CLEARLY the election result was very disappointing to Liberal Democrats, but how can your anonymous reporter justify writing “… the demolition of any last support for the Liberal Democratic Party...” ? (SWA 9/5/15)

Despite the disappointing result, the Lib Dems amassed 2.42 million votes (7.9 per cent). Proportionally Lib Dems merited 52 seats, not the 8 first past the post gave them. The Conservatives got 87 seats, Labour 31 and the SNP 25 more than their votes merited.

Clearly UKIP and the Greens merited more, but it is ironic that they are now saying it is time to reform the voting system when they expressed no concern that the Lib Dems, and before them the Liberals, have been disgracefully under represented in every election in living memory. The Alternative Vote was rejected after a scurrilous campaign against it. Although not perfect, AV could have been easily introduced and is far fairer than FPTP.

It would have created a Parliament more likely to consider the Single Transferable Vote system of Proportional Representation. Your correspondent, A Greenhalgh, advocated electoral reform long before the election, saying that more people would vote if they thought their vote would count. Spot on, Mr Greenhalgh, except you were wrong in saying that the Lib Dems favoured a “complicated list system”. Perish the thought. List systems give power to the parties; we want to empower the voters. Incidentally, to date, 11,000 people have joined the Liberal Democrats since the election, many of them locally.

David Hando,
Pwll Pen Court,
Hartridge, Newport