Chris Game sets out the case for a move towards proportional representation.

I’m surprised I’m writing this, but I do wish the sudden passion for electoral reform and proportional representation, prompted by the MPs’ expenses furore, would go away – at least for a week or so.

Everybody’s at it. There’s a Referendum 2010 petition calling for a binding referendum, on the day of the next General Election, on whether to move to a proportional electoral system for MPs. It’s backed by Health Secretary Alan Johnson, which is interesting, and by “leading figures” like Damon Albarn, Philip Pullman, and Richard Wilson, which is rather less so.

I’ve signed it, of course – not out of any great admiration for Gorillaz, His Dark Materials, or the political wisdom of their respective creators, but because I do believe proportional representation (PR) is an essential key to a better and more democratic political system.

Why, then, my ambivalence about the current PR craze? Because in Thursday’s European elections 40 million English voters outside London, who have no other personal experience of PR, will encounter its most voter-unfriendly form. I worry that they may wrongly assume this is what PR parliamentary or council elections would be like. As a PR peddler, I feel like a car salesman with only a Lada Riva in the showroom.

It’s not a bad comparison, because the term PR tells us no more about any particular electoral system than “car” describes a particular model. A car is a four-wheeled motor vehicle usually propelled by an internal combustion engine. PR is any electoral system whose aim is a close match between the proportion of votes a party attracts and the proportion of seats it receives.

Our familiar First Past The Post (FPTP) system is inherently unproportional. Its aim is to create, wherever possible, a one party majority, even from a modest minority of votes.

Thus, Labour’s 2005 Commons majority of 66 (with 55 per cent of seats) was gained with 35 per cent of the vote; its 2001 majority of 167 (63 per cent of seats) with barely 40 per cent. PR systems would at least greatly reduce the 2001 majority and would eliminate the present one, necessitating some inter-party coalition or power sharing agreement.

There aren’t as many PR electoral systems as there are models of cars, but there are certainly dozens – including those we now have in the UK. In Northern Ireland, for example, where accurate reflection of community views really matters, the PR system of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) has been used in local and Euro elections since the 1970s and more recently for the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In multi-member constituencies – like those for the Euro elections – parties nominate up to as many candidates as there are seats. In complete contrast to this country’s Euro elections, though, voters choose candidates, not parties. They pick as many candidates from as many parties as they like, ranking them in order of preference – as consumer-friendly as a supermarket.

An STV count starts by calculating the quota of votes required to fill the number of available seats. If a voter’s first choice candidate doesn’t need their vote – because she either reaches the quota without it or receives too few votes to be elected – it is transferred to their second or third choice. Again it is voter-friendly, with far fewer votes completely “wasted” than under our FPTP system in single-member constituencies.

As with all electoral systems, views of STV depend on one’s democratic priorities. It would certainly produce more hung Parliaments and coalition councils – as it has in Scottish local government. Before STV was introduced in 2007, 13 of the 32 councils had Labour majority administrations, most of them for generations. Today there are just two.

STV critics say that the outcome can be unstable government, and that no electors actually vote for a coalition. Supporters argue that a multi-party administration is a truer reflection of the views and votes of a greater proportion of those electors.

Similarly, STV constituencies are much larger, meaning that MPs and councillors have larger electorates to represent. However, with several members representing you, you’re likely to have at least one from the party or with the views you support. As in the Euro elections, small parties have more chance of gaining representation, and – particularly relevant in present circumstances – the number of safe seats would be greatly reduced.

A few EU countries will use STV this week – Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta. More – Italy, Denmark, Finland, Estonia – use open party list PR systems, in which electors’ party votes determine the party seat totals, but votes for individual candidates decide who is actually elected. Luxembourgers have an additional discretion: they have six votes, for their six MEPs, and may cast two votes per candidate if they wish, cross-party voting naturally permitted.

In the West Midlands we also elect six MEPs, but the similarity ends there. Sadly, the (very) closed party list system our Labour Government chose in 1999 could not be more different – no multiple votes, no candidate choice, no cross-party voting, no fun. Indeed, not much incentive even to turn out, especially for those of us with no coinciding county council elections.

If we do get to the polling station, we will face a ballot paper containing an extraordinary 71 names – 12 parties, all but one fielding a full slate of six candidates – ranked in order by party selectors and untouchable by us.

This profusion of candidates is curious, for the closed system means that fewer than a dozen stand even a remote chance of getting elected. For voters, unable to cast their single X for or against any individual candidate, it is bewildering, frustrating and insulting.

Which brings us to Sunday’s count and the translation of our votes, proportionately, into elected MEPs. Again there are several available methods and, predictably, that chosen by our big party Government is one that disadvantages smaller parties. In 1999 the disadvantaged parties were UKIP and the Greens; in 2004, as shown in the table, the BNP. This year could be the Greens’ turn again.

Most allocation methods involve each party’s total vote being divided successively by a series of divisors, with seats allocated to the party with the highest outstanding quotient, up to the number of seats available. We use the Belgian mathematician Victor d’Hondt’s divisor system – 1,2,3 etc. – exemplified in the table.

The candidate heading the list of the party gaining the highest vote (Conservatives) wins the first seat. The Conservatives’ total vote is then divided by two, and that quotient or remainder compared with the votes gained by the other parties. The top Labour candidate thus wins the second seat, and the Labour total is divided by two.

The process continues until all seats – seven in the West Midlands in 2004 – are allocated. With only six seats this time, it would seem that a party will require around 12 per cent of the vote to be reasonably confident of winning a seat.

The 2004 result demonstrates vividly the dictum attributed to Joseph Stalin: “It’s not the people who vote that count, but the people who count the votes.” Change the divisors, as in the lower part of the table, and you change the distribution of seats – to the detriment of the largest party.

Meanwhile, in my electoral system showroom, directly Sunday’s count is over, I expect to have plenty of far more attractive PR models on display.

The closed party list will be moved out the back with the other used models in need of repair. For, if ever our MPs are elected by PR, that is one system I’m prepared totally to guarantee we won’t use.

* Chris Game is an Honorary (unwaged) Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham.