British "Democracy"

With 2015 marking the first time I'll be able to vote in a UK general election, like many others I am at a loss as to who to vote for. And is it any wonder, when the state of "democracy" in our nation is an utter shambles...

My whole objection to the British electoral system, is the vast inconsistency between the number of votes a party gets across the nation, and the number of seats this translates to in Parliament. It seems a fundamental betrayal of the whole idea of democracy when some votes count more than others: The whole idea of democracy is that each person gets an equal say in how their nation is governed, and in a representative democracy a vote, an equal vote, to elect a representative. So how can 10% of votes earn anything other than 10% of the representative seats in Westminster? To put things in to perspective, let me highlight some peculiarities that occurred in the 2010 General election.

The Green Party managed to earn a single seat, earning 265,000 votes nationally. The Scottish National Party earned 6 seats with 491,386. Meanwhile, the despicable British National Party earned over 560,000 votes nationally, yet (thankfully) failed to secure any seats in parliament, and likewise with almost a million votes (919,000+), UKIP too failed to gain any representation in Westminster. I have the utmost respect for both the Greens and the SNP, but the numbers just don't add up. The small parties seem disproportionately disadvantaged, especially when you see how at the other end of the ladder, the Conservatives gained 47% of seats with 36% of the votes. To put this in to perspective, here is the average number of votes each party got for each of their seats, as well as the number of votes and seats earned (sorry for the overload of numbers here!)

Conservatives: 35,313 per seat (10,806,015 votes [36.4%], 306 seats [47.1%])

Labour: 33,370 per seat (8,609,527 votes [29%], 258 seats [39.7%])

Lib Dems: 119,944 votes per seat (6,836,824 votes [23%], 57 seats [8.8%])

Scottish National Party: 81,898 votes per seat (491,386 votes [1.7%], 6 seats [0.9%])

Green Party: 265,243 votes per seat (265,243 votes [0.9%], 1 seat [0.2%])

UK Independence Party n/a (919,471 votes [3.1%], 0 seats)

British National Party n/a (564,321 votes, 0 seats)

The point I'm highlighting here, is how the nation's desires are so poorly reflected in parliament. As you can see above, the green party averaged 265,243 votes for their one seat, but that seat, Brighton, was won by the greens with only 16,238 votes in that constituency, meaning almost 250,000 votes cast on them (93.9%) were wasted! First Past The Post (the voting system used in UK general elections) is shambolic and the very reason why so many people don't bother to vote. Why would you vote when, unless you live in one of the marginal constituencies where the seat is tightly contested, you're vote makes no difference whatsoever? As a matter of fact, only 2% of the voters, those who happen to live in those marginal constituencies actually affect the outcome of the election. It's a widely known fact, Michael Gove, the Tory chief whip openly talked about it on BBC Question Time (02/04/2015). It is no less than an outrage.