Electoral Reform committee  There are 158.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, it's gone down to just one or so independents in some past elections, but at the moment we're in a very good time for independents, partly because parties are losing popularity, as we mentioned earlier.

Electoral Reform committee  Independents are in the current government. We have a number of independent ministers at the moment.

Electoral Reform committee  Independents have formed groupings. They are not parties, but they're groupings. One grouping is part of the current coalition.

Electoral Reform committee  Except that there is no requirement to vote in a particular way, because that would make them a party, and they're opposed to that. This is Alice in Wonderland stuff, when parties are not parties and groupings of independents are not parties. They are groupings, but they are no

Electoral Reform committee  About one voter in 10 fills the whole ballot in. It's a relatively small number. The typical number of preferences is about four. People usually vote for candidates of two parties. That's the average.

Electoral Reform committee  For individual candidates, there's no incentive to say, “Vote number one for me and then stop”, because a lower preference can only count if they don't need it anymore. Usually candidates would have some preference about where their voters give their lower preference.

Electoral Reform committee  It's a beautiful part of the world. Prince Edward Island would be a natural unit, and New Brunswick, which I believe is your own part of the world, divides neatly into ten ridings. That would fall neatly into two five-seat ridings.

Electoral Reform committee  We're delighted to be here, but we'd be even more delighted had you flown us over to Canada to do this.

Electoral Reform committee  We would have been so much better.

Electoral Reform committee  There are still wasted votes. In a five-seat constituency, for example, all the votes for the runner-up in effect are wasted, but that's roughly one in every six votes in a five-seat constituency, whereas in a single-seat constituency, as under first past the post, half the votes

Electoral Reform committee  I think there's very little evidence that the population wants to see any changes, but there are a lot of commentators in the media who would like to see changes. There are commentators in the media who think all the ills of politics in Ireland can be put at the foot of the elect

Electoral Reform committee  They feel that there must be a quick fix somewhere, and the electoral system is a quick fix, but the voters themselves would resist strongly any change, particularly if it was a change to remove them somewhat from their MPs. If you had a list system of proportional representati

Electoral Reform committee  No, I think that deals pretty thoroughly with that aspect. It's basically not a political issue in this country.

Electoral Reform committee  Certainly it is true that MPs nearly always do vote the party line. MPs respond to constituents' wishes in terms of making constituency representations, obtaining more resources for the constituency, taking up individual grievances of their constituents, but they don't take their