Sir – Good idea or not, the elections for the police and crime commissioner do have an interesting aspect to them, namely that they allow a second preference vote, a system recently rejected for Parliamentary elections. I would imagine that this has been done to allow the elected person to claim a greater degree of legitimacy than would be the case with the first-past-the-post system.

So why is it that we can have this rather more democratic system for these elections, when we are denied it when choosing our MP or local councillors, a large proportion of whom are elected with less than 50 per cent of the vote? I can only hazard a guess. It will be interesting to see the results.

Duncan Ledger, Bletchingdon