Citizens in Charge

It seems the excitement in the UK never ends. Last week? Royal wedding. This week? Their first national referendum vote in nearly 4 decades.

The big referendum will determine what style of elections they use to elect members of parliament. From The Independent:

Forty million people will get the chance to support an historic change to the British voting system today.

“Super Thursday” will see the UK’s first nationwide referendum for 36 years, as well as the customary elections to English local authorities, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland’s Assembly and councils.

Yesterday the three leaders of the main Westminster political parties made their final pitches to voters. The stakes are high for all three men.

Nick Clegg anxiously awaits the public’s verdict on his party’s long-cherished goal to scrap the first-past-the-post system – and braces for the loss of hundreds of council seats.

He will cast his referendum Yes vote and town hall vote in his Sheffield Hallam constituency, where the Liberal Democrats may struggle to hold on to power on the city council. In line with tradition, he will not campaign today.

This differs from the initiative and referendum process here in that this will be a nationwide vote in the UK. Although some in the US are pushing for that style of referendum law here, it has not become law. We’ll keep you posted and once the results of the vote are known we’ll update this blog post so stay tuned.

If you want to read more about the vote you can check out the Wikipedia page here. Or if you want to learn more about instant runoff voting check out FairVote’s video here.