Join the rally against the Elections bill and start the process of fixing the UK

Hey folks, there is a rally this Saturday (5th Feb) against the government Election’s bill. The rally focuses on resisting the government’s attempt to move the elections of mayors and police commissioners from a vaguely good system where you get to state your first and second choice (and so can vote for who you actually want and then a safer backup vote) to the rather shit system that we current use for MPs in Westminster.

The current system for MPs is called First Past the Post and because you can only vote for one person you end up making a safe vote for the most preferable popular party rather than your actual desired candidate. Your realistic voting choices are heavily impacted by where you live and the voting trends in your local area which is a bit shit really as you can’t vote for your favourite party candidate unless they are already in for a good chance of winning.

Because your choice at the polls is limited, it is really hard to get rid of politicians, a lot of them don’t feel any pressure to do the right thing and we end up with a bunch of people in power who are complacent or corrupt.

Voting systems aren’t super attention grabbing but it turns out the way that you divide up and count votes and the options that you give people on the ballot have huge impacts on the way that the country can respond to the people in power and correct its course. Both the UK and the US use First Past the Post and it is a good part of the reason they both have rubbish two party systems and high levels of division and unaddressed inequality.

If all that sounds like something you’d like to fix, you can get involved by joining the campaign at: [https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/](https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/)

And joining the rally at: [https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/say-no-to-the-elections-bill-rally](https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/say-no-to-the-elections-bill-rally) (London or Manchester)

And broadly googling electoral reform or voting systems and learn more about how much damage our current system does and how plenty of people and countries have come up with and adopted much better systems.