Can maths produce a truly fair voting system?

The first past the post system has plenty of detractors, writes Mick O’Hare. Can maths offer a better way?

Is fairness an impossibility when it comes to elections? (Getty)

The Electoral Reform Society (ERS), as its name might suggest, is no fan of First Past the Post (FPTP), the system used to elect MPs to the British parliament. But even taking into account its raison d’être – to replace FPTP with a system more representative of how the electorate actually votes – its report into the 2019 general election was particularly scathing.

“Rotten”, “dysfunctional”, “disenfranchisement on an industrial scale”, a voting system that is “morally and politically bankrupt” were just a few of its withering criticisms. Aside from FPTP granting the Conservatives an 80-seat majority on only 43.6 per cent of the vote, the report estimated that 14.5 million people (that’s 45 per cent of all voters; more than it took to elect Boris Johnson’s entire government) cast votes for a non-elected candidate, with as many as a third of the electorate forced into attempting to vote tactically. “FPTP is brutal in denying millions of voters any representation at all,” the report concluded.

And there’s more behind that “thumping” mandate the Tories used to “Get Brexit Done”. It took roughly only 38,264 votes to elect each of the 365 Conservative MPs whereas it took 334,122 to elect each of the 11 Liberal Democrats (who, incidentally, increased their vote share by 4.2 per cent but conversely lost 1 seat) and 866,435 to elect the sole Green MP. And if you think that example is chosen to appeal to the more liberal-minded reader, pity the Brexit Party who garnered 644,255 votes for no MPs at all. Had the Brexit Party been the Tories they would have had 17 MPs while the Lib Dems would have had 96. “Smaller parties always lose out under FPTP,” said the report. And so do parties with a wide geographical spread – the Greens only gaining their single MP because of their strong support in one small area of Brighton.