If you would like to learn more about where I stand on politics, social justice, and environmental issues, please check out my blog, Mass Greens [1]

And feel free to post a comment.

In the meantime, here's my take on the outcome of the recent UK election:

One of the advantages of the first-past-the-post system, according to its supporters, is its tendency to produce clear winners and governments with reliable parliamentary majorities. But the 2010 general election produced a House of Commons in which no single political party had enough seats to govern alone. With 32% of the votes and 30% of the seats, the Conservatives reached out to the Liberal Democrats (whose 22% of the votes gave them just 10% of the seats) and formed a right-of-center coalition similar to the Christian Democrat-Free Democrat government in Germany.

Britain is part of the European Union and in European politics coalitions are the norm. But most European countries have proportional representation (PR) as do the devolved legislatures of Scotland and Wales. Until 2010, the consensus among PR advocates in Britain (most notably the Liberal Democrats) was that a coalition government would only form in London after -- not before -- Britain adopted PR for Westminster elections. In the event of a hung parliament at Westminster, many predicted, the Liberal Democrats would prop up a minority government in exchange for PR. Then, but only then, could Britain expect to see at the UK level the sort of full-blown coalitions that have become standard in Scotland and Wales.

But Conservative leader David Cameron and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg confounded the pundits by putting together a comprehensive, European-style coalition. Almost as surprising as the hung parliament and the coalition was the election of the Green Party's first Member of Parliament. To win a seat in Westminster, the Greens had to beat not only the two major parties (Conservatives and Labour) but also the centrist Lib Dems, the traditional beneficiaries of anti-incumbent sentiment. And that's exactly what the Greens managed to do. This simply isn't supposed to happen under first-past-the-post.

Despite the voting system, Britain's politics have come to look more like the politics of her European Union partners. Nevertheless, change is in the offing and next May the British people will have an opportunity to vote for a new electoral system. The referendum -- one of the Lib Dems' conditions for entering the coalition -- won't be offering proportional representation but a system that we in the U.S. have come to know as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). In Britain the system is called the Alternative Vote (AV).

The goal of AV is to ensure that each Member of Parliament has the support of the majority of the voters in her district, not merely a plurality. Voters in each district will be able to rank candidates in order of preference (i.e. 1 for their favorite, 2 for their second choice). If a candidate gets 50% plus one of the first preferences, she wins. But if nobody gets a majority, the least popular candidate drops out and the vote-counters distribute her supporters' votes in accordance with their preferences. For example, imagine a three-way race between Labour, Conservatives, and Liberal Democrats:

Labour 45%
Conservative 35%
Lib Dem 20%

No candidate has a majority, so the Lib Dem is knocked out. Let's say all the Lib Dem voters ranked the Conservatives second: Their votes will now go to the Conservative candidate, giving her 55% and pushing her comfortably over the threshold for victory. So although the Labour candidate with a plurality of 45% would have won under first-past-the-post, under AV victory goes to the Conservative.

The advantages of AV? It's simple and, on its face, fairer. After all, what could be fairer than requiring victorious candidates to have earned the support of the majority of the voters?

What about the disadvantages? Even electoral reformers will admit there are a few, but the one with the most important consequences is this: Although it removes the so-called "spoiler effect" AV can tend to reinforce two-party dominance. Yes, under AV people can vote for third parties without fear of unintentionally letting in the party they like least. But when those third-party candidates keep placing third out of three, and fail to pick up seats of their own, many of their supporters may ask themselves "what's the point?"

Ironically, the long-time champions of electoral reform, the Liberal Democrats, might be better off under first-past-the-post than they would under the system they will be campaigning for in the May referendum.