In rejecting proposals for island-wide voting last week, States members took the wrong decision but for some of the right reasons.

There is little doubt that a majority of islanders really do want to be able to vote across the board for their island representatives.

Wedded to their parish they may be, but electors see Guernsey as small enough for them to have a direct say in who sits in the States.

Perhaps more than that, as feelings about the quality of representation run ever higher – the proposals artificially to hike port charges because government refuses to cut its costs are a case in point – increasingly angry islanders want more control over the Assembly as a whole.

And who can blame them?

Why the States was correct in rejecting the proposals, however, is because the report ‘justifying’ it from the States Assembly and Constitution Committee was so flimsy and so undermined by its own chairman.

After the grandly-titled but pointless Legislation Select Committee (it scrutinises nothing), Sacc is the weakest link in government.

It failed adequately to make a case for IWV – despite all the popular support for it – failed to set out the consequences of electors not casting all their votes in a field of upwards of 90 candidates and failed amongst themselves even to agree what it was that they were after.

Unsurprisingly, then, that in pursuit of better governance and evidence-based decision-making, members threw out the report.

Yet how much self-interest was also displayed in rejecting island-wide voting?

Very few islanders believe that this administration has acquitted itself well. With a general election just 12 months away, how many deputies thinking of standing again would really want to give voters significantly more power?

Add to that the element of chance implied by Sacc’s incomplete and unhelpful report and it is clear that members were not minded to make life more difficult for themselves.

But that only delays the inevitable. Deputies have either to prove IWV cannot work – or else put it to the test.