UK voters: Yes to AV tomorrow
The primary benefit of AV is that allows voters to give more information about their desires. In particular, since there is no requirement to fill in all preferences, by leaving parties blank that you definitely do not want to see in power, extremists are excluded. Unless a candidate can gain the goodwill of a majority of voters, they will not be elected. It is not a perfect voting system, but it is better than first past the post.
The "No" group have really run a very dirty campaign. Their lies may be taken to court. They have not revealed their sources of funding. They claim that the BNP will be more likely to be elected. Not true: the BNP are the only party officially endorsing the "No" campaign because they know that they will be wiped out in a system that requires any candidate to gain the trust of 50% of voters. They claim that it will be more expensive because voting machines will be needed. Not true: Australia has had AV for eighty years without machines. I have been employed as a returning officer doing the counting. It really is very simple. They say that voters will be confused, which I find quite insulting as it implies that voters don't know how to count to five. Indeed, if anyone really is confused, they can simply put a "1" for their first preference and leave the rest blank, giving them the option of continuing to vote as they always have. They say that AV gives people more than one vote, which is a half-truth. Yet insofar as people get more than one vote, everyone's vote is recounted every time. It is just like having multiple rounds of an elimination election condensed into a single day. The "no" vote have (as far as I am aware) never answered how it is that the method used to elect party leaders (AV) is deficient for the nation as a whole.
The "Yes" campaign are guilty of overselling, as though AV is going to singlehandedly reform UK politics. It won't but it's still an improvement. A "Yes" vote is a vote for a system that lets voters have more say, a system that recognises the UK is no longer a two-party state (35% of voters at the last election voted for someone other than Labour or Conservative), a system that excludes extremists by preventing candidates with strong minority support being elected without majority backing, a system supported by the leaders of the following parties: Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, UKIP. The only leaders who are supporting the "No" vote are the Tories and the BNP.
Vote "yes" tomorrow.
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13 comments:
Absolutely.
The vast majority of Australians would agree with Byron that preferential systems work well. Switch, it's worth it.
Don't worry, I've already voted 'yes'. (My wife voted 'no', though.)
Let's face it, most of the videos made about this referendum have been pretty boring. Here is one attempt to change that.
Toby - Unfortunately, after the last federal election, someone commissioned a poll about preferential voting which showed a majority of Australians frustrated with it. I suspect that any poll taken at pretty much any other time in the last few decades would have given resounding support, but in the frustration of many (not me) with a hung parliament, it looks like some took it out on the system in their answer to the poll. In any case, the No2AV campaign seized upon this poll (which they may have commissioned, I haven't checked) and have been running with it and exaggerating it all over the place. It was actually 57% who expressed frustration with preferential voting, though it is widely quoted as 60%. I haven't seen the actual wording of the poll, so wonder whether it might not have been a push poll.
Terry - good to hear it. And not so good. I won't threaten marital harmony by inquiring any further.
I don’t think it’s insulting to say that many voters do not actually realise their 2nd and 3rd preferences will not even get a look in, but their little-considered last two can be the ones used to decide the winner. -JC
JC - While your comment may be true at present in the UK, I don't think it is very widely true in Australia, where people have got to used to such ideas and are generally quite aware that in most electorates, what really matters is whether they give a higher preference to the ALP or the Coalition. That is, electoral education is only a matter of time since it really isn't all that complicated.
At the risk of adding to the choir of colonial Westminsterites saying JUST DO IT YOU FOOLS YOU FOOLS YOU'RE EMBARRASSING US ALL IN FRONT OF THE AMERICANS...
... vote AV.
Alan Wood
The other factor which leads to frustration in Australia is that voters also vote for the senate (the upper house)which has a single electorate and multiple seats in each state - so you can be asked to vote for up to 50 or 60 candidates including many you've never heard of. This may be what leads top the 57% frustration - the local electorates are simple with no more than half a dozen candidates.
Jon, that could be true. I haven't seen the actual question that was asked in the poll in question and so am not sure how clearly it distinguished between preferential (AV) in the lower and the very different system used in the upper.
Some insightful postmortem in Facebook comments that I thought I'd record:
"The danger is that the conduct of this referendum acts as a precedent for any future referendum where there's been no independent and neutrally-conducted education programme to help people understand the decision they were being asked to make and no equally independent and neutral referee."
"Why on election day in London's Metro newspaper were the No campaign allowed to print a 2 page ad when this would not be allowed at a general election?"
"We're watching election results in which the British population is choosing to punish a small party that's trying to stop a large party from being too indiscriminate in clearing up the mess left by another party... by voting for the party that left the mess."
Personally, I think that it ought to have been a requirement of being allowed to vote that you had watched a basic explanation of what the Alternative Vote means and how it works. I witnessed a distressing number of comments from people yesterday (and over the last few days) who either admitted they didn't know what AV meant or clearly demonstrated that they didn't know and yet who were voting "no" and even encouraging others to do so.
I also think that whoever came up with the name "Alternative Vote" deserves some ridicule, since it is such a nondescript name. Preferential voting is better, but still less informative than "instant run-off voting", which I have just come across and which most accurately describes the system.
AV has been crushingly defeated (about 30-70). Here are ten reasons why.
I know it's all over, but I've just come across this list of 11 reasons, which is clear and broad. I like the beer/coffee illustration.
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