[EL] Election screw-up in one London borough

[Rob Richie]

On the other hand, London gives voters a back up second choice in a
simplified "instant runoff" form of ranked choice voting called in the UK
the "supplementary vote. If your first choice isn't in the top two, your
ballot counts for your backup choice. With two clear frontrunners, everyone
can decide to vote for their heart (their first choice) and a pragmatic
second choice if not already supporting one of the frontrunners as a first
choice.

In the UK today overall

* London, Scotland and Wales legislative elections will all be using
variations of the mixed member proportional system used in Germany and New
Zealand
* Northern Ireland will use multi-winner ranked choice voting
* Many local and mayoral elections will use the supplementary vote system

As a result,a far higher percentage of voters will help elect a preffered
candidate and in the mayoral race, won't have the same "spoiler" dynamic we
maintain.

FairVote's British counterpart, the Electoral Reform Society, has lots of
good resources -- http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/ -- as does BBC, etc.
You won't find much in the US press that mentions all these different
systems, as our foreign correspondents generally are as "electoral system
illiterate" along with most of the American political cognoscenti

Rob Richie

On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:10 AM, John Tanner <john.k.tanner at gmail.com>
wrote:

> We are not alone.
>
> On May 6, 2016, at 8:30 AM, Edward Still <still at votelaw.com> wrote:
>
>
> The Independent reports
> <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/elections-2016-absolute-shambles-in-barnet-as-voters-turned-away-from-polling-stations-with-wrong-a7014411.html>
> :
>
> The London mayoral election
> <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/london-mayoral-election-2016-who-will-win-zac-goldsmith-sadiq-khan-when-is-it-key-issues-a7012536.html>started
> with an “absolute shambles” in one borough as voters were turned away from
> polling stations given incomplete electoral lists.
>
> Hundreds of residents in Barnet said they were told they could not vote
> without their polling card, while some carrying the document said they were
> also refused.
>
> Arjun Mittra, a Labour councillor for East Finchley ward, said the
> “logistical nightmare” affected every one of the borough’s 155 polling
> stations.
>
> “Out of the seven people who came to my polling station in the first 10
> minutes, only one was able to vote,” he told *The Independent*.
>
> Edward Still
> Edward Still Law Firm LLC
> 429 Green Springs Hwy, STE 161-304
> Birmingham AL 35209
> 205-320-2882
> still at votelaw.com
> www.votelaw.com/blog
> www.edwardstill.com
> www.linkedin.com/in/edwardstill <http://www.linkedin.com/edwardstill>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>



-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Richie
Executive Director, FairVote
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
Takoma Park, MD 20912
rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616  http://www.fairvote.org
*FairVote Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/FairVoteReform>*   *FairVote
Twitter <https://twitter.com/fairvote>*   My Twitter
<https://twitter.com/rob_richie>

Thank you for considering a *donation <http://www.fairvote.org/donate>*
<http://www.fairvote.org/donate>to support our reform vision
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U50uJohIw4c>.
(Note: Our Combined Federal Campaign number is 10132.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20160506/b6f22026/attachment.html>