DMC is working with electoral reform coalition Make Votes Count to help raise awareness of the inadequacies of the UK’s current voting system

We’re working with Make Votes Count to help raise awareness of the inadequacies of the UK’s current voting system and highlight the opportunities for change that the May 5 2005 general election will bring.

Fewer than 150,000 votes made a difference to the outcome of the last UK general election, and “with democracy at its lowest ebb since the war” only those in marginal seats - 1 in 323 people - will do so this time.

Nina Temple, director of Make Votes Count, the coalition that campaigns for referendum on a more representative voting system, explains the three main issues:

The present winner-takes-all voting system frequently gives governments exaggerated majorities and leaves a tiny minority of voters in marginal seats to decide elections. Like any business targeting only those people who can make a difference to its success, political parties are spending millions of pounds on hidden high-tech campaigns to win over the 800,000 key voters in marginal seats who will decide the outcome of the 2005 general election. This is tantamount to telling 98% of the electorate that its votes do not count. A fairer, proportional voting system would produce a more representative parliament and make everybody’s vote count equally.

There is also a higher than usual likelihood in this election of a hung parliament for a much reduced Labour majority, which could leave the Liberal Democrats in a position of leverage. In that case, they would demand a referendum on voting reform.

Finally, electoral reform could still be made if Labour wins the election outright; its manifesto will commit to a process of reviewing the voting system.

With such significant opportunities available to get democracy back on track and make everyone’s votes count equally, Make Votes Count asked us to help them at strategic and executional levels. Strategicially, we’ve enabled the organisation to connect and collaborate with key online opinion leaders and supporters of electoral reform in order to spread their message as widely as possible during and after the election.

At an executional level, we’ve brought Make Votes Count together with some leading viral community exponents, including the team behind the Subservient President spoof who have created Subservient Blair, and Rubberductions with their political satire site Spinon.

The electoral reform issues and the idea of ‘making noise’ at this key time prior to the election have already captured the imagination of the online community - DoYouCount is the latest execution by another team of supporters committed to promoting the pro-reform message.

You can find out more about electoral reform here