Elections and the tyranny of the alphabet

When the election results of May 5 in Bristol are examined closely a strange phenomenon starts to emerge; the fact that you were much more likely to receive votes if you appeared higher than your party colleague in the ballot paper because your surname started with an earlier letter.

Yes that’s right, the number of votes that you received (and therefore your chance of being elected) was heavily dependent on your surname and so, never mind how good a councillor you had been or how excellent your campaign had been, the deciding factor was often your name.

This sounds crazy, I know. We imagine a much more rational decision-making process by voters. We hope that they carefully consider the record or the stated aims of the candidates and therefore we do everything we can to publicise these.

In fact, it turns out that what they often actually do is go in the voting booth; decide which party they want to vote for, and then just tick the first person from that party. This happened across all parties and most wards in the Bristol May 5 election.

Don’t believe me? Have a close look at the results. Firstly, take the pairs (or sometimes three) people from each party who stood in a ward. Give a tick to those who were voted for in alphabetical order within their party selection and a cross to those who were not voted for in alphabetical order.

What you should get if all else was equal is 50/50 ticks and crosses. For example, 127 ticks and 127 crosses out of the 254 councillors in this survey. This would mean that the surname had not had an influence. What you actually get is 191 ticks and 63 crosses.

This means that if you were listed ahead of your party colleague on the ballot paper (remember, not because you were a brilliant or experienced candidate, but because of the letter at the start of  your surname) you were 50 per cent more likely to beat your party colleague in the poll. 

This is clearly a nonsense and a rank injustice to many of the experienced councillors of all parties who lost their seats in this election because of this discrepancy. When a voting system has demonstrably failed in its task of delivering a fair result, we should look at ways to reform it and this must be done before the next major elections in 2020.

There are various “fairer” options that could be operated but the Green Party supports the single transferable vote for local elections. Under this system, you select the candidates in your order of preference, rather than just put crosses against the two (or three) whose party you like.

This, or perhaps a list system like the European Parliament elections, would deliver a more effective representation of what voters want and place less reliance on the alphabet.

Stephen Clarke (possibly soon to have a name-change to Stephen Aardvark…) is a Green Party councillor for Southville.