatever party, who say “why bother voting? My vote won’t make any difference” will now see that – whether they are voting for or against a dead cert in their own constituency – their vote will strengthen the hand of their favoured party.
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