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Was the 2015 election the most unfair ever?
Campaigners argue that the recent election 'disenfranchised millions', underlining the need for a better system
A report by the Electoral Reform Society has criticised the "divisive and disproportionate" results of the 2015 general election and highlighted how an alternative voting system could have returned a very different result.
The report, titled The 2015 General Election: A Voting System in Crisis, reveals how the election would have looked if Britain did not use the first-past-the-post system, which many criticised after Ukip and the Greens took almost five million votes between them, but only managed to get one MP each.
Some of the report's key findings include:
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50 per cent of votes in the election (22m) went to losing candidates, while 74 per cent of votes (15m) were 'wasted'
Over 9 per cent of voters (2.8m) were likely to have voted 'tactically'
Under a more proportional voting system – the single transferable vote – the Conservatives would have won 276 seats to Labour's 236, while the SNP would have secured 34, Ukip 54 and the Lib Dems 26. The Greens would have won two more seats – one in Bristol and one in London.
This election saw an MP win on the lowest vote share in electoral history – 24.5 per cent in South Belfast
331 of 650 MPs were elected with less than 50 per cent of the vote, and 191 with less than 30 per cent.
Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of the ERS, said: "This report shows definitively that our voting system is bust. May 7 was the most disproportionate election in British history – and it's about time we had a fairer system for electing our MPs."
Ghose said that the fact that nearly three quarters of votes were "wasted" – which the report defines as people either voting for a losing candidate or providing surplus votes to a winning candidate – shows the system is both "archaic and divisive" and "leaves millions disenfranchised and forces millions more to feel that they have to vote for a 'lesser evil' – instead of who they really support."
But Labour MP Dame Margaret Beckett said that the current system was preferable to the alternatives because it tended to return the result the electorate wants, the BBC reports.
"One of the virtues of our present system is that the British people understand it, they know how to work it. In 2010 they didn't like any of us and they didn't give any of us a majority," she said.
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"But in 2015 they said 'hang on a minute, we'd rather have a majority government of one or the other, than a mess'."
