It is instructive to compare the pie chart accompanying your coverage of the forthcoming Hertsmere elections showing the current make-up of the council (‘Which Party will get your vote?’, Borehamwood & Elstree Times, May 9) with one showing what it would be like if these seats had been contested under an electoral system that awards seats to parties in proportion to their popularity at the ballot box.

The effect of the winner-takes-all (or ‘first past the post’) system used in English local elections is to reward the leading party in each seat at the expense of all its rivals, with the consequence that smaller parties are squeezed or excluded from the council chamber altogether.

The Tories’ 57 per cent share of the votes cast in the three rounds of elections that produced the present council has given them 34 (or 87 per cent) of the 39 seats, a total which rose to 35 as a result of a defection to their ranks.

But Labour’s 28 per cent vote share won it only five (or 13 per cent) of the seats, since reduced to four. And the 15 per cent of voters who cast their ballots for candidates of other parties – or of none – are completely unrepresented.

If a proportional system of voting had been in use, as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, then (assuming the same councillor had crossed the floor) there would now be ten fewer Tory and five extra Labour councillors, plus three Liberal Democrats and two from UKIP.

Not content with a system which is hugely biased in their favour, the Tories are planning a switch to a system of all-out elections in multi-member seats (rather than having councillors retiring by rotation in successive years), which is likely to produce even more distorted results.

What seems astonishing is that this proposal has excited almost no public comment in your columns, even from supporters of the parties whose prospects it is clearly designed to damage further.

John Cartledge

Haddon Close, Borehamwood