British Prime Minister Gordon BrownSUZANNE PLUNKETT
In a bid to win over a jaded public, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has struck a bargain with voters: If they put an X on the ballot this year, they may never have to do so again.
Instead, he will campaign for election this year on a proposal to replace Britain's traditional winner-takes-all voting system, the same as Canada's, with a scheme in which voters write a number next to each candidate, ensuring that all MPs are elected by a majority.
The system, known as the alternative vote in Britain or the preferential ballot in Canada, creates an "instant runoff" where, if no candidate gets 50 per cent of the first-choice votes, the second choices are then added to the tallies, and so on until a candidate achieves a majority.
A similar scheme is used in Ireland, where it is popular, if complicated, and makes it more likely that the governing party will be supported by a majority of voters (though not necessarily a majority of first-choice voters). It is also used by Mr. Brown's Labour Party, and Canada's Liberal Party, to elect leaders at conventions.
"If the people decide to back this system, it offers voters increased choice with the chance to express preferences for as many candidates as they wish," Mr. Brown said during a major speech on constitutional reform.
"Each elected MP will have the chance to be elected with much broader support from their constituency."
His scheme would be subject to a national referendum, to be held in October of 2011.
Mr. Brown also pledged to lower the voting age to 16 and to give Britain a written constitution, two long-time promises of his Labour Party.
The voting-reform proposal, one of the most dramatic in the English-speaking world, was made in the midst of deep public distrust of the democratic system. Last year saw Britain rocked by an MP expense-account scandal in which parliamentarians were caught billing the public purse hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of second-home and third-home mortgages, along with such fripperies such as moats and duck houses.
Alternate voting systems are unpopular with some factions of Mr. Brown's Labour Party, and risk further dividing his already fractious and sometimes mutinous government. But Labour officials said Tuesday they believe they need a radical proposal, prominent in the campaign, to restore public trust in the Westminster system.
Because Mr. Brown must face his first Prime Ministerial election before the end of June - he was appointed to his current post by Tony Blair in 2007, after serving as Mr. Blair's Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years - the pledge is essentially a key campaign promise in a difficult election.
As it stands, the opposition Conservatives are leading strongly in the polls, though not quite enough to secure a majority government.
In bringing up an issue of democratic reform late in his 13th year in government, he risks drawing attention to the relative stasis in Britain's parliamentary system. The House of Lords remains an appointed body with lifetime tenure, although Mr. Blair eliminated some hereditary peerages. He had promised to make it a fully elected body, and to introduce a written constitution, neither of which has occurred.
The opposition Conservatives denounced the proposal loudly, calling it a gimmick.
But Mr. Brown's pitch appears to be aimed more at voters for the Liberal Democrats, Britain's perpetually third-place centrist party, whose members are almost obsessively devoted to alternative voting schemes.
Liberal Democrat leaders would prefer a proportional-representation system, in which voters cast ballots for parties rather than candidates. Such systems give the advantage to smaller parties.
"This is a deathbed conversion to electoral reform from a party facing an historic defeat," Liberal Democrat Chris Hume said in a radio interview.
The election is most likely to take place on May 6, the date of Britain's elections for local councils and for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments. But some believe Mr. Brown will dissolve parliament and call an earlier election, to take advantage of Britain's current economic recovery, which some economists believe will not last long.
Although all three of Britain's major parties have been campaigning aggressively since the New Year, with Conservative billboards dotting the countryside and Labour speeches devoted to campaign promises, a formal election has not been called. Some insiders say this will occur very soon, although Mr. Brown, known for waiting until the last minute on many political decisions, could wait until April or even May to drop the writ.