Problem: A party might be small because, despite having widespread support, it’s seldom sufficiently clustered to get its candidates over the threshold and into Parliament. An example of this is the Liberal Democrats, who got 2.4 million votes, but only eight seats. Another party might be small because it’s not standing candidates in every seat, but where it does, they get in. In that second case, they might not have many – or any! – votes other than in the seats that they won. The SNP are in this second position at the moment, with 1.5 million votes and 56 seats. Their electoral success would mean that their vote weighting was reduced, as they aren’t aggregating many votes from seats they didn’t win.
Response: Actually, I’m not sure why this is a problem – Weighted Votes will mean that each party’s influence in Westminster is proportional to its support across the UK. Their supporters will still benefit from them having an incentive to maximise their vote, which is the point of WV.
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