What the Electoral Reform Society doesn’t want you to know
In ten weeks’ time, Britons will be asked to vote on arguably the dullest question ever put to a referendum: whether to adopt the Alternative Voting system in our general elections.
Under AV, instead of picking one MP, voters would list their first, second and third preferences. Our elections would be made infinitely more complicated. Counting extra votes means extra bodies, computers, and so on. And that, in turn, means lots of money can be made. The additional cost of switching to AV could be as much as £120 million, since this complex system may require voting machines. Little wonder Britain’s largest provider of voter-counting software is pouring cash into the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign, then. And little wonder they are at great pains to keep their role quiet.
The main actor in this referendum drama is the Electoral Reform Society (ERS). Since its inception in 1884, the society has campaigned for the British to choose MPs by a proportional representation voting method. Precisely this conviction led it to denounce AV — which is little more proportional than our current system — as recently as last year as a monstrous compromise. Now, however, it has become AV’s loudest cheerleader. What explains this sudden change of heart? More puzzling still, the ERS has donated an astonishing £1.05 million to the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign: where would this little-known society find such a sum?
The Spectator has acquired internal documents from the society which help to explain the group’s change of mind and the source of its funding. The documents reveal that it is the majority shareholder in Britain’s leading supplier of election services. They show that the society’s ties to the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign are far closer than either side has admitted in public.
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