HERE'S a question for you. What can 27,930 people do that nearly nearly 600,000 others can't?

The answer is elect an MP to the Westminster Parliament.

At the last general election, the DUP needed only 27,930 votes per MP while UKIP won nearly 600,000 votes but didn't get a single MP last year.

It gets better (or worse depending on your party). The Greens had more than 500,000 people voting for them in 2017 for the return of just one MP. The Lib Dems, however, secured an MP for every 197,336 votes cast in their favour.

I raise this point because the four national Boundary Commissions have announced the results of the consultation which, if parliament accepts them, will see constituency boundaries redrawn and the number of constituencies reduced from the current 650 to just 600 at the next general election in 2022.

According to a report by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), election specialists Rallings & Thrasher have worked out that, if the votes cast in the 2017 election results were cast in these new boundaries, the Conservatives would have a majority of 16 – despite no votes changing.

So what's the point of the proposed changes and why have they come about?

The Parliamentary Constituencies Act required the four Boundary Commissions for the UK to carry out a review of constituencies and to submit final reports to Government this month after Parliament specified that the review must reduce the number of constituencies, and therefore MPs, in the UK, to 600.

The boundary commissions were asked to consider where the boundaries of the new constituencies in England should be and they key factor here was to ensure every new constituency (except two for the Isle of Wight) has roughly the same number of electors: No fewer than 71,031 and no more than 78,507.

Now on the face of it, this sounds like a really good idea.

But I would suggest that in practice, it won't make much difference.

Doug Cowan writing on the Electoral Reform Society website explained: "Westminster suffers from something called electoral bias.

"The ‘bias’ is the difference in seats between the two main parties if they both got the same number of votes. From 1992-2010, this helped the Labour party, in 2015 and 2017 it helped the Conservatives (although governing parties often tend think it’s biased against them…)

"The bias is caused by the fact each constituency only has one MP. These constituencies have different numbers of people in them, meaning you can win a small one with fewer votes than a big one. But, this isn’t the only source of bias.

"Turnout is different around the country, so you need fewer people to vote for you if fewer people in general vote in your constituency.

"But General Elections are not only Labour v Conservative battles. The more people there are voting for third parties (as long as they don’t win), the easier it is for the major parties to win a seat – the threshold for winner gets lower. You just need one more than the second-place candidate. In Belfast South, a candidate in 2015 won on 24.5 per cent."

Take, for example, the Tatton constituency. Now I don't wish to engage in sweeping generalisations but frankly the Tories could put up a Burton's dummy for election and if it had a blue rosette on it, the good people of Knutsford and Wilmslow would vote for it.

So all the Labour, Lib-Dem, Green and independent votes are essentially wasted.

(Interestingly, Esther McVey's Tatton constituency will cease to exist if the proposed boundary changes go ahead.)

Warrington South and Weaver Vale have both been much more interesting over recent years, changing hands between Labour and Conservative.

Even with constituencies such as these, many, many votes are wasted.

The older I get, the more I agree we are in desperate need of reform in our voting system.

According to the ERS, no matter which way you design boundaries, Westminster’s voting system will mean our Parliament only barely represents the UK. To solve this, we need to abandon the idea that each constituency should only elect one MP.

Instead, proportional electoral systems like the Single Transferable Vote elect groups of MPs from slightly larger constituencies. Rather than trying to divide a town or county into three arbitrary but equal-sized lumps, each with their own MP, you add the constituencies together into one big constituency with three MPs. The group of MPs reflect the variety of political opinion in that area.

And by ranking candidates on the basis of preference, you get not only political diversity but ensure that if your first choice can’t win, your vote isn’t entirely wasted.

As Doug Cowan says: "The fact that the new boundaries will change election results isn’t a sign that it has been gerrymandered – it’s a sign that Westminster’s unfair system is working just as expected."