Bollitics: The AV Referendum

[Jon]

I'm firmly of the opinion that this system of voting will marginalise minority parties further and to a large extent preserve the status quo of three "big" parties for a long time to come.

Whys is Caroline Lucas of the Greens in favour of this then Gareth? :?

[Condimentalist]

It'll marginalise extremist parties - not small parties. I expect them to benefit. Obviously the main winners are the Lib Dems. Personally I don't mind that, there are some decent politicians in that party. Taking the long view, I'd rather have that third voice involved, and this assortment of mugs won't be around forever. No-one is going to be voting for them in the short term either way.

And make no mistake, a 'no' vote will be taken as evidence that the country isn't interested in reform.

[bickster]

I'm firmly of the opinion that this system of voting will marginalise minority parties further and to a large extent preserve the status quo of three "big" parties for a long time to come.

Whys is Caroline Lucas of the Greens in favour of this then Gareth? :?

I really don't know, if her result was repeated under AV she probably wouldn't be in parliament

Brighton Pavillion: VOTE SHARE %

Green

31.3

Labour

28.9

Conservative

23.7

She really is a rare three way marginal, can't see many Tories voting Green can you?

I'd say she was misguided but ill informed because she really does look like a turkey thats actually voting for xmas.

[Jon]

And make no mistake, a 'no' vote will be taken as evidence that the country isn't interested in reform.

exactermundo.

That's one of my main worries. Will it get taken off the agenda by the big boys following this no vote, with the quite legitimate argument that "the public don't want it".

I'd love a yes vote on this.

It's not proper PR, but it's a step.

[bickster]

It'll marginalise extremist parties - not small parties.

How? Its a simple question, give me one realistic scenario where any small party can benefit from this, just one.

Show me a realistic election result that will get a small party a seat under this system

[Jon]

But former Home Secretary Lord Reid told BBC News AV was a "threat to the very basis on which we have always held our democratic system".

The Labour peer said AV "completely undermines and corrupts" the principle of "one person one vote"

Can anyone explain to me what this prick is on about?

[bickster]

And make no mistake, a 'no' vote will be taken as evidence that the country isn't interested in reform.

It'll also make those people totally f**ked off with the current system more f**ked off than before and as such not complacent that they've got change when they haven't really. The **** off with the system can only grow.

Seeing a no vote seen on that level is exactly why I will vote no, the change is not a change, you want real change, keep the system the same, the disaffected will grow quicker. Election turnouts year after year will reflect that as less and less people vote

[bickster]

But former Home Secretary Lord Reid told BBC News AV was a "threat to the very basis on which we have always held our democratic system".

The Labour peer said AV "completely undermines and corrupts" the principle of "one person one vote"

Can anyone explain to me what this prick is on about?

No, he's clearly an idiot

[blandy]

It'll marginalise extremist parties - not small parties.

How? Its a simple question, give me one realistic scenario where any small party can benefit from this, just one.

Show me a realistic election result that will get a small party a seat under this system

That question (as I'm sure you know) is not one that can be answered - it's not a "simple question".

Without access to people's second preferences in any area 10 months ago, it's impossible to "prove" anything. It's as untenable as your assertion that the Greens would have lost out in Brighton. You might be "probably" right or wrong. No one can know.

Why is Caroline Lucas of the Greens in favour of this then Gareth? :?

... if her result was repeated under AV she probably wouldn't be in parliament

Brighton Pavillion: VOTE SHARE %

Green

31.3

Labour

28.9

Conservative

23.7

She really is a rare three way marginal, can't see many Tories voting Green can you?

I'd say she was misguided but ill informed because she really does look like a turkey thats actually voting for xmas.

You say the Tory voters wouldn't have put Green as second choice - would they have put Labour then, to back up your point? and your quote completely ignores the 4th placed Lib Dems with 7000+ votes.

So under AV, in Brighton the first rounds would have seen the very small number of votes of the Independent bod, the socialist, the zombie rights (yeah, really) and the UKIP get shifted about, but then it would have got to the lib dem votes in 4th and a great deal may well have gone to the Greens, or some to Green, some Labour and some Tories in such a way that Labour would then be third in the running, and their votes shifted, many more of which may have gone to the Greens than to the Tories, perhaps? We just can't know. Which is why examples are worthless speculation and prove nothing either way [it would have been different / it would have been the same]

It's feasible that Greens would have won in Brighton under AV as well as under the current system. But I'm with Jon, I'm sure AV will help the chances of more than the main 2 parties that are cemented in place under the current system.

Another way of looking at it is "how would MPs and candidates have to behave in future?" knowing they would need voters of other parties to be sympathetic to their views.

The main arguments in it's favour are that it's a (small but significant) step in the right direction, that it will give more voters votes genuine meaning and significance, that the people campaigning against it are almost always on the wrong side of wider political issues (IMO), that the nature of the opposition to it betrays the desperation of the entitled brigade to hold on with lies and deceit.

I also kind of look at like "don't support the lying cynical self entitled political establishment in maintaining their cosy stitch up". If people like Thatcher's spawn are against AV then it must be good.

AV was good enough for Cameron and the Tories in their own elections - Cameron owes his being PM to their AV. David Davies would have been FPTP leader.

[mjmooney]

AV was good enough for Cameron and the Tories in their own elections - Cameron owes his being PM to their AV. David Davies would have been FPTP leader.

Good point. The "Yes" campaign should use this on their posters.

[bickster]

A more "intelligent" reasoning for voting NO.

Say no to AV; Britain needs an entirely new system

Monica Threlfall, 21 March 2011

The British public is finally being offered a referendum on electoral reform because the faults of the Westminster system are all too apparent. The way it gives so many more seats in relation to votes to leading parties and squeezes out third-placed and smaller ones; the way if offers constituents only one Member of Parliament to represent them, despite the residents' diversity; the way some winners can get their seat with only a handful of votes more than the next candidate, while others can hold on to theirs for decades due to an in-built social majority of their constituency's residents; and the way our Single-Member Majoritarian system (FPTP) can give the leading party overwhelming dominance of parliament and government – such defects undermine confidence in the parliamentary system.

Does this mean that critics of FPTP should embrace a change to the Alternative Vote? Unfortunately not. Alone in the world, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Australia use it for their national parliaments. It has worked well in Papua because in polities that are highly fragmented along ethnic and tribal lines, AV prevents candidates from behaving in an overly partisan way, making them seek support beyond their own communal base in order to gain the 2nd preference votes and get elected with an overall majority. But this is the very opposite of Britain's situation, where three nationwide parties stand accused of becoming increasingly similar, and a worrying number of potential voters abstain from deciding between them. AV is said by specialists to be the best system for promoting centrist politics, just what reformers in Britain wish to avoid.

By now we all know that those little diagrams on websites are a misleading simplification of the AV count. Do we all get our 2nd and subsequent preferences counted towards the outcome? No. Do all preferences even get counted? No. Will Labour and Conservative voters be able to transfer their 2nd choice to the Lib Dems, so as to prevent each other's rivals from winning? Not usually – only if the Lib Dems have already beaten them by coming top or runner-up. In sum, a large majority of voters will never have their 2nd choices counted.

If the reason for reform is to increase competition between the old parties and help new ones, AV does the opposite. Whichever party comes third-place in a constituency is the only mainstream option whose ballots will have their 2nd and subsequent preferences counted along with those of the small and fringe parties. What the Lib Dems are probably hoping for is that, as their candidates frequently end up in third position, their voters will have the casting vote using their 2nd preferences to determine the winner, with this pattern repeating itself in numerous constituencies.

But if third-placed LibDems become kingmakers with their 2nd preferences, both Labour and Conservatives will want to develop alliances with them, whether voiced or whispered, and policy differences will blur even further. Instead of going all out to persuade voters to back them on the grounds of their difference from other parties, candidates would have to make broadly-based appeals to attract more 2nd preferences, rather than focusing on narrower issues, as explained by the online Electoral Knowledge Network. More hot air, fewer specifics.

In fact, choosing between so many poorly defined candidates confuses people so much that Australian parties issue voter guides telling their supporters who to vote for in their 2nd and subsequent preferences – this shows how AV pushes parties into constituency alliances that may actually be undesirable at national level. Imagine the British scenario in which the candidate from Party A has to convey the message, endorsed by the party, "Vote for me, but if you must vote for Party B, remember I'm not that different, so you can put me down as your 2nd preference", while Party A's sitting MP in the next constituency might have to suggest the opposite to Party C voters if their candidate is likely to come third: "I'm not so different from Party C, so give me your 2nd preference". A level of political incoherence likely to increase the electorate's disdain for politics, and an uncomfortable situation for MPs.

As to opening up parliament to more parties, AV does the opposite: it concentrates the vote on the two main parties, since the winner needs a bigger majority than under FPTP. In Australia, the two leading parties got 82% of the votes on 1st preferences alone, while the Green's 2nd preferences got transferred mainly to Labor, leaving the Greens with only one MP.

UK Green Party take note: with 1% of the national vote, you got one MP under FPTP. The Australian Greens got nearly 12% of the national vote, but only one MP. Under AV, Green parties cannot obtain a seat with a simple plurality, yet getting a majority is far too difficult, even if they were twelve times more popular than now, because a party must come top or runner-up on 1st preferences in a constituency before benefiting from any 2nd choices.

As to electoral reformers' desire to increase proportionality, AV does not offer this, as it remains a Majoritarian single-winner system. It does not offer strong majorities either. In the recent Australian election Labor got 37% and the Liberal Coalition got 44% of the vote on 1st preferences but ended up with the same number of seats each. Adding in the extra preferences, they came neck-and-neck, but with no change of seats and Labor had to reach for independents to form a government with a razor-thin majority. This means AV neither gives a significant increase in seats to the leading party (desirable for government stability), nor produces a more proportional outcome (as under PR). Instead, it entrenches the two-party system.

Advocates of a greater representation of women in parliament should give up any illusion that AV per se will help. Though Australia with nearly 25% of women is ranked 41st in the world, above the UK (22% and in 53rd place), Papua New Guinea has only one female MP (0.9%). By comparison, New Zealand with a Mixed Member Proportional system ranks 17th in the world with nearly 34% of MPs being women.

In terms of announcing the results, under AV election night could be a flop, because the count would not be in on time. With, say, ten candidates running, constituency tellers used to counting a turnout of 50,000 voters could be faced with half a million choices! Perhaps it's just as just as well they are not actually going to count most of them, but they still have to shuffle around the ballots to small parties to find enough 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc preferences to push a candidate over 25,000 votes to get the seat.

As to the alternatives to AV, the Scottish and Welsh FPTP with their tiers of Additional Members elected on a different basis, and Germany too, have the merit of achieving greater proportionality of seats gained in the legislative assembly. But to increase the presence of women it was necessary to impose strict gender balance rules on the parties because the system itself doesn’t deliver it. Two tier (Additional or Mixed Member) systems thus constitute an improvement over FPTP and AV, but at the cost of creating two types of MP (which leads to tensions), and having extremely complicated vote-counting systems.

To institute a top tier system at Westminster, the total number of MPs would have to rise considerably or the number of Single Member constituencies be reduced by nearly half – in other words a complete re-design that incumbent MPs would not vote for. The same problem would affect any planned adoption of an existing Proportional Representation with a Party lists of candidates, since large multi-member constituencies would have to be created, and most MPs fear the loss of their links with their current relatively small ones.

The best bet for reformers would be to advocate a new system that maintained the MPs' links with the small area of the present constituencies, while at the same time allocating seats in a more proportional way to parties, such as by distributing them across a group of constituencies – a multi-member district – so as to create proportionality within the group/district, while keeping the candidate selection and campaigning and representation constituency-based. A more proportional seat allocation would put an end to the current vast electoral 'deserts' where there are either no Labour or no Conservative MPs to represent supporters who voted for losing candidates. A hybrid system combining moderate PR with constituency links for MPs would solve many electoral defects of both systems and renovate Westminster parliamentary life without requiring the resignation or re-election of incumbent MPs.

The full proposal for a new electoral system for Westminster, with its implementation guide, is available for scrutiny and comment here.

Dr Monica Threlfall is Reader in European Politics at the Institute for the Study of European Transformations.

Clicky

[blandy]

A more "intelligent" reasoning for voting NO.

...Britain needs an entirely new system

I agree with that bit. I think that rejecting AV is likely to lead to no chance of further change, whereas voting for is likely to lead to a greater chance of further change.

Some of the points made kind of skew things a bit ,by comparing apples with Oranges.

For example the Aussie parliament has ( I think) about 4 times less MPs than ours. so the 1 green would translate to 4 greens, for example, on similar numbers of MPs. Still unbalanced, but it's a bit sly to compare the numbers, while ignoring that we have 4 times as many MPs.

The point about if the point of AV is to get more centrist policies is also a bit wonky. I don't know anyone who says that's the point of it.

I thought the general view is that people want more representative parliaments, that they want more people's votes to count. AV would to a degree help with those things.

Also, on the point about people (MPs) and parties appealing to other parties' voters - yes, but it doesn't just apply to the 2 big parties courting Lib Dems.

It could lead to parties taking more account of (say) Green issues, or of immigration or of any number of other things which have widespread support/concern - wars or whatever, but are largely ignored. They'd have to do it to get votes.

We'd get some of the single issues addressed more directly by those in power.

Many people are now more interested in taking direct action, than the political system, because their concerns (UKuncut) just get swept under the carpet by the established lot.

Also some of the extremists subjects would come under more intensive and coherent scrutiny. Some of the racist crap of the BNP would be properly looked at, and debunked.

[tonyh29]

if her result was repeated under AV she probably wouldn't be in parliament

Brighton Pavillion: VOTE SHARE %

Green

31.3

Labour

28.9

Conservative

23.7

Greens polled 14% of the second vote in London Mayor elections , more than Ken and more than Boris

Libs got 24% of the second vote but that was before they had a change of concious and started delivering what was right for the country at the cost of votes :winkold:

short term the lib 2nd vote will dip and so who else is there to mop up other than the Greens ?

so the Greens could well be the big winners under AV ??

[blandy]

fixed for you

Libs got 24% of the second vote, but that was before they morphed into Robert Johnson and sold their souls at the cross roads

[mjmooney]

fixed for you

Libs got 24% of the second vote, but that was before they morphed into Robert Johnson and sold their souls at the cross roads

And now they've got a hellhound on their trail.

[Jon]

A more "intelligent" reasoning for voting NO.

...Britain needs an entirely new system

I agree with that bit. I think that rejecting AV is likely to lead to no chance of further change, whereas voting for is likely to lead to a greater chance of further change.

Some of the points made kind of skew things a bit ,by comparing apples with Oranges.

For example the Aussie parliament has ( I think) about 4 times less MPs than ours. so the 1 green would translate to 4 greens, for example, on similar numbers of MPs. Still unbalanced, but it's a bit sly to compare the numbers, while ignoring that we have 4 times as many MPs.

The point about if the point of AV is to get more centrist policies is also a bit wonky. I don't know anyone who says that's the point of it.

I thought the general view is that people want more representative parliaments, that they want more people's votes to count. AV would to a degree help with those things.

Also, on the point about people (MPs) and parties appealing to other parties' voters - yes, but it doesn't just apply to the 2 big parties courting Lib Dems.

It could lead to parties taking more account of (say) Green issues, or of immigration or of any number of other things which have widespread support/concern - wars or whatever, but are largely ignored. They'd have to do it to get votes.

We'd get some of the single issues addressed more directly by those in power.

Many people are now more interested in taking direct action, than the political system, because their concerns (UKuncut) just get swept under the carpet by the established lot.

Also some of the extremists subjects would come under more intensive and coherent scrutiny. Some of the racist crap of the BNP would be properly looked at, and debunked.

Totally spot on Pete. Agree with eevry word. I really find it quite hard to fathom the whole "AV is not PR, so i'm not voting for it, but I do want PR, which is not on offer".

I guess that's a fine POV if you see NO advantages that AV has or may have over the less democratic FPTP. But if you recoginize that AV is a bette system than FPTP, whilst still desiring a system better/more democratic than AV, then surely you vote yes on AV?

A No on AV, would, as Pete says here, probably close the issue again for the foreseeable future. Maybe a generation. PR would be off the agenda, as the govt would just say, "you didn't want it when we offered it".

get AV in, and move onwards from there.

Get AV in. Get a better, more legitimate govt elected, andf then press them for a purer form of PR.

[bickster]

Totally spot on Pete. Agree with eevry word. I really find it quite hard to fathom the whole "AV is not PR, so i'm not voting for it, but I do want PR, which is not on offer".

It's simple Jon, if this gets a Yes, then PR will be much further away, no-one is going to change the voting system again so soon because constantly changing the voting system can lead to political instability and confusion.

I guess that's a fine POV if you see NO advantages that AV has or may have over the less democratic FPTP. But if you recoginize that AV is a bette system than FPTP, whilst still desiring a system better/more democratic than AV, then surely you vote yes on AV?

You do realise that AV is still FPTP, it just has a fixed post until the last round. People will still get elected with less than 50% of the vote (thats another myth being pushed out there). AV is no more democratic than what we have now, in some respects it is worse. What is democratic about a system that says "Go on lad, yer last choice was shite, have another go, oh you chose a shite one again, try again. But the other bloke only gets one vote because he backed the second placed party" Thats not democracy and its certainly not any more democratic than what we have now, in some respects its less democratic.

A No on AV, would, as Pete says here, probably close the issue again for the foreseeable future. Maybe a generation. PR would be off the agenda, as the govt would just say, "you didn't want it when we offered it".

get AV in, and move onwards from there.

See above, vote yes now and PR won't be on the agenda for another 20 years, vote no now and at least PR is still on the agenda and can be offered in as little as 5 years imo.

Get AV in. Get a better, more legitimate govt elected, andf then press them for a purer form of PR.

AV is not any form of PR, not pure or impure, it is simply not remotely close to PR. It is still a FPTP system, people will still get elected with less than 50% of the vote. Any govt that gets elected will be no more legitimate than the ones we have now.

[bickster]

Greens polled 14% of the second vote in London Mayor elections , more than Ken and more than Boris

Libs got 24% of the second vote but that was before they had a change of concious and started delivering what was right for the country at the cost of votes :winkold:

short term the lib 2nd vote will dip and so who else is there to mop up other than the Greens ?

so the Greens could well be the big winners under AV ??

Sorry but no, for the Greens to benefit at the hands of the LibDems, they would first of all have to replace them as the third placed party in that seat (which given the current state of play in all but one seat in the entire country is a huge ask), you can't transfer your votes to a candidate that is already out, your votes only transfer to the remaining candidates. So if the third placed LIb Dems votes transferred as a second pref to the greens who were already out, the vote then transfers to the third choice who would presumably be Labour, in fact it would only be Labour or Tory as by that stage any other choice is utterly pointless

[Jon]

It's simple Jon, if this gets a Yes, then PR will be much further away

I gues that's where myself and Pete disgree with you mate.

We think it'll make PR more likely in the future, not less.

I think a no vote bins the issue for a long time, sadly.

and yes, I am aware AV is not PR, but it is a fairer, more representative, more demcratic method of electing MP's than simple FPTP.

Plus it has the benefits that pete has already noted. Hence why I want it really.

It's better than what we have (IMO). A step in the right direction. As Pete says, party's/MP's may now have to take more account of other issues and other interests to get to the 50% mark (or as near as damnit). The days of MP's getting in with just over 30% of the vote would be gone, which surely is a good thing?

[The_Rev]

I'm still worried that AV will enable guilt free second choice votes for the BNP. As somebody who lives in a town where the BNP always run and there have been numerous EDL marches over the past year, I am voting no.