Wednesday, May 16, 2007

On 18 Doughty Street Later

At 9pm on 18 Doughty Street I'll be interviewing Dr Ken Ritchie, the Director of the Electoral Reform Society. Any questions for him, let me know.

Then on Vox Politix at 10pm among my guests are Tory MP Nadine Dorries and Jonathan Isaby from the Daily Telegraph. Expect a few impersonations from Nadine and some great anecdotes about being a nurse from Jonathan. [shurely shome mishtake - ed]

Tomorrow's Vox Politix Panel include Dominic Lawson and Michael Brown from the Independent, Professor Ivor Gaber and Joanne Oates from Digital Spy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Vox politix should be a great show, but just don't give your guests too much to drink beforehand...More than a G&T to relax them both, and you may have a bit of an incident on your hands...

Anonymous said...

Ken Ritche. With the first past the post (FPTP) system, everyone knows who their MP/councillor is, and how to get rid of them. With proportional representation (PR) it's not so simple, as the recent Scottish elections have shown. If they so wished the Lib-Lab scottish gov't could continue in power - with a FPTP system the result would have been clear.

Alwyn ap Huw said...

Because of the complexities involved in counting STV votes it has to be done electronically. As the Scottish elections and the last USA Presidential elections have shown electronic counting is unreliable.

Shouldn't those who support PR ensure that a reliable means of counting that voters can have confidence in is available before pressing ahead with further PR schemes?

Anonymous said...

Alwyn

You are wrong. STV counts can be done by hand, and are up and down the country in student union elections, with turnouts similar to that you would get in multi-member council wards.

Obviously in a general election constituency there would be more votes, but I'm pretty sure Eire has used STV without computers before at a national level. Anyway, that's simply a matter of resources.

It's not that complicated.