Fairness
Do seats track votes closely enough that large blocs are not over-rewarded and smaller blocs are not shut out?
Westminster keeps producing the same kind of mess
Votes pile up where they change nothing. Parties obsess over a handful of marginals. Voters are pushed to choose tactically instead of honestly. That is not just bad luck. It is a ballot-design problem.
This site starts with that glitch, then works outward: why it happens, what a simpler ballot could do, and which reform paths make the most sense for the UK.
The glitch in Westminster elections
The odd thing about First Past the Post (FPTP) is that it can make perfectly normal voter behaviour produce weird results. You can end up with millions of wasted votes, giant seat bonuses for one party, safe seats where almost nobody gets campaigned to, and constant pressure to vote against the side you fear rather than for the side you actually like.
Those are not four separate problems. They are four symptoms of the same design choice: a ballot that lets each voter make just one mark in a multi-party democracy.
34% Labour's vote share in 2024
→
63% of seats won
📊 14.8 Million Wasted Votes
In 2024, nearly 15 million votes had no impact on the result. If you live in a safe seat, your vote effectively does not count.
⚖️ Seats Don't Match Votes
Labour won 63% of seats with just 34% of votes. Reform UK got 14% of votes but only 0.8% of seats. This is not democracy.
🎭 Forced Tactical Voting
Millions vote against their true preference to "stop the other side". Voters should vote for who they want, not against who they fear.
🏚️ Safe Seats = Ignored Voters
Most constituencies never change hands. Parties focus all resources on marginal seats while ignoring everyone else.
Data from the 2024 General Election. For more on these issues, see Make Votes Matter and the Electoral Reform Society.
Britain may be closer to electoral reform than it has been in a generation
First Past the Post is increasingly hard to defend. The party system is fragmenting. Labour knows that its historic 2024 seat haul came from just a third of the vote — and that the same arithmetic could work against it next time. Reform UK, which built its base partly on a promise of proportional representation, could become a major force in Westminster. The conditions for a serious reform conversation are assembling, whether or not any party plans to start one.
When that conversation arrives — through a commission, a manifesto commitment, or sheer political necessity — the options on the table will matter enormously. And that is where Britain has a problem.
The reform menu has been too narrow
Every serious UK attempt at electoral reform has been shaped — and often derailed — by the specific political circumstances of its moment. The Jenkins Commission proposed a mixed system that satisfied almost no one. The 2011 AV referendum asked the public to adopt a system that even many reformers considered a compromise, and the campaign for it collapsed under the weight of unfamiliarity and a brutal opposition effort.
The lesson is not that reform is impossible. It is that the choice of system matters as much as the political will to change. A reform proposal that is hard to explain, hard to count, or easy to caricature will struggle — no matter how theoretically sound it is.
There is an unconsidered path
This site argues that Britain's reform debate has underexplored a family of voting systems built around a radically simple ballot change: instead of marking one candidate, you approve every candidate you would be happy to elect.
That single change — from "pick one" to "approve as many as you like" — unlocks a set of reform options that range from the smallest possible improvement to Westminster (single-winner approval in existing constituencies) to a fully proportional Parliament (multi-member approval districts). And crucially, at every point on that spectrum, the ballot stays simple.
What matters in a good reform
Once you see the glitch, the obvious next question is: what should a better system actually do? A good reform has to clear a few tests at once. It should make seats fairer, give voters more real power, preserve a workable local link, stay legible on the ballot, and fit the politics of how reform could actually happen in the UK.
Voter Power and Accountability
Can voters back people they genuinely support, and can elected representatives still be held to account by identifiable electorates?
Local Connection
Does the system preserve a credible constituency or regional link, using boundaries people can recognise and work with?
Simplicity
Can ordinary voters understand the ballot and can administrators count the result without opaque transfer rules?
Implementability
Could the UK actually legislate and run it, either as a near-term reform or as a clear next stage after proportionality is won?
What happens next
The point of this site is not to declare a winner. It is to make sure that when Britain next seriously considers electoral reform, the options on the table include approval-based systems — not because they are perfect, but because they have been overlooked and they deserve honest evaluation alongside the Single Transferable Vote, the Additional Member System, and list proportional representation.
There is now a concrete way to push for that. Open Britain is calling for an independent National Commission on Electoral Reform — a formal, evidence-based review of how Britain elects its MPs. Over 10,000 people have already signed.
Sign the petition for a National Commission on Electoral Reform
Parliament should establish an independent commission to assess whether First Past the Post is still fit for purpose — and if not, what should replace it. This is the single most useful thing you can do right now.
Sign the petition at open-britain.co.uk →Also worth your time:
Make Votes Matter
The main UK campaign for proportional representation. Building the coalition that makes reform politically unavoidable.
Electoral Reform Society
Research, events, and the institutional memory of a century of reform advocacy.
Write to your MP
Ask them to support a commission on electoral reform that evaluates a genuinely wide range of systems.
Center for Election Science
The US organisation behind real-world approval voting campaigns. Directly relevant research and experience.