Grab and change it, it's yours

[venta]

Does anyone know what the actual text which is actually going to appear on the actual ballot papers on May 5th is? A bit of googling hasn't turned up any results for me, but the pages I was finding suggest to me that I may have been going about my searching in the wrong way.

I'm kind of assuming that the ballot paper will look broadly like this:

[Poll #1729575]

Now, lots of campaigners would have you believe that this is analogous to:

[Poll #1729576]

And lots of other campaigners would have you believe it's analogous to:

[Poll #1729577]

You'll notice that the second two polls allow the results to be interpreted as pol(l)ar opposites.

So, does anyone know exactly what the question is? More to the point, has the government made any commitment at all about what they're going to do with the results, how they'll be interpreted, or whether Cameron will (in fact) go "oh, that's nice" and carry on regardless with the existing system?

Comments

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

One random thought I had - is there any reason why a country has to use the same system in every constituency? I mean, if we the people of Cambridge decide we want to use say Borda Count to elect our representative to the House of Commons, is it the business of anyone else in the country?

I mean yes, in practice it's easier and less confusing to use the same system everywhere, but the thought did cross my mind. It would be interesting to see how much variation there is in the vote (if that information is available).

(Cambridge University used to elect two members, which were chosen via STV. Not that I like the idea of giving extra votes just for going to a particular University, but it does seem in the past we managed with using a different method for some constituencies.)

[condign.livejournal.com]

In theory, no. To give one example, while all members of the U.S. House of Representatives are elected by the same system, the primary system in each state may (and does) differ. Hence, Iowa has caucuses, New Hampshire has primaries. Moreover, state primary rules differ.

I don't know of a jurisdiction that uses different systems within the same area (e.g. caucus for some positions in one state, but primaries in another). My guess is that this is a cost issue: since states often bear the cost of holding the election, holding two different types is a duplicative expense.

Whether this would violate some rule in the U.K., though, I don't know.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I believe that in the Representation of the People Act 1948, the voting system to be used was specified, and its uniformity across all constituencies was imposed. But I guess that could be amended if there was a real desire to do so. It seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, though. Both for practical reasons (as you say) and also because I think there would be a nervousness of a system whereby different MPs might try to claim different degrees of 'legitimacy' depending on how exactly they had been elected.