AV or not ?

[theoldbrigade]

Thoughts please.

It's a really interesting debate - and one which i'm thoroughly enjoying!!!

One thing i'm pretty sure of though, is that AV will encourage people to vote for 'WHO THEY WANT', as opposed to 'WHO THEY THINK THEIR VOTE WILL COUNT FOR'.
What I mean is, if I want the Green Party, but no they have 'no chance', I can put them as my first choice, andd then my second choice would be who i would've voted for with the FPTP system.

So probably the same outcome, but at least the figures would be truer, and the smaller parties would see that too.

It's a no from me!! (Only thing that pains me is I am ging against beautiful Ezzie Izzard - he would get my second vote though!!) Oooooohhhh can I vote No first and then Yes second?????

YES

I wish the referendum was on PR - but it isn't.

So considering the choice, I think that AV is better than the existing system.
And as for David Cameron saying that it was too complicated to explain, my 8 year old DS can rank things in order of preference.....

"It's a NO from me. I'd rather we have a government with a majority, whether that be my party or not"

Eh? But you would have a government with a majority. Why do you say that AV wouldn't deliver a government without a majority, DrNortherner? AV will allow many people to have their vote counted even though they don't vote for the two major parties.

ARe you saying that unless we vote either Labour or Tory, then we don't have the right to have our voices heard?

It is the current system that fails to deliver a true representation of the will of the British people.

AV is actually likely to deliver more majority government with slightly larger swings. We're more likely to have coalition governments under FPTP if the Lib Dems continued to be as popular as they were at the last election (ha!).

There is an interesting article in the Economist (I received it only tonight)... They argue that AV is a messy version of FPTP and "not an improvement". They suggest voting "NO".

blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/uk-alternative-vote-referendum/

The 2010 Australian election conducted under full preferential voting produced a parliament with no overall control. The Labor Party government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard returned to office after obtaining the general support of cross-bench independents and minor parties.

Had the election been conducted under first past the post voting rules, it would have been highly likely that the Opposition Liberal-National Party Coalition would have won a narrow majority of seats.

Not surprisingly, the governing Labor Party's policy supports the continued use of full preferential voting. Support for full preferential voting remains the policy of both the Liberal Party and the National Party, despite the system having been responsible for their 2010 defeat.

The only party that does not support full preferential voting is the Australian Greens, whose policy is STV, and if single member electorates are used, optional rather than full preferential voting, AV as it is known in the United Kingdom.

So none of Australia's political parties support first past the post voting. So where exactly is this move back to first past the post voting coming from?

Thanks for the links - didn't realise the NO campaign was lying about that too but I suppose I should have guessed. Have they said anything at all that is actually true?

Worth also mentioning something which I raised on one of these threads (re the Olympics reference in drosophilia's link) - FPTP is a real misnomer. There is no fixed post you have to get past. Where the post is depends how many parties there are, and even how many votes they get. It is AV that has a clear winning post that you must reach to win.

I am voting No, basically because I find it unfair.
For example, let's say if you vote Labour 1st choice, and Labour come third on first choice votes, with Tory first, LibDem second. Then maybe some smaller parties get eliminated, and then their votes are redistributed, then with all these second choices counted, eg UKIP, independent, BNP, or whatever, the Tory candidate reaches 50%, so as a Labour voter, your second choice never gets counted, but the second choice of people who chose say, ukip or bnp does get counted. I'm not sure if this is a realistic example or not, but on principle, I just feel it's wrong that one person's preference has been given more weight than another's. I don't think FPTP is that great either, but I don't want to switch to a less fair system.

In your example, if the Tories can get to 50% without LD or Labour being redistributed, face it, Labour never stood a chance. Tory would clearly beat any other party in a head to head in this constituency. In fact Tory wins under both FPTP and AV. How can you say AV is less fair?

All ballot papers count once, in every count. If your first choice is eliminated, your second choice is counted. If your first choice is not eliminated, it is still being counted. Every ballot paper counts equally.

But if your choice comes 3rd, it's not counting is it, just because a party has reached 50%, your second vote is never counted. If, as a losing vote, it was redistributed, it could have left to a different party winning, if libdems were on 40, then 10% labour redistributed to libdems could have helped libdems to 50. But the vote for the 3rd placed party is given less power for being 3rd than the losing votes that came 4th or 5th. That, to me, seems unfair.

Nimpy.
Surely, if a party has already reached over 50% of the votes, then it doesn't matter how the rest of the votes are re-distributed. They can't add up to more than 50% as well? (Unless my maths is totally up the creek. But then I am very tired!)

Remember 1. the no campaign is financed by tory backers - they are from a class that thinks that people who didn't go to private school are a) can't make decisions (though the evidence is often the opposite) and b) to stupid to notice when they are being lied to - that is why the No campaign has been selling lies -

1. The idea that AV leads to coalitions is nonsense - it actually magnifies landslides (dramatic switches in public viewpoint). This fundamental misunderstanding is based on lies put about by the NO campaign and internally in the tory party by MPs who were opposed to letting the country decide at all.

1. The economist dramatically misunderstood some key 'facts' about AV, and based their whole leader and two articles on one piece of discredited research from the University of Essex. This was a big mistake and in my view totally discredits the Economist - the Financial Times has understood AV and is supporting a YES vote, and has written appropriately on the pitfalls of each. There are many inaccuracies in their articles on AV - factul ones, not opinion ones, that I will be writing a letter to them about. I will also be cancelling my subscription - not because of their choice but because these articles on a key subject were either biased or ill-informed or both which is not what I buy the paper for. (the times I will still read because although it is NO and pedalling similar misunderstandings its a) what I expected and b) I regard it anyway as less rigorous than the economist - I was wrong in that!!

1. Nimpy it might seem unfair, but it isn't. You are expressing a preference of where your vote should go in the final count.

Someone voting for a party that is not eliminated is effectively saying:

My first preference is that my vote goes to Funny Juggler
at Round 2. Funny Juggler hasn't lost the first round, the election has not produced a winner, so I would still like my vote to go to Funny Juggler
at Round 3. Funny Juggler is still in! go juggler! I would still like my vote to go to Funny Juggler
at Last round: The election has not produced a winner, Funny Juggler
is one of the two stongest candidates and I would still like my vote to go to Funny Juggler.

Someone voting for a party that is eliminated in the second round, who had expressed a second preference is saying:

My first preference is that my vote goes to Surprisingly Good Singer. when votes are counted:
at Round 2: Surprisingly Good Singer hasn't lost but the election has not produced a winner, so I would still like my vote to go to Surprisingly Good Singer
at Round 3: Surprisingly Good Singer has lost! she has been eliminated, but there is still no winner, because its not the final, so I can't vote for her in this round or later rounds. Because I can't vote for Surprisingly Good Singer, so I would like my vote to go to Dance Toupe from South London.
at last round - Dance Toupe from South London is in the final! One of the strongest candidates!!! I would still like my vote to be with Dance Toupe from South London!

That is a much fairer system than first past the post because it means that someone can say 'I would really like Dance Toupe from South London until they are eliminated, then their vote is switched when the 'final' is announced. This happens in so many sports, talent shows, etc (especially ones where simon cowell is involved) because elimination voting gets the biggest crowd behind each candidate which is what politics should be about.

(in x-factor the winner with the biggest support is the one that sells the most records ireespective of whether someone really liked Jedward or whatever...

Ok maybe it just feels unfair - my maths isn't too good. I'm really not sure now but I'd better get some sleep.

The NO campaign is going to win, and I must say how disillusioned I am with
the British public. I always thought we stood for certain principles , truth
justice and fairness.In the last 40 years almost 50% of constituencies have not changed hands, if you live in Caerphilly and vote Tory, or Chichester and vote Labour you might as well stay at home. I know who is going to win
in my constituency next time, yet if I moved 20 miles down the road , my vote would count for something.
In the NHS postcode lottery over the supply of cancer drugs no one thought
the remedy was for cancer patients to move house to get treatment , yet
that is what I need to do to get a vote to mean something.
If the No vote wins, as Miliband said today no political party wil go near this issue for a longtime, one chance to start down the road to a fairer voting system is going to be rejected, and probably the only chance you will get
for the rest of your life.
Ironically the politicians who want you to vote for fptp, know it is not fair,
when they start with a blank sheet of paper they always come up with some form of PR, from voting for their Party leaders to voting in the Scottish, Welsh, NI or European Parlaments.

So if you vote NO remember the next time that you moan about some inequality in society be it bankers bonus or getting your child into the school
you wanted , you had a chance however small and insignificant it might be to start to make an unfair system just a teensy bit fairer and didn't bother.

AV is the fairest way to elect a single representative from a field of more than two. FPTP is a less good way to do this. That is today's choice.

For those like Giddy who really want PR - we don't know what will happen next but I for one think we are much more likely to get future change if we vote for some change now - not to keep the status quo.

Av is not fair either,- yes but it is the only offer on the table, and is slightly fairer than Fptp

They aren't going to leap from a referendum on AV to one on PR, -yes but if we show there is some appetite for change, the debate wiil be kept alive
when the No vote wins there wont even be 25-30 years of AV,

The longest journey always begins with a small step.

If AV goes ahead, surely the smaller parties would benefit?
I'd vote for my preference first (which could be a small party), then for who i would have voted for with FPTP.

So surely AV is better for the smaller parties (although it will probably have the same result as FPTP)?

Unless that small step is seen as 'good enough' and takes the pressure off.

AV is hugely expensive, doesn't solve any existing problems,and diverts the focus away from meaningful change as much as it acts as a stepping stone.

In encouraging politicians to say what the people who don't really want them want to hear, it will turn politics into even more of a marketing campaign - I would rather have politicians who say what they really mean than what opponents want to hear.

AV is not hugely expensive - that is a LIE. It will take a bit longer to count in some constituencies. Big deal. It is fairer - you want it to be cheaper too?

There will be twice as much counting to do, and time is money - of course it will be expensive.

That's FINE, and right if it is a good system, but I don't happen to believe it is.

'lie' is a very big and cross word to use!

Anyway, my vote is cast.....

No, no and no once again.