I'm voting YES.
There are a number of reasons not to, but there are a whole plethora of reasons that you should vote affirmative.
First off, David Cameron himself admitted that the electral system as it currently stands is broken. Additionally, Labour, the LDs and Tories all use AV to elect their own leadership. Why should that privilege not be extended to us, the voting public?
Third, as for "No" claims that only 3 countries use AV and one of those wants to change (AUstralia) is misleading in the extreme. THere are almost ZERO indications that Australia is contemplating moving back to a FPTP system. Sure, a few cases loudly compain about it, but onlybecause they lose out in the current system. Most Australians are happy with their system. The other aspect of this is that only ONE country on the entire planet uses FPTP to elect 100% of their legislature. Us.
So if the "No" camp want to imply that for some reason being in a small group is a bad thing then surely being the only one is even worse?
So why AV? Well, there's the rub. AV is a pretty bad system. It is better than FPTP (more on that later) but nowhere near as representative as the STV or other methods. But AV is the system to which our political masters decided to present to us.
So why vote YES on a system that is a "miserble little compromise"? Because this referendum (the second ever) is ALREADY being marketed as vote on the status quo vs change. If we object, both Labour and Tories will forever be able to point to this and say " no, the public do not want change. We and they are happy with the current system."
So don't vote no in thehope of holding out for something better. Because if you do, I can promise you this will be the only chance you get in the next 50 years (if not more) of changing the political system.
Next, the difficulty of AV. AV is not a complicated system. It is certainly lss confused than, say, buying car insurance, or programming a TV. You rank candidates in order of preference from 1 to whatever. I say whatever because you can stop at 1 if you like, or you may rank all parties. And that is that.
There is a highly, HIGHLY patronising section of the media and the "no" camp that likes to paint AV as too complicated for us "the public". It is likened to them saying "I understand this system, but you won't, so don't worry your little heads about it and let us get on with running things and telling you how to think"*
So why is FPTP unfair? Inherently the FPTP penalises any race where more than 2 candidates run. And the constitutency system exaggerates this. UKIP (I can't stand them, but the make a good example) polled 1,000,000 votes across the country in the last election, but did not get a single MP. That is not a fringe party! It grossly unfair. The LDs, for better or worse, got 20% of the votes but fewer than 10% of MPs. How is this fair or representative? I don't need to to trot out the old stat of how many votes it took to elect an MP from each of the main parties, but it still stands. It will also get rid of cynical tactical voting.
To those who argue that AV elects 2nd or 3rd place candidates, that is a crock of rubbish. WHat it does elect is people with a majority of votes. As it stands, we get a system where a Tory government ends up in government when a MAJORITY of the population actively DISLIKE them. So we have a minority imposing their will on most of the population. AV will elect people who are preferred by a majority, not simply "the most" in a one round, simplistic, unfair voting.
More to come, but I'm off to vote (funnily enough) YES!
*quote courtesy of Marcus Bridgestoke