Conventional voting systems are designed around the needs of governing parties to have democratic legitimacy and effective hierarchical structures. The House of Lords has different roles to the Commons, that of scrutinising its legislation and checking its power. The mandates given by the TOU-STV system is designed for those roles.

The name of the chamber might be “Assembly of Peoples' representataives, the legislators might therefore be “Assembly Members”, “AMs”.

The OAB system has two stages of the preference voting that is used in STV systems. The first, nomination stage is website based and open to anyone to stand. Candidates can align with a party by gaining proposals by members of that party elected to public office, or organisations affiliated to that party. Individuals and organisations not aligned to political parties may propose candidates who will be independents, although technically, as candidate's have no direct link to their parties all candidates are independents.

Propositions by MPs are more informative for voters than party affiliation alone, and the decoupling allows legislators independence from their parties as they cannot be deselceted by them. Candidates will normally stand across the UK, and a variety of search functions will make the extensive list of candidacies accessible, and give information about the candidates, including any voting record they may have.

In each polling district parties will have numbers of “positions”; one position for every 10% of the vote they gained in any election in the last 5 years. Where a party has a vacant position that polling district is counted towards a constituency for its aligned candidate with the most votes in it.

Candidates with constituencies where the total electorate of the polling districts in their constituency meets a threshold will progress to the second stage. The polling districts in which a progressing candidate is most popular for their aligned party are ranked by the candidate’s popularity relative to the next most popular candidate aligned to the party. The lowest ranked polling districts that are surplus to those required to meet the electorate threshold are not included. The polling districts where further candidates aligned are less popular will therefore have less positions, and those further candidates will have constituencies made up of polling districts where they are more popular.

Polling districts that did not form part of a successful candidate’s constituency will have that candidate’s votes transferred, together with surplus votes over a threshold from polling districts that are part of their constituency, to voters’ next preferences. Other calculations are also made as the vote count progresses.

• In each polling district, the proportion of first preference votes going to candidates aligned to parties with positions to first preference votes for independent candidates, will be used to calculate the number of positions for independents.

• Mechanisms will prevent candidates being eliminated from the calculation that would leave parties’ or independents’ positions unfilled.

• Candidates aligned to parties without any positions in a polling district will have that polling district calculated for their constituency if they have more votes than any other candidate. One candidate from each of those parties may stand in any such polling districts in the election stage.

• When no candidate qualifies for the election stage then the least popular are eliminated and their votes transferred to the next eligible candidates marked on those ballot papers.

The result of the nomination stage is an election stage in which voters will have a choice of a dozen or so electorally viable candidates that reflects the political landscape in their polling district. While wide enough to give a high degree of choice, the ballot is also concise enough that voters can readily make well informed choices.

The complexity of hundreds or thousands of candidates competing across thousands of polling districts will make the ‘free-riding’ tactical voting strategy available with STV impossible to calculate in either stage.

The election stage will use postal or in-person paper ballots, with a UK wide vote count that allocates all the available seats.

Constitutional advantages of TOU-STV

While the TOU-STV system provides high levels of accountability and proportionality, the most important advantages of the system are best understood when we look at it in the context of the UK’s bicameral system.

The relationship between the two chambers of the UK parliament is not fixed. The most significant change was with the Great reform act of 1832, that made constituencies and qualifications for voting more equal. MPs in the Commons gained greater democratic legitimacy which enabled much of the chamber’s current primacy over the Lords. The Common’s primacy is not derived from statute, and any statute to maintain the primacy of the Commons would not change the nature of the mandates of MPs and legislators in the upper chamber. Popularly mandated legislators in the upper chamber could have ramifications of a similar magnitude to the Great reform act for parliament, negating much of the supremacy of the Commons and leading to a return of competition between the chambers. The constitutional considerations is why reforming the Lords to an elected chamber has always been difficult to achieve.

It is the complementarity between the two sets of mandates for MPs and peers that allows the chambers to work together to pass legislation, and not compete. That peers are not bound to their parties’ whips, in the same way as MPs are, gives them the authority of independence from the Commons necessary to fulfil their core roles of checking the power of the Commons and scrutinising legislation. In practice, peers are not independent from their parties in the Commons, and the relative neutrality of the Lib Dems and cross benchers and the balance of power they hold gives the chamber its relative political neutrality, a PR system would usually replicate this.

In the TOU-STV system’s decoupling of the AMs from their parties, and in giving electorates the extensive choice of candidates, AMs in the reformed upper chamber would increase their independence from their parties. AMs might be expected to take positions aligned to those of their proposers, while AMs that were proposed by party leaderships would be expected to take those parties’ whips. The electorate could therefore differentiate a government from the parties of government, allowing results that more accurately reflect the nation's politics. A candidate’s proposer, and any party they represent, will be printed next to their name on ballot papers so that the election stage is accessible to all voters.

With many blocks having shares of the seats there would be a narrower likelihood of any cohesive grouping gaining a strong democratic mandate on any issue, and therefore possibly destabilising the parliamentary system. Stable arrangements between a government and a majority of legislators to rubber-stamp legislation would also be harder to achieve. The variety of mandates in the chamber would likely promote shifting alliances issue to issue, and legislation would be more likely to be passed or amended on merit. A multitude of blocks would be analogous to fractured parties, which is democratic and appropriate for an upper chamber, as it has no responsibility to govern from a mandated program.

Because neither voters nor AMs would know where they might stand in the election stage of future elections, there would be a limited ability to form a voter-link from which they might gain electorally. There will be some legislators returned from smaller devolved areas that could cultivate a voter link, but their mandate as a block that might contest the supremacy of the Commons would be limited by their low numbers, political differences, and the lack of clear division between them and legislators elected from geographically irrational UK constituencies. An expectation or convention of representation from senators would therefore be much less likely to arise than with other PR systems. In legislators in the upper chamber not seeking or gaining a mandate for representation, the primacy of the Commons and complementarity between the chambers would be maintained.

Legislators would still be accountable to the electorate at large in the nomination stage, and electorates in their constituencies in the election stage at the subsequent election.

The election of independent experts

After an initial vote count, one party-aligned AM per independent AM will be secondarily elected in a recount of the votes without any independents. These party-aligned AMs will pair with an independent and be entitled to use their vote when the independent is not. This allows experts to contribute to legislation when it is appropriate to their expertise and continue their work outside the chamber, without giving rise to any democratic deficit. The role would bemore accessible to experts, allowing a greater variety of independents to stand. Voters in the election stage would not have to choose between part-time and full-time AMs, as they could effectively vote for independents ‘for free’.

The independents expected to spend the least time in parliament, so allowing their pair to vote more often, would be most popular for pairing, and they would likely be more able to choose who they pair with.

Non-expert independents, those elected due to their politics, would allow little time for their pair to vote, and might more tightly manage when they vote according to their differences on legislation. For those who vote for those independents, also returning secondarily elected AMs may seem to carry more weight. However, it is also likely that the positions of the independent would limit who might be willing to pair with them, only a secondarily elected AM with similar poliotics will want to pair with them, negating any advantage to voters.

Because it is the same voters that elect both independents and secondarily elected AMs, the two groups are likely to be broadly similar in their spread of political positions. Pairings would also be likely to politically aligned simply to allow for easier working relationships.

Any overall imbalance of the political positions of the two sets of legislators would leave the independents with the advantage of greater access to voting, in line with their having been primarily elected.

By elections will be by vote recounts. This would bring in a new secondarily elected legislator, and allow periodic opportunities for pairings to re-organise themselves.

With short campaign periods for election stages, discontiguous constituencies, and the variety of smaller platforms of prospers and candidates, experts’ ability to campaign will be more equal to that of political candidates than might otherwise be the case.

With independents being available to return alongside prefered party-aligned AM, the electorate as a whole would determine the broad balance between experts, politically disposed independents, and party aligned AMs in the chamber.

Regionalisation and devolution

Candidates could stand exclusively in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, or in any region that has devolved power. Electors would be able to vote for UK-wide candidates, or those local candidates on issues for the nation or region, allowing regional competition to be no less than it is for UK wide candidates. The smaller areas in which regional candidates stand would give continuity for those incumbents’ voters from one parliamentary term to the next, allowing a degree of representation. Candidates’ ability to stand on platforms relating to devolution could give mandates that would legitimise and entrench devolution, as recommended by the Brown report, more reliably than legislators with mandates based on their parties’ national campaigns - with mandates that empower their parties’ whips. Those AMs would also have greater authority on matters relating to devolution than legislators elected under other PR systems, as those systems would allow localised candidates no competition from UK-wide candidates.

Candidates could also stand in areas proposed for devolution by parties or other qualifying organisations, likely standing on platforms for or against such a devolution itself. This would give momentum and legitimacy for any campaigns or processes that the election results support.

Summary

A body of legislators broadly proportional to the entire electorate’s view on parties, proposers, and issues, would be elected. A high percentage of voters could have a preferred candidate returned, indicating the low wastage of votes achieved, and legitimising the elections in the public perception. The ability of electorates to return candidates with stronger mandates for their sub-party alignment would reduce the danger to the bicameral system of ‘second tier’ elections to the upper chamber, as well as preventing large blocks forming with mandates that could challenge the primacy of the Commons.

At the same time as maintaining the primacy of the Commons, only legislators in an upper chamber that have comparable democratic legitimacy to MPs could check the power of the Commons. Only legislators with legitimacy from elections could expect to be recognised as legitimate in simple terms, which are invariably the only terms that are effective in politics.

In addressing constitutional concerns, the difficulty and political costs of attempting a large-scale reform of the longest-established, and one the most stable parliamentary systems in the world, would be substantially reduced.

Politically, the argument for large-scale reform of the Lords must be won with the public. The lack of accountability of MPs; and of the lower profile peers; the sum of our parliamentary system, would allow for suitable messaging to gain that mandate, even if it isn't explicit.

Without such a mandate any proposed reform will be limited and politically expedient for the government, as was the case with Blair's reforms of the Lords, and the Lib Dems opportunity to reform elections for the commons in 2010.