Some thoughts on the reforms needed to the electoral system

This blog posting may come across as a bit of a lazy piece of work seeing as how it will be, more or less, a list of the reforms I believe are needed in the electoral system in the UK.  I will fill in more details in a later posting but I want to get the bare bones of my ideas ‘out there’ so that readers can post their comments on my ideas and add any suggestions of their own.

I have always intended this blog to be a forum for political and electoral change and want people to contribute their comments and suggestions or even write for this blog so that interested parties can engage in a dialogue as to what reforms are needed and how they can be achieved.

As I haven’t had any experience in running a multi-writer blog I have no idea how I can open up the blog for other writers to post directly so I have set up an e-mail address specifically for people to send their blogs to me for posting until I can sort out proper access.  I have also been made aware of problems in posting comments so, if you have a problem posting comments, you can use the same e-mail address or try typing up your comment in a word processor and then cut and paste it into the comment box.

The e-mail address to send your contributions/comments/suggestions is vor.comments@gmail.com.  Please include your name/pseudonym with your submission so that you can get your ‘by-line’.

So, let’s get started, shall we?

Valen’s suggestions for electoral reform

1. Scrap the ‘First-Past-The-Post’ system in favour of Proportional Representation 
2. Change the funding of political parties so that all donations to such organisations are put in a central fund and distributed to all political parties on an equal shares basis 
3. Change the rules on how much can be spent on promotional materials/events 
4. At General Elections, a single publication will be distributed that contains the manifestos of all the parties with the various strands of policy given separate sections
5. Manifesto pledges can only be added to the multi-party manifesto publication if they have realistic and independently verified funding strategies to pay for them
6. Election campaigns to be fought positively based on policies and no character assassination, scaremongering or divisive tactics 
7. Election campaigns must be fought honestly and focus on independently verified facts not opinions
8. Any breach of the rules will result in a 10% deduction in any votes cast for the party who broke the rules which will be evenly distributed to the other parties
9. People standing for the post of Member of Parliament must have been born and/or lived in the constituency in which they are standing for a minimum of 10 years 
10. Although there would be the ruling on who may stand in a constituency (point 9 above), all parties (except nationalist ones outside of their country) must be on the ballot paper so that voters can vote for the party of their choice and not settle for a tactical or second choice vote

I think that’ll do for a start, don’t you?

Please send your comments and suggestions to me via the comments section on the blog or via the e-mail address given above.