Why the UK Election Results are the Worst in History.

Hello Internet The UK had an election we need to talk about
because after the debates finished, the people voted and the ballots tallied the results
were this: But parliament ended up looking like this: Which isn't, exactly, representative. And
by not exactly, I mean at all. Red earned 30% of the vote and 36% of the
seats, which is sort of close, but the rest is madness: Orange earned 8% of the vote but
got one eighth of that while Yellow's 5% just about doubled, and purple earned 13% and got
squat. Meanwhile blue's 37% of the people booted
to 51% of the seats in parliament.

The blue boost is even bigger when you consider that
51% of the seats gives basically 100% the control. How'd this happen? In the UK -- national elections aren't really
national, they're a bunch of local elections. The UK is divided into constituencies, each
of which elects one member of parliament (M.P.) To represent them. This local / national divide
is where the trouble begins.

Imagine a parliament with just three constituencies,
and it's easy to see how it wouldn't always align with citizens. Some people think this
sort of result is fine -- it's all *about* winning local elections, theyll say.
Each M.P. Represents their constituency. And while the imbalance in this example is
extreme, but it's the same problem in the real election and this same argument is given,
but there are two more problems with it in reality land.

1) Few citizens have any idea who their MP
is, they just know what party they voted for -- what party they want to represent their
views on the national level. And pretending like it's a local election is a bit disingenuous.
-- In practice it's an election for how the nation will run -- not really for who is going
to represent a tiny part of it. And even if it were 2) The individual constituencies are worse
at representing their citizens than parliament. Indulge this spreadsheet-loving nerd for a
moment, will you? The difference between what a party earned
at the polls and what they got in parliament is the amount of misrepresentation error.

If we calculate all the errors for all the
parties and add them up we can say the Parliament as a whole has 47% percentage points of misrepresentation
error. That sounds bad looks like a utopian rainbow of diversity compared to any local
election because the local elections have *one* winner. Out of the 650 constituencies
647 have a higher representation error than parliament. These are the only three that
don't and they're really unusual for having so many of a single kind of voter in one place.

Most places look the The Wrekin which is dead
in the middle a mere one-hundred and one points off. Note that the winning candidate didn't
reach a majority here. Which means more than half of constituencies elected their MP with
a minority of voters. The worst is Belfast South at the bottom of
the list.

Hilariously unrepresentative. Less than a quarter of the voters get to speak
for the entire place in parliament. This is the the lowest percentage an M.P. Has ever
been elected by.

So when people argue that the UK election
is a bunch of local elections 1) people don't act like it, and 2) It's even more of an argument
that the elections are broken because they're worse on this level. These local elections are unrepresentative
because of the terrible 'First Past the Post' voting system -- which I have complained mightily
about and won't repeat everything here -- go watch the video -- but TL;DR it only 'works'
when citizens are limited to two choices. Voting for any party except the biggest makes
it more likely the biggest will win by a minority -- which is exactly what happened. That citizens keep voting for smaller parties
despite knowing the result is against their strategic interests demonstrates the citizenry
wants diverse representation -- but that successes is the very thing that's made this the most
unrepresentative parliament in the history of the UK.

People happy with the results argue the system
is working fine -- of course they do. Their team won. But Government isn't a sport where a singular
'winner' must be determined. It's a system to make rules that everyone follows and so,
we need a system where everyone can agree the process is fair even if the results don't
go in their favor.

If you support a system that disenfranchises
people you don't like and turbo-franchises people you do -- then it doesn't look like
you support representative democracy, it looks like you support a kind of dictatorship lite.
Where a small group of people (including you) makes the rules for everyone. But as it is now, on election day the more
people express what they want the worse the system looks which makes them disengaged at
best or angry at worst and GEE I CAN'T IMAGINE. WHY. This is fixable, there are many, many better
ways the UK could vote -- here are two that even keep local representatives.

And fixing voting really matters, because
this is a kind of government illegitimacy score -- and it's been going up and may continue
to do so unless this fundamentally broken voting system is changed..