Alternative Vote

[Saracen]

I'll keep this short. I'll be voting yes next week, purely because regardless of whether or not AV is a more proportional system, it is definitely a fairer system that FPTP. It offers slightly more opportunity for coalitions to form, which in my view is the best thing that can happen to this country, and is a small step towards the right direction.

Re the bit in bold, .... not according to the Jenkins Commission.

It would probably be more fair to the LDs, but at the price of being "unacceptably unfair" to the Conservatives. While some people will no doubt like that idea, it's not exactly democratic to want to the unfair to the electoral chances of the people you don't like.

And note, that wasn't just "unfair", but unacceptably unfair.

Even in the overall conclusions, Jenkins commented

On its own AV would be unacceptable because of the danger that in anything like present circumstances it might increase rather than reduce disproportionality and might do so in a way which is unfair to the Conservative party.

So, in the light of that, can just justify how it is "definitely fairer", because I'm struggling to see it?

.... Crucially the boundary changes are wrapped up in this proposal (iirc) which is actually an even more important step in the road to a fair electoral system. Oh and it reduces the changes of a fringe radical party like the BNP gaining a seat anywhere. Winner.
....

Another part of the "back room" deal problem. From appearances, what happened with the negotiators was something like :-

LD team : We want PR.

Tory team : Not a chance. We want boundaries revised.

LD : No reform, no coalition.

Tory : We can do reform, but not PR, and only if we get boundary reform.

LD : Give us an AV referendum, and you can have boundary reform.

Tory : Okay. Deal. But we can campaign against AV, and we want a minimum turnout for the referendum to be valid?

LD : Well, you can campaign against us, but no minimum turnout stipulation or we walk on the coalition.

Tory : Deal. Fancy a pint now?


Obviously, this is all speculative, but it just states the problem with back room horse-trading. We, as on the people of the country, don't know what was offered, and what deal was paid for the deal.

Was a reformed NHS part of the deal for the LDs Holy Grail of electoral reform? Was that why they did what many of their supporters see as selling their soul? Or was it the £10k income tax PAs plus electoral reform, versus NHS reform and a large increase in student tuition fees? Were students sold down the river for AV?

We simply don't know. All we do know is that we have a government the structure of which nobody voted for, that is not bound by it's manifesto promises simply because "we're in a coalition so have to compromise". It's a golden "get out of jail free" card for both sides.

Even if we conclude that this time we have a coalition acting in the national interest, what about next time, or the time after?

.....

I expect that the voter turnout for this will be low, ....

That's one of the problems for me. If turnout is low, one good question is "why"? Is it because people don't understand the issues, or the possible implications, or is it perhaps because they just don't care. And if they don't care enough to vote on it and we have a very low turnout, where's the mandate for a change to the existing system?

An amendment to the referendum Bill imposing a mandatory minimum turnout to validate the referendum was put before the Lords and voted down. Why? Who is afraid of actually insisting that a good proportion of us care enough to bother to vote? What if only 5% of people vote? Or 15%?

[Georgy291]

According to that, my power increases 31% to 0.293 (Maidenhead)

thats 10 times more than swansea :O

[Spud1]

Fair points saracen - and if you take the Jenkins report to be the be all and end all of the situation..then fair enough. I take a slightly different view, as logically to me AV seems much fairer than FPTP. I justify this because currently someone can get eg 30% of the vote, and get in to power. So 70% of the population didn't want them in. That is not "fair" on any possible level, it makes absolutely no sense to me.

With AV however, because you have more than one vote which has to be exclusive, you can get a much better picture of what people want. Even if most people only use 3 of their votes to rank Con/Lib/Lab. This is further backed up by the fact that in reality, most people don't agree 100% with a single parties views. Personally I am a staunch LibDem voter, but I disgree very strongly with the lib dem stance on Nuclear power and Tuition fees (I want more of both). So for me, the current coalition works very well..there is a mix of policy which fits my views nicely. If just one of the two parties had got into power, I'd always be left with a large chunk of policy that I thought was retarded.

Now of course you can get a coalition with FPTP, but for me..AV would let me express my desire for a Liberal led coalition backed up by the tories, with labour left back in the 70s with the unions where they belong. It's true that nobody actually voted for the government that we have in power at the moment - but with AV, people *could* vote for a coalition..and with the option to just retain a single vote, people are free to choose as they wish. I think that's something that the yes campaign has not pushed hard enough - the fact that you can still vote in exactly the same way as before if you want to, you are not forced to vote for 10 people at once.

The judgement of "fair" is probably too subjective, but that's my take on it and I think that it is.

The low turnout will likely be that people just don't care yes, but then, most people don't care which party gets elected let alone /how/ they get elected. The vast majority of the population doesn't understand how an election really works, they don't care about policy or about what the people they elect will actually do - and this is why the various PR (not "the" PR that we want ) campaigns work..people are led by the marketing rather than true logic.

[Saracen]

I certainly don't take the Jenkins Commission to be the be-all-and-end-all .... but in terms of an independent, comprehensive analysis and report, it's about as good as we've got. So I don't swallow it whole, but I don't reject it out of hand either.

Michael Portillo commented on "This Week" last might that he'd voted (by post, it seems) for "No", and the logic was that while he agrees the current system is broken, he doesn't think AV is any better. That actually coincides with my view pretty well.

I've argued many times, over many years, that FPTP, at least as it's implemented, is "unfair" and you only have to look at, say, Blair's 1997 landslide to see how. It was unfair to the Tories in relation to that 7% built-in lead I mentioned, but it was grossly unfair to the LDs, because the % of seats they got bore no resemblance to the % of the vote.

That's broadly why Jenkins ended up with the "AV top-up" solution.

Pure PR has the advantage of being "fair" in terms of percentages, but breaks the constituency link. It also puts a lot of power into party leaders hands instead of the electorate if we end up with a "list" of candidates and those elected are selected from that list, top-down. Position on the list has more relevance to chances of getting elected than the views of actual voters.

But if we had an AV top-up system preserving the constituency link, with something (give or take a bit) like 15% of MPs selected from party lists in order to address that problem with unfair percentages, you could maintain the important constituency element, while still ending up with a much more proportionate result than AV, and the unfairness that Jenkins mentioned could be either eliminated or at least heavily mitigated.

To my mind, if we're going to have electoral reform (and we should, starting with thinning out 800-ish unelected members of the Lords) we can't just dump one unfair system for another unfair system. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to do a more researched and rational job of it than that.

And, after all, New Labour have been calling for electoral reform for years (and started it by messing about with the Lords, before chickening out) and successive manifestos called for an independent Commission (which was Jenkins). They then seem to ignore what their own Commission recommended, which rather makes a mockery of having had it. It's a bit like Ireland having a referendum on joining the Euro, and then having it again until the electorate get the answer right.

[Biscuit]

thats 10 times more than swansea :O

Indeed, strange thing is it still says no political change. Im wondering if that's because of the area which im living in, the system in which the website uses is useless or if the actual AV is pointless...

I have been keeping up with this thread, or at least trying too, but that website doesn't seem to follow whats been said so im confused?!

[petercook7]

av dont have to be complicated, if you wish to vote for only one then you can, if you wish to select your list then you can. What it does do is make you MPs work harder if they want a job.

[santa claus]

Isn't it ironic that the very person responsible for the AV referendum will see it fail partly because of his own plunging popularity? For the good of the Country and his ailing Party, should the Deputy Prime Minister step aside before Thursday?

And is Mr Clegg's demise being stage-managed? I have no doubt that the Coalition will run its 5 year term as David Cameron said today; it's what he didn't say that's more significant and that is who would be leading the Libdem contingent at the end.

[Lucio]

av dont have to be complicated, if you wish to vote for only one then you can, if you wish to select your list then you can. What it does do is make you MPs work harder if they want a job.

AV is not some magical panacea for our society, it doesn't change anything about the people for whom we vote not does it affect the process by which they're selected. I don't see how you can make an assumption that MP's will have to work harder, when I suspect that being a moderate candidate is a far better bet, so you can attract the biggest % of second and third place votes.

One of my biggest bugbears with AV is that the views of the smallest minority that get taken into account first when deciding the winner. Can anyone really believe that it's "fairer" to have the views of the smallest minority affect the decisions of the majority? Under AV, it's entirely plausible that parties will have to show policies that are in line with otherwise minor parties such as the Greens, UKIP or the BNP, so as to attract their "second choice" vote.

[BobF64]

One of my biggest bugbears with AV is that the views of the smallest minority that get taken into account first when deciding the winner. Can anyone really believe that it's "fairer" to have the views of the smallest minority affect the decisions of the majority?

Minorities believe that, its why so many "equality" laws are actually laws promoting a minority over everything else.

The biggest problem I have is that, based on past experience of politicians, they will do a half arsed job.

I sincerely doubt that this would be a first step to greater reform, it will be a single solitary change.

Should people vote for a change to AV, it would require mandatory voting at the very least.

On the plus side, if most people only vote for 1 candidate, we will still have first past the post anyway.

[chrestomanci]

One of my biggest bugbears with AV is that the views of the smallest minority that get taken into account first when deciding the winner. Can anyone really believe that it's "fairer" to have the views of the smallest minority affect the decisions of the majority? Under AV, it's entirely plausible that parties will have to show policies that are in line with otherwise minor parties such as the Greens, UKIP or the BNP, so as to attract their "second choice" vote.

AV encourages politicians standing for election to appeal to a broad church of options. In my view this is a good thing. Under the current system party policy is set by a fairly small group of people in an inner circle, that then becomes a manifesto. If elected with an absolute majority, the party with want to enact everything that has been set-out as policy. The public has very little influence on the party policy. Under AV, the party would be much more interested in appealing to more voters, so they are more likely to think again about some parts of their policy, if they find on the doorstep that it is turning off a significant number of voters. They will also be influenced by fringe parties who will ask their voters to put a main party as second choice if the main party put some fringe friendly policies in the manifesto. I don't think this is much of a problem because the main party will only do so if it is acceptable to them, so I doubt any of the main parties will be listening to the likes of the BNP.

After the election it is possible for fringe parties (with only a few MPs) who are the junior partners in a coalition to exert some influence, but again I don't think it is a serous issue. A small party with only a few MPs will not have much influence, and if they throw their weight around to much then the government can always chuck them out of the coalition and invite a different small party instead. Just look at how little influence the Lib-Dems have had in the current government, and they have 57 MPs. I doubt that one or two MPs from UKIP, the BNP or Greens would have much influence at all.

In any case, I don't think we will be seeing many MPs from minor parties with AV, as you would need a proportional system for that such as AV+

[billythewiz]

have a look how much power you have

From that link :-

Analysis from nef suggests that switching from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote would have the following effects across the UK:

An increase in the average power of UK voters from 0.285 of a vote to 0.352 of a vote (where a score of 1 is a fair vote).
An increase in the number of very marginal seats from 81 to 125, an increase of 44 seats.
A reduction in the number of very-safe seats from 331 to 271 a reduction of 60 seats.
A small reduction of inequality in the power of votes with the most powerful fifth of electors going from having 21 times the power of the least powerful fifth down to 18 times.

That last point seems to contradict the conclusion of the Jenkins report. Reducing the power of the most powerful votes (and you thought everyone's vote was equal under the existing system !!) definitely is MORE proportional.

[billythewiz]

I'll be voting yes next week, purely because regardless of whether or not AV is a more proportional system, it is definitely a fairer system that FPTP.

Re the bit in bold, .... not according to the Jenkins Commission.

There's been a fair amount of opinion, exaggeration and plain inaccuracy all claimed with backing of the Jenkins Commission.

The first thing that needs to be said about Jenkins is that it was NOT a report/investigation into AV. It looked at a whole raft of different options and concluded that a "two-vote mixed system" (also called "limited AMS" or "AV Top-up") would be best for us.

Unfortunately the referendum on the 5th isn't about "AV Top-up" or any other form of PR, it's about vanilla AV.

So what did Jenkins have to say about AV

81. The simplest change would be from FPTP to the Alternative Vote (henceforth referred to as AV).
This meets several of our four criteria.
It would fully maintain the link between MPs and a single geographical constituency.
It would increase voter choice in the sense that it would enable voters to express their second and sometimes third or fourth preferences, and thus free them from a bifurcating choice between realistic and ideological commitment or, as it sometimes is called, voting tactically.
There is not the slightest reason to think that AV would reduce the stability of government; it might indeed lead to larger parliamentary majorities.
This is a formidable list of assets, particularly in the context of our terms of reference.

So what did Jenkins say about FPTP

FPTP exaggerates movements of opinion, and when they are strong produces mammoth majorities in the House of Commons.
The FPTP system is peculiarly bad at allowing this third party support to express itself.
One thing that FPTP assuredly does not do is to allow the elector to exercise a free choice in both the selection of a constituency representative and the determination of the government of the country. It forces the voter to give priority to one or the other, and the evidence is that in the great majority of cases he or she deems it more important who is Prime Minister than who is member for their local constituency.

[BobF64]

AV encourages politicians standing for election to appeal to a broad church of options. In my view this is a good thing. Under the current system party policy is set by a fairly small group of people in an inner circle, that then becomes a manifesto. If elected with an absolute majority, the party with want to enact everything that has been set-out as policy.

Thing is, thats how party based politics works.

We dont live in a democracy, we just have democratic elections.

In order to change things so that MPs are more representative youd have to either abandon parties, so you vote for a person with views rather than a party, or abandon MPs and vote for a party which then picks from its list if it wins.

And I dont think either of those will happen, the latter is too much like the EU parliament.

In reality, voters dont need more choices or better representation, MPs just need to learn to work together rather than against each other.

[billythewiz]

Can anyone really believe that it's "fairer" to have the views of the smallest minority affect the decisions of the majority?

Let's look at how "fair" FPTP has actually been in the past. Let's take some figures from the highly regarded Jenkins Commission.

Does anyone remember Labour's most successful poll ever ? No, not 1997, I'm talking about 1951. In that election the received THE MOST VOTES and the HIGHEST PERCENTAGE of votes that they have EVER ACHIEVED !! BEFORE OR SINCE !! They received 250,000 more votes than the Tories and yet achieved 17 seats less than the Tories and remained in opposition for 13 years !

Read all about it in the Jenkins Report in the chapter called Perverse Results.

Then there was the 1983 election (the one after the Falklands Conflict) when the SDP/Liberal Alliance polled 25.4% of the votes and received 3.5% of the seats in Parliament.

Read that here (paragraph 29).

Is that "fair".

As for 2nd and 3rd choices, under AV I would vote #1 for Monster Raving Looney, #2 for Science and #3 for my real choice. So YES, it is fair to consider "minority" views.

[The Hand]

I'm voting "Yes" to AV. The voting system needs reforming and we need to start somewhere. Voting "No" is just endorsing the unfair old FPTP system... Also if Margaret Beckett is supporting the "No" campaign, there is no way on Earth I'm voting "No" ...

[billythewiz]

One thing that has been bothering me is why the BNP are opposed to AV and yet UKIP support it.

I've been having a think and I have a theory ....

The BNP want power, they want lots of seats .... AV will reduce their chance of getting seats !!

This is also true for UKIP, so why do they support it ? UKIP are essentially a one issue party. Once we are out of Europe they have no reason to exist. AV will force the other parties to try and attract their supporter's 2nd choices and so their issue will gain more attention under AV.

On a different topic, there has only been one other UK wide referendum and that was in 1973, so the youngest person to vote in that would now be 56 years old !!

It seems such a shame to me that only the 2nd referendum in UK history could result in a vote for "Na, let's just keep things the way they've been for the past 200 years!".

Especially as the main reasons (as put forward on the TV adverts) seem to be ..
1) democracy is too expensive,
2) the people are too thick to choose 1, 2, 3. Anything more than a single "X" will confuse them.