Distorted vote

SIR - Yet again in the county elections we see a gross distortion of the will of the electorate as 46 per cent of the voters elected 55 Conservative councillors out of 77 while the remaining 54 per cent of the voters elected just 22 councillors. No wonder

SIR - Yet again in the county elections we see a gross distortion of the will of the electorate as 46 per cent of the voters elected 55 Conservative councillors out of 77 while the remaining 54 per cent of the voters elected just 22 councillors.

No wonder Cameron doesn't want to have a referendum on changing the voting system. He knows that his Tories will get a large majority with far less than half of the votes just as Blair did in the three previous general elections.

I'm sure that it's no coincidence that there were three times as many MPs in safe seats with very large majorities who grabbed large sums of public money compared with MPs in marginal seats.

A fair result in the county elections would have elected 35 Conservatives with 46 per cent, 22 Lib Dems with 27.1 per cent, 11 Labour with 13.9 per cent, 6 Greens with 7.1 per cent and 4 Others with 5 per cent of the vote.

Nobody in their right mind would advocate the party list system as used in the Euro elections. It may be proportional but it doesn't give voters any choice as to which members of a party they can elect. Before we can clean up our distorted election system and our corrupt parliamentary system we need to have a proper public debate followed by a referendum. This referendum can include other issues such as fixed term parliaments, recall of recalcitrant MPs, a written constitution, reform of the House of Lords, etc., as well as a fair voting system.

We must not let Cameron slide out of his responsibilities this time as Blair did 10 years ago.

GEOFF CHURCHARD

Lib Dem County Cllr for Sandridge, Marshalswick North and Jersey Farm