My Right Wing Agenda

Just read an interesting Blog post on Nick Webs blog regarding Proportional Rep... And it brings something back to mind... our SW MEPs are elected on a proportional representation system. We have just ranked our candidates. In the Tory party apparently the number 2 slot goes to a girl... now I don't think this is fair... in the South West we have two female candidates Julie and Zehra. It wouldn't matter if they came out last and second to last, the higher of the two would be our number 2... Now as it happens the Results have been released and Julie is at number 2 I'm not sure whether she was actually ranked number two or not, but by the by... she will be our Second MEP..

This brought me on to remembering I've only voted in one MEP election so far... and as I recall I actually voted for people... in my case all tory.. but that's not how everyone votes and here begins the problem... you see if a candidate was at the bottom of the Party list but actually got a larger (than other candidates from that party) vote they still wouldn't get in I know in the south west we will get 2 for sure and probably 3 a miracle for more!! So say Zehra gets more votes than say Julie she wouldn't get in because the votes are applied to the party and they are elected in order of rank... In My humble opinion this seems far less democratic than our current first past the post system, hum and the lib-dem's want this in place of first past the post??? Doesn't the populous already feel disconnected enough from the politicians if we moved to this sort of system it would surely be even more disconnected... People should have the option to vote for People because of the person, and not just because of the party they belong to.

To be honest I didn't like the way we ranked our candidates for the MEP seat, and I don't like the fact that we are not getting to actually vote for the people we want as MEPs.. surely each party should just put up as many candidates as there are seats available, and the top 6 get the seats... that way it goes on the people who actually stand... if we vote for individuals then we are more likely to feel connected to them.. in our recent CF elections I basically voted for the people that I had met / heard about.