Letter: Push back the boundaries of debate on voting reform

Sir: As a Liberal Democrat who joined the Liberal Party back in the 1950s precisely because it favoured proportional representation I welcome any discussion of the subject.

Andrew Marr ("Changing the chemistry of politics", 2 April) is wrong in one important assessment of STV when he says it would require redrawing every constituency boundary. All one needs to do is lump together existing single-member constituencies into multi-member ones, five or six members per enlarged seat being the favoured number, but perhaps not desirable for very rural areas where size might present problems.

Boundaries between present constituencies are often so arbitrary as to be daft, lines drawn on a map to try to create clumps of land with roughly equivalent numbers of inhabitants without reference to natural boundaries such as rivers, limits of built-up areas, postcodes or directions in which most people commute to work.

Martin Kyrle

Eastleigh, Hampshire