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Electoral reform activists have launched an online tool urging people to “swap their votes” in support of candidates who support proportional representation.
of United in victory The site seeks to stop the centre-left vote being split between Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats by encouraging strategic voting in Conservative-held seats.
However, the bill would favour candidates who support an overhaul of the way the UK’s voting system works, including abolishing single-member constituencies (FPTP) and replacing it with a “proportional representation” system.
Neither the Labour nor the Conservative parties have said they want to abolish single-member districts, which tend to favour larger parties.
But smaller parties have long supported changing the system to mirror the way votes are counted in many European countries.
Compass, the strategic voting campaign group pushing for the reform, said it hoped the tool would help increase the number of MPs who support electoral reform.
The spokesperson said: I The general election “presents a real opportunity for a fundamental reshaping of British politics.”
“But to get there, we need to support candidates who support systemic change; otherwise we will remain trapped in a never-ending cycle of single-member districts that frustrates the will of voters and denies them the opportunity to exercise meaningful choice,” they added.
A website has already been set up to help people find out who to vote for in their constituency if they want to oust a Conservative candidate.
It has also identified more than 60 constituencies to target, including Steve Baker’s constituency of Wycombe, Jeremy Hunt’s constituency of Godalming and Ash and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s constituency of North East Somerset.
The party is currently putting together a further 30 constituencies where candidates have stated they support electoral reform.
The tool asks voters whether they would be willing to “swap” their vote in another constituency to increase the chances of a candidate who supports a move to proportional representation winning.
In areas where no candidate supports electoral reform and has a realistic chance of winning, voters are asked which party they would ideally vote for and for whom they would be prepared to vote in exchange for their vote.
They are matched with someone in a close district where a candidate supporting proportional representation is likely to win, and the paired voter is willing to switch parties.
“If you live in a close district where a progressive candidate who supports voting change has a chance of winning, we will drive votes to that candidate from other parts of the country. And you are free to vote for a champion of democratic reform,” the website states.
This approach means that the overall number of votes received by parties remains the same, but candidates from smaller parties who support electoral reform are more likely to win.
With three weeks to go until the election, the combined vote share of the two major parties was the lowest on record, according to an analysis of opinion polls.
Compass said an average of the latest polls from Norstat, YouGov and More in Common this week put Labour and the Conservatives’ combined vote share at 61.3%, their lowest ever at this point in the election cycle.
The previous lowest combined Labour and Conservative vote share three weeks before voting was 71 percent in 2005, nearly 10 percentage points higher than today.
Compass said this reveals “deep dissatisfaction with the binary choice facing voters.”
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