The system of first-past-the-post (FPTP) used at the general election will be modified.
Their first votes will be for the 40 constituency members, to be chosen for the Assembly by FPTP.
Call the combination "FPTP Plus".For supporters of constitutional reform, such as this newspaper, these are good times.
Duverger's law is strong.But it is also possible to imagine Britain responding to its great political fragmentation by giving up, or modifying, FPTP.
The other big innovation and it was fundamental to the creation of the coalition involves holding a referendum on scrapping Britain's first-past-the-post voting (FPTP) system in favour of an "alternative vote" approach.
But chance always has a role to play.The fact that an FPTP system like that of New Zealand before the 1990s so majoritarian people called it "more Westminster than Westminster"—gave way fairly easily to a form of PR suggests the same could happen in Britain, too.
The key explanation for the current frenzy of political reform is the existence of Britain's first full coalition government since the second world war.The Lib Dems have long hated FPTP.
The ERS insists that the general election should have been the final nail in the coffin for FPTP, but the Conservative party has expressed no desire to change the system.
"Scottish Labour mistook its own strength because of FPTP [first past the post], which allowed it to dominate even though it never won a majority," he explains.
"Because FPTP is a winner takes all system, votes for the losing candidates are not taken into account in any way — something which, when replicated nationally leads to millions of unrepresented voters.
As I write in the review:...it is a commonplace among the political classes that AV matters because it would hand the Lib Dems perhaps 20 more seats than FPTP, a system that brutally disfavours smaller partiesNot so fast, says the professor.
