Voting reform poll set for May

It expected there will be a referendum on switching to a new voting system within a year.

The BBC reported this morning that deputy prime minister Nick Clegg is set to announce soon that a vote on ditching first past the post in favour of the alternative vote system will be held on May 5 2011.

Holding the vote on that day would be expected to boost turnout, as it is the same day as local elections in England and Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly polls.

And the Guardian expects the Coalition government to make the announcement on Tuesday, as part of a wider constitutional package including the equalisation of constituency sizes.

A referendum on changing the voting system was a key concession won by the Liberal Democrats during their coalition negotiations with the Conservatives following the general election.

Any such referendum would prove a stern test for the cohesion of the Coalition government, as the Conservatives are likely to campaign against it.

Alternative Vote is favoured by many reformers as it maintains the link between constituencies and single members of Parliament, unlike many propositional systems which require the creation of larger multi-member constituencies.

Under the AV system voters still elect one person to represent them in Parliament, but rather than marking an 'X' against their preferred candidate, they rank candidates in order of preference.

If a candidate receives a majority of first votes they are elected. But if no candidate secures more than 50 per cent of the vote, the second choices for the candidate who polled in last place are redistributed amongst the others.

The process is repeated until one candidate gets an absolute majority.

But the Liberal Democrats have traditionally favoured a more proportional system, which would distribute seats in the Commons more based more on the overall proportion of the vote secured.

While the Liberal Democrats got 23 per cent of the vote at the election, they only got 57 seats out of a possible 650.

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