Madam,

As someone with an active interest in the subject of electoral reform, I was interested to read the letter from Tony Jones in last week’s Cambrian News (‘Side effect of fairer electoral system is likely to be Hamilton as our AM’) about the forthcoming Welsh Assembly Elections.Some may well view the likely election of Mr Hamilton of UKIP as an unfortunate side-effect of the additional member proportional voting system. However, it should be remembered that it will nonetheless require a significant number of voters in the mid and west region to vote for the candidate for this to be realised. The system offers much greater voter choice and an opportunity for a vibrant multi-party democracy at Cardiff Bay; a demonstrable improvement on the archaic, unfair, and uninclusive “first-past-the-post” system, which is regrettably still used for elections to Westminster.

Given the present situation, whereby the new devolution settlement for Wales is a work in progress, one hopes for the next step to a single transferrable vote (STV) system, where voters have the maximum degree of choice, over both parties and candidates. This would make Wales truly a beacon for modern representative democracy, and would certainly reduce the possibilities for party-selected candidates to be parachuted into certain Assembly seats.

Yours etc

Dr Chris Finlayson

Pen y Cei

Aberystwyth.