Electoral Administration Bill

It is clearly desirable that voting systems are readily understandable, as the amendment says. I suspect that among ourselves we have very different views on what is readily understandable. I would always argue that voting for one, two and three in any election is as easy as anything and that all voting systems should be by voting one, two and three. That would deal with the problem. I recognise that at the moment we have different arguments and different systems. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, I do not see the problem arising in the way he has suggested. I think that the problem is not from having different electoral systems but different elections taking place simultaneously. The problem the noble Lord referred to, in particular with the London elections, was over a confusing system—the supplementary vote in the mayoral elections. That is not a readily understood system and a very simple ““one, two, three”” would address that problem. Next year, in Scotland, we shall be electing list members by a simple list proportion system, constituency members by the traditional first past the post X voting, and, for the first time in Great Britain, local councillors using the single transferable vote system—one, two, three. I think all three systems are relatively understandable in terms of the voting process, so I do not anticipate any great problem in Scotland next year. I do not see a large-scale problem arising. We do not want too many systems, but it is not a problem at the moment. I see no reason to say that there should be only two systems if there are simultaneous elections. Often simultaneous elections are good as they encourage turnout. We do not expect voters to have to go to the polling stations repeatedly, but when they go there is no reason why they should not be able to elect people for one, two or three levels of authority. We are nowhere near where they are in the States, where dozens and dozens of elections take place simultaneously, but three or more is not a problem. If there are different systems, I do not think that that necessarily is a problem either.