SIR – Changing our voting system to what Nick Clegg calls the ‘alternative vote’ would create more unfairness, not less.
At the recent election, for example, Philip Davies MP won with 48.56 per cent of the vote, but being below 50 per cent, Clegg’s rules would have applied.
This would mean that, in the first instance, the Green Party’s 1,477 votes would have been reallocated according to their supporters’ second preference.
Given that Greens and Blues do not usually mix, most would have probably gone to Labour or the Lib Dems, leaving Mr Davies still ahead by about 500 votes, but still below 50 per cent.
After that it would have been the turn of the Lib Dems who are usually virulently anti-Tory and so most would have made Labour their second preference.
With 9,890 votes now added to the Greens’ contribution, it is just possible that there would have been enough second preferences to put Labour above 50 per cent, handing victory to a party which originally secured 9,944 fewer votes than the Conservatives.
This cannot be right. Despite Mr Davies’s somewhat eccentric brand of Conservatism, he secured an impressive majority which entitles him to represent Shipley in the House of Commons. Any other outcome would be a travesty.
Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley
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