The British popular vote was Labour 35.6%,
Conservative 32.7%, Liberal Democrat 22.3%, other
4.4%.  Yet Labour won 56% of the seats.  This is bound
to increase interest in proportional representation in
Britain, since it has been talked about over there
quite a bit anyway and since all countries in western
and central Europe except France and Britain use it
for their national legislatures.

--- Christopher Elmendorf <cselmendorf@ucdavis.edu>
wrote:

I'm not so sure.  Based on my reading of the last 18
months of controversy in the U.K. over "postal
voting," voter registration, and voting fraud, the
U.K. seems to me to be in better shape than the
U.S., in no small part because the U.K.'s Electoral
Commission is a more sensibly designed institution
than is the U.S.'s Election Assistance Commission.

While the Blair Government has dragged its feet over
EC recommendations regarding individual voter
registration and other ballot-security measures, the
Government has been fiercely attacked for this--in
the House of Lords a year ago, by an "election
court" judge a month ago, and by Conservative and
Liberal Democrat leaders during the just-concluded
general election campaign.  By linking their attacks
to the EC's recommendations, Conservatives and
Liberal Democrats were able to (credibly) charge the
Labor Government with "playing partisan politics" in
a domain where that is not appropriate.  In order to
pull off this attack, opposition leaders publicly
committed themselves to central aspects of the EC's
reform agenda (despite the fact that that agenda is
in many respects consistent with the Labor Party's
interest in lowering the cost of voting).  Seeking
to diffuse critisism, Government ministers in the
last few weeks said they would introduce legislation
along the lines of t!
 he EC's recommendations, if returned to office.  We
will now see if they do.

I elaborate these themes a bit in a forthcoming
paper that I hope to post to SSRN around the middle
of next week.

Meanwhile, I'd welcome any thoughts from Brits (and
other close observers of the U.K. EC) who agree or
disagree with the above.

Chris Elmendorf
 

There was some earlier discussion on the list

about the comparative

virtues of the British and American systems of

election administration.

The depressingly familiar content of this article

certainly suggests

that the two countries face many of the same

problems, political inertia

among them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4520893.

stm

- Bill McGeveran

		
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