are you going to vote yes or no in the referendum on voting systems?

[edam]

Apparently on 5th May next year we'll be asked if we want to keep first past the post or go for alternative vote.

Personally I don't like AV where you rank candidates in order of preference, as it causes odd things to happen. FPTP isn't perfect but neither is AV.

But my main reason for - probably - voting 'no' would that I'm pissed off with the Lib Dems. This is their cherished prize for giving the Tories cover for savage attacks on the poor and public services and betraying many/most of their voters (and people who were tempted to vote for them). So fuck 'em.

I quite the coalition and would vote yes to changing our voting system. Two party politics has made this country shite.

I agree Posie, I am so fed up with these massive swings in policy everytime the government changes between labour & tory. And only having a realistic choice of 2 parties, neither of which actually represent what I want.

It means I have to guess how everyone else is going to vote before making my own choice, which is a total nightmare! With AV, I could at least say
"This is my favourite, if enough people agree with me great! Otherwise, this would be my second choice"

Its really bad how a candidate can be in power when only a third (or less) actually support them. As networkguy showed, in some areas there can be even 6 candidates. That means if they are all close, that a candidate that was supported by only 17 %could get in power! How mad is that!!

what about the other 2/3 of people, or the other 5/6 of people?

I really like AV because it means that whoever is elected will have the support of at least 50 % of the people.

AV doesn't stop all that though. It just creates unfairness in a different way. I experienced AV when I lived in London and voted for Mayor and ended up having to vote in a really complicated manner that didn't actually reflect my views. It was just the least worst combination.

Under AV, in my constituency, I might have a choice between Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and UKIP (that was it last time). If I don't use my second choice, everyone else's votes count for more than mine, and my candidate might lose out to a smaller party. The Lib Dems might end up taking the seat if they are get enough second choices - even though most people don't actually want them and may well object strongly to some of their policies (but slightly less than they object to the other parties).

If we are going to have a choice, it should be true PR v. FPTP. At least then it would be a genuine alternative, not an equally unfair system. But I don't like the sort of PR that breaks the link with constituencies - I value having a local MP who I can go to with my concerns if necessary. Frankly every alternative to FPTP has its own drawbacks.

Speaking as someone who lives in a safe seat where my vote is definitely wasted, I'm still not convinced AV is any better.

I'll vote for AV as PR is not on the ballot paper.

Before the election someone told me to look at this

It shows that in some constituencies there was as little as 37 votes between the winning party and the second party.

The thing is would AV be any different to the tactical voting that has happened for years? Ie for the 2010 election if you lived in Crawley and were a UKIP supporter you probably wouldn't have voted UKIP cos it would have been a wasted vote. You would have voted either Tory or Labour depending on who you would rather keep out.

OK so AV means those who were too scared to waste their vote before on smaller parties can vote for who they really want, but surely the likelihood of these winning more than 50% of the vote is minimal anyway so it won't really make much difference.

I'd just have to do a different sort of tactical voting under AV to keep the party I fear most out of power. Rather than vote for the party I like most, as they have no chance of being a first preference round here!

(Unless they bring in an option where you can vote for the same party first, second, third which would kind of defeat the object of the exercise...)

Did anyone else hear Ming (or however the wretched name is spelled) Campbell on R4 last night? Patronising beyond belief - he was trying to justify why it wasn't a sellout for the LDs to only have AV on the table and the first thing he said was that it was a first step and would make people more "susceptible" to further change.

Now I don't have a problem with them believing that PR is the best option, but I do mind that they think we should all be duped into going along with it by spinning us a soft version first. I mean "susceptible", what do they think we are - hypnosis victims? If they can't argue the case convincingly there's kind of a problem anyway.

interesting, tigger. (It's Menzies, btw. Don't ask me why!)

I'd prefer more real proportional representation, and I'm a Labour voter on my most right wing days!

If the referendum includes changing constituencies, I'm voting no. Not just because it would apparently favour the Tories, but because I don't agree with making parliamentary constituencies bigger and fiddling around with the boundaries. It seems to me that the proposal in its current form reduces representative democracy rather than increasing it.

Finally, I'm suspicious that the Lib Dems are using the chance to get PR to justify supporting the Tories and their horrible policies. PR is precious little use if we just get the same terrible policies anyway.

Not read thread yet but am feeling exactly like the OP "But my main reason for - probably - voting 'no' would that I'm pissed off with the Lib Dems. This is their cherished prize for giving the Tories cover for savage attacks on the poor and public services and betraying many/most of their voters (and people who were tempted to vote for them). So fuck 'em."

The other thing hearing Menzies (?really, makes a joke of teaching phonetics doesn't it!?) made me think is that there's nothing being said about the West Lothian question and the massive duplication of representation of the Scottish in particular but also the Welsh and Northern Irish constituencies. If there's talk of fundamental parliamentary reform, why isn't that being dealt with too? Menzies' constituency is in Scotland, as is Charles Kennedy so maybe that has something to do with it? And they wonder why we're cynical about individual self interest of politicians hey.

Ah, but is it 'massive duplication' ?

Scotland is in a different position (as might be Northern Ireland) with respect to law making, because the Parliament in London bring forward bills which in some cases (eg defence) affects the whole of the UK, and currently on income tax too, but when criminal law (and probably a number of other matters) is made an Act of Parliament, it generally applies only to England and Wales.

I can see some benefits of there being 'national' governments in NI, Scotland, and Wales, but the big problem (and West Lothian question) arises, in part, because there is no separation of English law from interfering non 'English' MPs.

I am far from happy that as things stand, there must be rather major differences for people if they were to move (eg to Scotland from Wales, because of a new job) and the effects on what is or isn't provided (free prescriptions, University fees, etc ?) can change quite dramatically, let alone the laws which apply.

It means one cannot compare services or opportunities on a level playing field as the re may be quite a number of unknown differences. Also, being ignorant of a law isn't enough to make you 'not guilty' and these days, once you've broken a law and had fingerprints and DNA taken, your prospects for employment could be harshly affected!

The bottom line, for me, is that the 'postcode lottery' at county level is being copied at national level, and while the politicians say it makes them more accountable and they know the national issues, it is breaking us apart and in unfair ways. Seems like the grass is bound to be greener 'over the border' in some way or other.

So the WL question could be avoided if matters affecting only England were discussed without any non England MPs in the house.

Other matters are rarely going to be duplicated as such - if the Scottish Parliament makes some regulation, can Westminster countermand it? The Welsh Government has fewer areas under its control anyway, so a bit academic. Not familiar enough with what happens at Stormont.

Hey said, glad to hear there are more people thinking the same way.

Tigger, thinking too much about the West Lothian question drives people mad. To resolve it properly, we'd need an English parliament which would then call the legitimacy of Westminster into question ? what would they be left with? And how could it possibly work given the Treasury has to be a national body, surely?

I think there are still plenty of UK-wide decisions that would need all the MPs to vote, but clearly something needs to be done to hold sessions where items only affect England.

It probably needs an amendment to the Parliament Act to allow for some MPs to be excluded 'excused' admission to such sessions.

maryz put it most succinctly for me:

"I find the first past the post system very archaic - it is possible to be elected with only about a third of the vote. It amazes me how often MPs are elected with the support of less than half the constituency."

longfingernails, that's a slightly weird document IMO, especially if it's being presented as evidence of Labour bias in the system.

It presents 5 aspects of the system that produce electoral bias, one of which is, er, the way people vote (tactical voting) which is hardly a structural bias, more a choice.

It states that UK population trends mean that boundary commission changes will ALWAYS mean a shift towards the Conservatives, due to the drop in the urban population, so that a delay in those changes means an inbuilt bias toward Labour. This may be true, but it's hardly an eternal truth - try page 14 of this certainly up until the end of the last century the proportion of the population living in urban centres was rising. This would explain why I remember discussion of the electoral bias towards Conservatives in the 1980s caused by delays in Boundary Commission changes...

It also states that the overrepresentation of Scotland has been eliminated (though not the West Lothian question of course), which should have improved things, even though the overrepresentation of Wales continues - this is not new, and at least things appear to be moving in a less biased direction.

Differential turnout - am I misreading this? It seems to suggest that if this element had been eliminated in 2005, Labour would actually have won more seats, i.e. this factor appears to be a bias against Labour. But I'm willing to believe I am misreading it.

Support distribution - they say themselves that this factor does not appear to bias very heavily to either side.

Yes I'll believe that the current system is biased towards Labour, I have read it in many places. But I don't find that particular analysis particularly convincing.

maktaitai

I agree that tactical voting isn't systemic but behavioural - the author (who is an expert in psephology and polling) acknowledges this.

The differential turnout thing basically means that typically Labour MPs are elected with fewer votes than Tory MPs because of low turnout in Labour areas. That means there vote is more "efficiently" distributed. As the author points out, this was equivalent to a 2% Labour headstart in the polls in 2005 - he hasn't updated the document to take the 2010 data into account.

I accept that population dynamics are not fixed - especially given the immigration boom over the last 10 years - but on the current trends I think it is a truth universally acknowledged that delays in boundary reviews benefit Labour.

OK sorry back on track - having pondered this during the evening, I think I may vote for the AV. 25 years ago I was a passionate supporter of electoral reform, but over time I lost faith in it, having seen too many news stories in too many countries where small parties wield an excessive amount of power. However, if there are limits on the number of votes allowed, and depending on what the referendum looks like, I may decide to vote for AV because a) I often wish I could add footnotes to my ballot paper, and this is a way of doing that, and b), hey the Oscars use AV, and no-one could accuse them of making really out-there and audacious choices...

um...

but...

Ok, how much of that immigration boom is in urban centres and how much in rural centres? I know that a lot of immigrants do rural work, but my guess (which may well be wrong) would have been that quite a lot of any immigrant boom would increase urban populations. Which would mean that delays in Boundary Commission reviews would definitely not benefit Labour.

Right, I'm off to find some stats to prove myself wrong on this, because I have read in lots of places that the current structure benefits Labour, so I want to pin this down! Sorry about the thread hijack. Will start another thread if I find anything useful.

maktaitai On the other hand I don't think most immigrants are allowed to vote in general elections until they become British citizens.

I should add that the timeframe for immigrants to become naturalised British citizens is at least as long as the timeframe for Boundary Reviews (about 5 years) so actually I don't think that immigration directly affects the consequence of boundary review delays much.

maktaitai - you've probably read it in lots of places because the press is still overwhelmingly biased towards the Tories. (Partly because they hope the Tories will set the rules in favour of their business interests and savage the BBC.) Check out the political affiliations of the national press. And the newspapers still set the agenda.

edam

Well, it is undisputed that in 2005 Tony Blair won a very similar vote share to the one David Cameron achieved in 2010 - and got a very respectable majority with it.

Yet David Cameron gets a Hung Parliament.

Whatever the reasons behind that, whether systematic or behavioural, it is pretty clear that Labour have an advantage over the Tories.