How are you voting today?

Got 10 minutes left to vote. Still not going to happen.

Blah, blah, I have no right to moan then if I don’t express my vote. Whatever. All on the list are corrupt or useless anyway.

Whatever. All on the list are corrupt or useless anyway.

You didn’t fancy standing? Or are all your neighbours only interested in voting for corrupt or useless candidates?

Voted Green in the end.. Mainly because I know the candidate and how good she would be if elected.

Local: Green Party

Welsh Assembly : Plaid

Couldn’t double green in my constituency sadly. Can’t stand the snp so in tribute to the late great chazza went lib dem for local

Voted nealry a week ago by post. Parish Council was the best 13 candidates and you can vote for 12 – I voted for the 10 independents – skipped the 3 Lib Dems

Changed my vote last minute, went Spoiled/RISE.

They’re a new party, who won’t win a seat, but I reckoned it worthwhile to contribute towards a wee morale boost.

So who voted UKIP in Wales ? ITV predicting they will win 8 seats in the Welsh Assembly

I voted against the majority in the North East … 😈

We went and voted for our PCC; I disagree with the position, but as it’s not going away I’d rather the slimy tory didn’t get it.

It was just the PCC vote here; it was eye opening to see how few crossed out names there were, my wife and I may have totally swung the whole thing with twenty minutes to go!

Ronnie the Crofter for me!

(Couldn’t vote SNP as the local candidate is a Creationist. We need people who listen to scientists in power, not airheads).

As mefty points out FPTP makes more sense the smaller the constituency – it makes less sense in larger constituencies.

The counter-argument to that is that it’s easier to merge smaller constituencies into the larger ones needed for a more proportional system.

Do the Irish, the Kiwis or the Germans worry about the ‘constituency link’?

And if a party gets an average 60% of the vote in a local council election then it makes sense that the people are represented by a councillor from the party which the majority has voted for.

While I agree 60% of the vote should give a majority (and under FTPT would rightly result in a constituency candidate being elected), across a whole city it’s not right that the view of the 40% who didn’t vote for the party in power aren’t represented at all, nor is it right that there’s no opposition on the council.

Ukip got 13% of vote in Wales, similar to general election but with proportional representation they’ll end up with 5 – 8 ? seats.

Glad Corbyn survives but media still got there claws out.

it’s not right that the view of the 40% who didn’t vote for the party in power aren’t represented at all

They are represented, but not necessarily by someone who they voted for.

Looks like I’m going to get the result I wanted and predicted. Minority SNP government with a Green tinge.

Great – I live in a ward that is apparently in the top 7% in terms of deprivation and the winner is…. Conservative!

Facepalm.

Sounds like the previous incumbents haven’t done such a great job then.

Glad Corbyn survives but media Labour MPs still got there claws out.

Great – I live in a ward that is apparently in the top 7% in terms of deprivation and the winner is…. Conservative!

@pomdo that would be interesting to understand why ? Poorer people not voting at all, better off habe perception that prior representatives have not done enough to tackle the issue ?

Sounds like the previous incumbents haven’t done such a great job then.

D’you know, I think we were Conservative before. It’s made me think about joining a party.

Funnily enough, a friend of a friend was out leafleting with the Conservative nominee on Wednesday – she had a puncture and couldn’t get the trim off to change the wheel, so he drove off and left her to it. Nice.

Pretty impressive results (so far) for Labour considering just about every single media outlet was foretelling their downfall in a jamba-esque frenzy pre-election.

Our local ward had a 40% swing to Labour…

Well a quite interesting result in our constituency. A massive swing away from labour, who are normally nailed on, in a ward with an enormous Jewish community. Nobody has the remotest idea why….

in a ward with an enormous Jewish community

Me too…-still waiting on results here.

I’m relieved we’ve gotten rid of Boris as mayor….Unfortunately I fear he may be back as PM very soon.

Forgot to vote, first time ever! Too busy quaffing vino in the garden. The right people won anyway in our district so I don’t feel to guilty.

@pomdo that would be interesting to understand why ? Poorer people not voting at all, better off habe perception that prior representatives have not done enough to tackle the issue ?

Be interested to know myself – very roughly, 4600 votes cast out of what I’m thinking is around 19000 voters (based on my working out from old census data and adding a bit on therefore +/- ooo, I’m gonna say 25% to be on the safe side). Turnout percentage in Birmingham as whole was 31.88% apparently, so quite a bit lower round by us.

The crooked D’Hondt system gives us this result in the Highlands:
Tories: 3 Seats Votes 44,693 21.8%
Labour: 2 Seats Votes 22,894 11.2%
SNP: 1 Seat Votes 81,600 39.7%

That’s right.

With 39.7% of the vote the SNP got 1 seat, but with half that (21.8%) the Tories got 3 seats. and with a quarter of that (11.2) Labour got 2 seats.

In effect 1 Tory vote cancels out 6 SNP votes, or 1 Labour vote cancels out 4 SNP votes

If that isn’t a crooked system I don’t know what is.

That sort of corrupt system has triggered revolutions elsewhere.

You do not have a democracy when one person’s vote does not have the same value as another’s.

(Westminster specified at devolution that the Scottish voting system prevent there ever being an SNP majority in Scotland)

The SNP won 7 out of 8 of the constituencies so have 8 MSPs for the region more than twice the number the Tories got, yet their vote was less than twice. That is how D’Hondt works and seems pretty reasonable to me.

EDIT: Actually 6 out of 8, so 7 in total – conclusion still stands.

All PR voting systems are crap. This one is just less crap than some of the others – and it’s still far better than FPTP

With labour now gubbed in Scotland ,all the secret Tories came out the closet. 😉

Turnout in Bristol Mayoral election up to 45ish% from 28ish% previously. A fairly big old hike. Counting doesn’t start till tomorrow but locally Labour are sounding confident for Marvin.

epicyclo – Member
BoardinBob – Member
I won’t vote for the SNP. Anything else is pointless. I’m not going to bother my arse.
On behalf of all Scots wanting to live in a country not ruled from elsewhere, thank you.

Don’t worry, my vote was put to good use in the referendum 😉

That sort of corrupt system has triggered revolutions elsewhere.

How did corruption take a part in it? I’m really not sure there is actually corruption taking place in Highland local politics.

Westminster specified at devolution that the Scottish voting system prevent there ever being an SNP majority in Scotland

Errr, we’ve just had years of an SNP majority, and it was only two seats short this time. Where do you get your facts from?

can’t believe people voted tory, do they not see the news?

turn out in my area was 45% which is pretty shocking given its a vote for who controls the country. Don’t understand the people that don’t vote

epicyclo – Member

The crooked D’Hondt system gives us this result in the Highlands:
Tories: 3 Seats Votes 44,693 21.8%
Labour: 2 Seats Votes 22,894 11.2%
SNP: 1 Seat Votes 81,600 39.7%

That’s right.

With 39.7% of the vote the SNP got 1 seat, but with half that (21.8%) the Tories got 3 seats. and with a quarter of that (11.2) Labour got 2 seats.

That’s just the regional vote though. You need to take into account the constituency seats also. Where the SNP took 59/73 seats, with 46.5% of the vote. One balances (or is intended to balance) the other.

This isn’t exact numbers but from a quick look it looks like the snp got about 44% of the votes cast, and about 48% of seats. So quit yer cryin.

With labour now gubbed in Scotland ,all the secret Tories came out the closet.

Scottish politics has changed it is lining up more along the lines of Independence (SNP) Vs Unionism (Cons), it suits both parties to play it this way as they have a simple, strong message to project.

Labour conversely don’t know what they want to be and have to win back a split vote. As a strategist it must be your worst nightmare, you need policies that will get people to return from the both the SNP and Con folds.

Scotland is interesting – one party talking Tory policies and the other one actually implementing them. Woe is labour in contrast!!!

Next Prime Minister anyone?

bigjim – Member
‘That sort of corrupt system has triggered revolutions elsewhere.’
How did corruption take a part in it? I’m really not sure there is actually corruption taking place in Highland local politics.

I have nothing against the actions of any of the Highland candidates.

It’s the d’Hondt voting system which is corrupt, not the people. It a separate vote used for the regions in Scotland. (We use FPTP for the constituencies.)

Any voting method that gives more value to one person’s vote than another person’s vote is a corrupt system.

FPTP does this as only the votes of winners have any merit^ and the winner* almost never [ was it once??] get 50% of the votes cast.

Secondly we can see how many votes are required to get an MP for each party – its never the same number for all parties with a constituency model

All we can do is try to make the unfairness as fair as possible
I agree the scottish system was designed to create hung parliaments so it actually tried to be unfair

^ i always tactically vote, with FPTP, as anything else is a total waste of time. PR does at least allow me to vote honestly
*ie the party that forms the govt

Any voting method that gives more value to one person’s vote than another person’s vote is a corrupt system.

😯

And how would you propose to solve this conundrum?