Make UK elections more democratic with proportional representation

In the UK election results announced today, parties besides Labour and Conservatives got 33% of the votes. However, they will only be represented as 15% of the members of parliament. This means that the voices in Parliament do not represent the views of the British public.

Proportional Representation (PR) is an alternative system which would mean that Parliamentary representatives are selected based on how many votes their party gets across the whole country. This is the system used successfully in Australia, Norway, Iceland and many other countries.

In the current UK system, anti-austerity party The Green Party got 3.8% of the votes and only one seat out of 650 in Parliament (0.15% of seats). In PR, they would have got the equivalent of 25 seats, giving them significantly more power in Parliament to represent voters' views. They'd likely get even more because people would have no need to do 'tactical voting' — where people vote for a less preferred party because it has more chance of getting a seat in the current system.

Whilst PR benefits smaller parties on both ends of the political spectrum, it is clearly more democratic and would create a fairer electoral system for the UK. PR also encourages politicians to work together, rather than constantly swinging back and forth, which allows for more long term thinking, rather than constantly thinking about winning the next election.

Please sign the petition for Proportional Representation in UK Parliament now!

Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, said, “I believe strongly in proportional representation. I believe there should be a direct relationship between the percentage of votes a party wins and the percentage of seats they win in whatever parliament the election is for".