Our Candidate in Weston-super-Mare got this letter published in his local paper. Well done Clive!

SMALLER PARTIES GET A BIGGER SAY IN POLL

UKIP and the Green Party polled five million votes between them and each party ended up with one seat.

The SNP polled fewer than one-and-a-half million votes and won 56 seats. That’s over 90 times more seats per vote. Do we need any more proof that “first-past-the-post” has to go? This system of voting does two things. It skews the result of an election by giving the largest parties a disproportionate number of seats for the votes they got.

More insidiously, it alters the way many people vote. If the candidate who represents their views has little chance of winning, many people instead vote for the candidate who is most likely to defeat the one they do not want to win.

In other words, instead of voting for the candidate they want, they vote against the one they don’t.

If every vote is to count, we need proportional representation. In a multi-party democracy, first past the post is anti-democratic and must be replaced.