Why Do Something With Purpose When You Can Do It Lethargically?
By I want to flag this now, and I’ll have more to say about it in the next day or two. High points so far for me:
Modeling an elected House of Lords after the United States Senate, which when I’m in charge, is the first US democratic institution up against the wall. Modeling after the Senate to the point where a third of the body would be up for election every parliament. Sound familiar?
The second thing — while I see nothing about how these constituencies would be drawn up (and love or hate the U.S. Senate, at least there is a clear logic to which patch of dirt the Senators represent) there is a lot on electoral systems:
Straw will say that the government wants to consult on which of three electoral systems to adopt: first past the post in constituencies, consisting of three members, modelled on the old European parliamentary constituencies; single transferable vote, with four or five members, based on the existing government regions; and elections in today’s large multimember European parliamentary constituencies. Unlike elections to Strasbourg, which are closed lists, these would be open or semi-open lists. Labour favours this.
I’m in favor of the latter two, with a preference for STV.
But why not just get rid of the institution altogether?
