Scottish secretary Donald Dewer announcing the countdown to Great Britain's first proportional representational election for Scotland's devolved parliament in 1997
(PA/EMPICS)
Q. What is tactical voting?
A. Tactical voting could be a way of ensuring
that your least-favourite choice doesn’t get in where you live.
So if you’re a die-hard Labour supporter but live in a constituency
where Labour hasn’t got a chance of winning, you could vote either
with the party that has the policies closest to Labour’s, or that
has the best chance of keeping the party you least like out of
power.
Q. What is proportional representation?
A. Proportional representation in an electoral
system is where the number of MPs is linked to the number (proportion)
of votes that a party wins. So if 5% of the population votes for
a party nationwide, it gets 5% of the seats, even if it’s not
the most popular party in any one area. In our ‘first past the
post’ system, the number of MPs a party has reflects the number
of constituencies in which it has an outright majority. So if
a party gets 40% of the vote nationwide but doesn’t win any one
constituency, it gets no MPs.
Q. When did women get the vote in the UK?
A. It was just before the end of the First World
War in 1918 that certain women were first given the vote, after
many decades of campaigning by the feminist movement. It was seen
by some as a thank you for their efforts during the war. But it
wasn’t until 1928 that women were given exactly the same voting
rights as men and allowed to vote at the age of 21. Between 1918
and 1928, only women who were 30 and either a householder or married
could vote.
Q. Could all men vote before then?
A. No, only upper class and land-owning men could
vote before 1918. All men aged 21 or over got the right to vote
after being conscripted and forced to fight and die for their
country.
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