Labour MS will propose Bill to change Senedd voting system to STV
Martin Shipton
A former Welsh Labour Minister is working with the Electoral Reform Society to introduce a Bill that would change the Senedd’s electoral system again – this time to the single transferable vote version of proportional representation.
Alun Davies, the MS for Blaenau Gwent, argues that STV is far preferable to the “closed list” system which will be used to elect the expanded Senedd next May.
The change he is proposing would be implemented, if passed, at the following election in 2030.
Under the closed list arrangement, Wales is being split into 16 “super constituencies”, each of which will elect six MSs. People will vote not for individual candidates, but for party lists. MSs will be elected in proportion to the votes cast for their parties, with the parties deciding the order in which candidates win seats.
This system has been brought in following agreement on a Senedd reform package between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru that is also increasing the number of MSs from 60 to 96. Former Plaid leader Adam Price, who negotiated the deal with former First Minister Mark Drakeford, has said he was told that if the closed list system wasn’t agreed to, the whole reform package would be off the table.
Strongly criticised
The decision to adopt the closed list system has been strongly criticised on the basis that it takes power from voters and hands it to the parties. Under STV voters rank candidates in order of preference based on who they think will do the best job.
Many have expressed concern that the closed list system makes it easier for parties to exclude candidates who are out of favour with the leadership – thus creating a class of timid politicians who become tribal loyalists and don’t engage in independent thinking.
Professor Laura McAllister of Cardiff University chaired an expert panel that examined options for Senedd reform. Earlier this month she told The Welsh Politics Podcast hosted by Labour MS Lee Waters: “Closed list PR was one of the electoral systems that we rejected in the very early stage of our analysis of different electoral systems – notwithstanding the fact, of course, that there are weaknesses and strengths to every electoral system, and you’ll never have one that ticks every box.
“But what we tried to do back in 2017 was to have a set of criteria – values, as much as anything, that we felt should be enshrined in a more proportional electoral system, Hardly any of those are carried forward with closed list PR, and the most significant thing to say is that it reduces voter choice and gives more authority to the parties in terms of candidates.
“One of the traditions of voting systems, traditionally and historically in Britain, has been that people go out and vote for a candidate that represents a party, rather than the other way round.”
Welsh Executive Committee
Explaining how the closed list system was settled on, Mr Waters said that after the 2021 election a sub-committee of Labour’s Welsh Executive Committee was established to consider Senedd reform.
He added: “My understanding is that the MPs who were elected there didn’t want the extra numbers, but they accepted that was going to happen. What they weren’t prepared to compromise on was electoral systems, because STV has always been the call from the Richard Commission [in 2004] onwards, They did not like STV, partly because in Westminster there is an attachment to First Past The Post, and partially because of individual hang-ups. So for example [former Cardiff West MP] Kevin Brennan, who was Mark Drakeford’s close constituency colleague and very influential with him, comes from an Irish family and has an experience of STV promoting parochialism, getting internal candidates to be competing with each other with voters rather than campaigning for the party as a whole, and really did not like the system and thought it would be a retrograde step for Wales. And I think that was very influential on Mark. Mark himself would have preferred STV – but what could he get through?”
Alun Davies, who is all but certain to be re-elected to the Senedd next May, said: “I have always supported STV and want to put down a marker for the next Senedd with a Bill already drafted to get rid of the closed list and replace it with STV.
“I have been talking with the Electoral Reform Society [ERS] and they have been drafting such a Bill.”
Accountability
Jess Blair, Director of ERS Cymru, said: “The Senedd election next year will be held under a system no one wanted – the closed list system. Closed lists will deliver a proportional result but will not deliver accountability, with voters only being able to back political parties rather than the individual candidates on the ballot paper that will actually represent them in the Senedd.
“Both the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform and the Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform recommended the single transferable vote (STV) instead of the closed list system, which would deliver both proportionality, ensuring the Senedd looks the way the Welsh people voted, and direct accountability to voters for MSs.
“We warned from the start that closed lists risked being a lose-lose compromise and that we needed a voting system that works for the Welsh people. This draft Bill demonstrates how easy the change from the closed list system to STV would be, if the circumstances after the May election meant a change would be possible.”
It’s not by any means certain that the Bill will succeed in the new Senedd, however. The change to the closed list system could only be introduced with a two thirds majority, which Labour and Plaid Cymru were able to secure between them. It is highly unlikely that they will retain such a majority next May.
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The closed list system is a affront to democracy, and it reflects badly on the leadership of welsh labour in 2021 that this is the electoral system they insisted was introduced during their negotiations with plaid. Sincerely hope the numbers will be there to get this passed in time for 2030. PS. it may be wrong to assume that only plaid, labour and the lib dems would support a change to stv – it may even attract the support of the tories and reform (as stv may benefit them too).
Compare and contrast FPTP. Closed list proportional or FPTP, thems your choices. (Until we vote for a party that campaigns on STV… see Plaid.)
I completely agree with all the concerns raised about the bizarre system put in place by the Labour controlled Senedd. It seems designed to put all the power in the hands of political parties, denying the electorate the opportunity to choose their own preferred representatives. Labour has long demonstrated their wish to control Wales through manipulating candidate choice. Their parachuting in of favoured people from England and London, with little or no Welsh connection, to winnable seats was a feature of the last election. Reform Ltd, the private company owned by Nigel Farage, is also a completely controlled one man… Read more »
Plaid agreed because at that time they, and others, had not seen the Reform tidal wave coming over the border.
Voter turnout in the Senedd elections is disgracefully low. Solution? Let’s make it more complicated…
What’s complicated about preference voting? If someone offers to get you a can of pop from the shop, you don’t struggle to say “I’ll have a cherry coke if they’ve got one otherwise I’ll have a normal coke”.
It’s a lack of preference voting that puts people off voting because if they vote for who they really want they end up helping those they don’t want. So what’s the point.
Low voter turnout is gradually eroding our democracy, by making it mandatory as a civic duty would go some way to making sure that the result is more truly representative.
… and the party that now looks like getting the indifferent chunk of the electorate off its backside is ……… oh dear it’s not going to plan, is it?
Closed lists were agreed at a time when they didn’t anticipate the threat of Reform UK. If this law is to be enacted then it needs to be passed before the Senedd election next May, because afterwards they will depend on Reform to get it passed because of the two-thirds majority rule. It won’t be in their interests to do so. Too little too late!
If you are voting in order of preference 1-2-3 then you choose by personality of the candidate.
Plaid Cymru, Green Party and Liberal Democrats have well known personalities.
Reform and the Tories don’t have any worthwhile personalities in Wales.
“promoting parochialism”
I think voters would like a bit more of this from their so-called representatives, especially the Westminster ones who disappear into Palace of Westminster to become drunk on the imperial opulence and embarrassed about where they came from.
Though I’d be happy enough to have it I think virtues of STV can be rather overstated. The number of rejected ballot papers is way higher than other voting systems in the UK, in the last Scottish local elections there was in the region of 40000. Compared to under 10000 at the UK wide election results in Scotland in 2024. The process by which the winner is determined in a given ward can also be poorly understood (just try explaining the maths behind a result in which the candidate with the 4th highest number of first preferences wins on the… Read more »
What’s your preferred system?
I would prefer something like the German system. Everybody gets two votes – one for a constituency AS and the other for favoured party.
The party votes are totalled and the seats allocated proportionally, minus those already won in the constituency vote.
The German system involves not knowing how many AS’s will be elected in advance of the voting- there is a variable number of top-up AS’s. Now that we have agreed on 96 I think we should stick to that number. Either STV with the current super-constituencies, which works against smaller parties and so is only roughly proportional or full proportionality by adapting to Cymru the “Proportional past the post” system as advocated by Gabriel Haines at the UK level.
Isn’t that what we had? One regional vote using party lists and one constituency vote using FPTP.
Not quite – the present system was weighted towards the constituency rather than the total.
What does that mean in practice? Less proportional but more democratic?
Interesting question.
I would think the most democratic would be add up all the votes cast and distribute the seats accordingly (although I would add a minimum requirement such as 5% to get any seats)
But that could mean your constituency despite narrowly picking Plaid gets a Labour representative because other constituencies overwhelmingly vote Labour. Why should what other constituencies do affect who represents your community? That doesn’t seem very democratic.
Which is why I suggested the system I did.
I don’t think this is the full story on how we ended up with closed lists. I suspect that it had a lot to do with Welsh Labour believing it would benefit them and particularly their incumbents. But all it’s done is open the door for Farage. The argument about parochialism and internal party competition is nonsense. That’s pretty much what closed lists have provided.
Have to agree with this. Labour/plaid thought they were being clever and could stitch up elections for the foreseeable future. Whilst reform will do well next year, they would have also done well on the current/old systems based on current polling. Ironically they might not do so well under STV, which make me think Mr Davies to trying to sticth them up again!
How about asking the people which system they want. This is a democracy after all.
How did that go in 2016? 🤔 We elect politicians in a Parliamentary system to make these decisions for us and if we don’t like them after the fact we kick them out.
The problem in 2016 was the question. There should’ve been a range of options and the ability to rank them in order of preference. Instead the establishment fudged a stupid question and got a stupid answer. This can’t be used as a reason never to ask people what they want again.
I disagree. Even if we’d kept to the Additional member system Reform would still be looking at gaining a large number of seats, from constituencies where they have gained a large amount of support and on the top up lists in the regions in which they are not as strong in. Once Labour chose not to increase public spending significantly after the UK General Election, the shift by many Labour and swing voters to Reform LTD was inevitable. Let’s be clear, I hate it, but ever since the 2016 US Presidential Election I’ve realised that this was always where we… Read more »
I think you make a fair point that Reform would make gains regardless of which voting system was being used. However closed lists magnifies those gains in my view. They would perhaps not get as many second preference votes under STV for example? In any event we will find out shortly in Caerphilly.
Wasn’t the purpose of devolution to bring Welsh politics home to Wales? With the exception of Plaid Cymru, which has no government ambitions at Westminster, then the polls in Wales seem to reflect the popularity or otherwise of party leader at Westminster and their personalities and communication skills or record of their parties in government at Westminster. Isn’t that more of a problem for democracy in Wales than the voting system for the Senedd? Will anything other than independence repatriate politics to Wales?
Independence is the only answer, but we only get that by electing a majority Plaid Cymru twice, possibly even three times and even then the British establishment may refuse to give Cymru/Wales up.
I’ve chanced to hear on the TV two different politics academics – in Professor Curtice’s line of work but neither of them as widely known – from different universities offering their own opinions as to why we in Wales have been landed with the closed list system of voting instead of s.t.v.
Both of them said that they had information which suggested that the Welsh government had initially preferred a switch to s.t.v., but that Labour in Westminster had vetoed that idea. They were however prepared to consent to the closed list.
I think there is much in what you say. If true, it’s rank stupidity on the part of UK Labour. If the polls are even half right, there will be few Labour MSs or Councillors left to knock on doors at the next general election.
You might prove to be right. We’ll know, in due course.
The Westminster based parties have always been opposed to anything but FPTP as they believe it will undermine the “Buggins turn” nature of London centred politics and encourage voter fluidity and undermine the idea that politicians are only answerable every five years.
Basically Kevin Brennan was Mark Drakeford’s constituency counterpart at Westminster and had a great deal of influence on him. Kevin Brennan has Irish family and their feelings were that STV caused party colleagues to campaign against each other for first and second preference votes, as oppose to campaigning against their opponents. I think that’s what it came down to. The irony is that Mark Drakeford was in favour of STV.
A bit late for that now. Labour are facing a good thrashing.
Labour would be facing a good thrashing regardless of the electoral system employed. They’re going to get a good thrashing at Westminster in 2029 too and bar some kind of miracle that will be by FPTP.