A tough collective decision

Voting is an individual decision, but elections are also a remarkable instance of collective decision making. The process tends to attract criticism, though. Are its imperfections inevitable?

Last week saw parliamentary elections being held in two of Europe’s largest democracies. In the UK, a Labour victory was widely predicted and came to pass; in France, against the expectations of some, the Rassemblement National failed to win an outright majority, mostly because of a broad call for tactical voting. In both countries, there was considerable dismay about the large discrepancy between some parties’ share of the vote and the corresponding share of the seats. Is these countries’ election system flawed?

Unhappy voters

Naturally, the criticism came the corner of the parties that gained fewer seats than a strict proportional distribution according to the votes would have produced. In the UK, there were no complaints from the Labour party, which achieved a comfortable absolute majority — 411 seats out of 650, or 63% — with just 34% of the votes, nor from the Liberal Democrats, whose 12% vote share delivered them 72 seats (11%). But , formerly the Brexit Party, only got 5 seats (less than 1%) despite receiving 14% of…