Votes Do Not Equal Seats

According to this report, in the last general election (May 2005) Labour had 35.3% of the votes yet gained 55.2% of the seats, 32.3% of the votes went to the Conservatives resulting in only 30.7% of the seats and the Liberal Democrats came off even worse, converting 22.1% of the votes into only 9.6% of the seats. Various designs of proportional representation (PR) are designed to redress this injustice. Proponents of the "first past the post" system (FPTP) say that it facilitates a strong government and avoids hung parliaments, yet history shows that FPTP can produce hung parliaments and PR can produce working majorities.

Interactive Democracy could be added to any of the existing or proposed systems, FPTP or PR, and would add greater fairness to any one of them by allowing voters to have their say on each issue. In effect it would allow us to choose the politicians we like AND the policies we prefer from each of the parties manifestos.... and give us the opportunity to suggest our own policies.