WE now know the identity of our next Tatton constituency MP, sorry Conservative party candidate.

She was chosen behind closed doors last Wednesday.

The voters of Tatton have had no say in the matter.

This sorry state of affairs is certainly not democratic.

Voters should be the people to choose our next MP from a number of genuine candidates.

Our undemocratic first-pass-thepost system should be scrapped in favour of the single transferable vote (STV) system.

The whole of Chester East would be one constituency.

It would return, as now, four MPs.

Voters would rank the list of candidates in order of preference.

Each person’s single vote would be initially allocated to their preferred candidate.

Second preference votes for eliminated candidates would then be re-distributed and so on, until only four candidates remain.

STV has the dual advantage of allowing voters to choose between candidates of the same party and will give rise to a more proportional House of Commons.

It is more democratic than the alternative vote (AV) system that was rejected in the referendum of 2011.

Richard Barraclough Cheshire