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Concept
Electoral Reform Society
Summary
The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) is an independent campaigning organisation based in the United Kingdom which promotes electoral reform. It seeks to replace first-past-the-post voting with proportional representation, advocating the single transferable vote. It is the world's oldest operating organisation concerned with political and electoral reform.
The Electoral Reform Society seeks a "representative democracy fit for the 21st century." The Society advocates the replacement of the first-past-the-post and plurality-at-large voting systems with a proportional voting system, the single transferable vote. First-past-the-post is currently used for elections to the House of Commons and for most local elections in England and Wales, while plurality-at-large is used in multi-member council wards in England and Wales, and was historically used in the multi-member parliamentary constituencies before their abolition.
It also campaigns for improvements to public elections and representative democracy, and is a regular commentator on all aspects of representation, public participation and democratic governance in the United Kingdom.
The ERS was founded in January 1884 as the Proportional Representation Society by the polymath and politician John Lubbock. By the end of the year, the Society had attracted the support of 184 Members of Parliament, split almost equally between Conservatives and Liberals. Other early members included Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), C. P. Scott, editor of The Manchester Guardian and Thomas Hare, inventor of the Single Transferable Vote. The initial aim of the Society was to have proportional representation included in the terms of the Representation of the People Act 1884 and the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, but, despite a determined campaign of political lobbying, it was unable to do so.
A PRS pamphlet of the 1920s described the organisation's aims thus:
- to reproduce the opinions of the electors in parliament and other public bodies in their true proportions
Official source
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