LIKE your correspondent Chris Rothwell, SNJ June 10, I was outraged that voters who didn’t vote tactically for Labour were classed as traitors by one of your previous correspondents.

Having said that I am much more dismayed that we still harbour such an unfair and adversarial electoral system that virtually forces people not to vote for what they really believe in.

It may be argued that our first-past-the-post system was tenable when we had only two political parties vying to run the country.

However, even after the Second World War, there were many examples of elections where the loser had many more votes overall than the victor.

Currently, it is estimated that only 100,000 voters in the country can determine any general victory.

Just to illustrate how unfair the voting system is, for every one seat in Parliament, Ukip needed four million votes, the Greens one million, Lib Dems 300,000, Labour 40, 000, Conservatives 34,000 and the SNP 26.000 votes.

The SNP of course is low as their vote is concentrated within Scotland.

Although our establishment is too scared to introduce such a radical system that might upset the market, after the war, our government imposed a system of proportional representation on defeated Germany with a lower threshold of five per cent to enter the Bundestag.

Similarly, the European Elections work on PR, which allowed Molly Scott Cato to become an MEP, one of six in the region and she succeeded by having 12.2 per cent of the vote.

PR, by its very nature allows people to vote positively rather in a negative vein for a second best choice.

At this last election, eight million people were missing from the electoral register partly because of the government’s self registration, but also many people had very little faith in this form of democracy.

Both Scotland and Wales vote by PR for their Assemblies and I am convinced that once people start to know that every PR vote counts, they will feel it is worth engaging to vote again.

Proportional Representation's time has come: it will invigorate participation, otherwise our democracy will wither.

Across the country there is strong will for change, in the Stroud constituency there will be a campaign commencing in the autumn.

John Marjoram

Stroud District Councillor