Pff, semantics- in your absurd example you’re correct but find me a real world example where that’s the case?

But if you want a more technically correct version that’ll work even in daft examples, change that to “The candidate must have 50% of the valid votes” if you must.

Junkyard…

Where did i say how I was voting?

I think you said on the first page…

I am pro PR but cannot support this poor fudge compromise.

Unless of course you are just not going to bother voting on this, in which case why are you bothered which way it turns out?

Now, while I agree that PR would be a far better system than we have now, AV is still superior to FPTP in that it takes in a far larger ranger of peoples views, and even at the point where it seems breaks down, as in your example, it then becomes the same as FPTP.

I think whoever wins this referendum will take it as a signal of far more than just the question on AV… if it goes for AV, then I can see that the question of going to a full PR won’t be too many years away, however if it goes against AV, I think that electoral reform is going to be dead for a generation.

To some extents, I think those who want PR, but are going to vote against this, or abstain, are really just cutting off their nose to spite their face, because while it’s certainly not as good as PR, and I’ve not heard anyone argue that is the case, it is better than FPTP.

How about this way of thinking of it…

Round 1:

Everyone votes for their favourite candidate.
Least popular one goes home.

Round 2:

Everyone votes for their favourite candidate, which means the people who voted for the least popular in the previous round get to choose someone else. I’m taking a wild guess here that if your favourite candidate is still in the running that you’d want to vote for them again, and not suddenly swap allegiances! If your candidate dropped out in the last round, but you decided you didn’t want to vote for anyone else, then you’d just not vote, and you’d drop out of the voting.
Least popular goes home.

Round 3:
As for Round 2.

And repeat until one person has more than 50% of the votes in that round.

This is all AV is except you make all your decisions about who you want to vote for and in what order on a bit of paper in advance.

The argument that someone who’s candidate wins only has one vote, whereas others have more than one vote doesn’t really hold. While it’s true you would have only voted for one candidate, you would have voted in every round of the voting, which is just as many times as someone who has changed who they are voting for.

I think you said on the first page…

Being fair i can see why you would think that but in all honesty I am not sure which way I will vote hence the debate. I am not trolling – I find that a bit sad- and I still uncertain as to how I will vote. I suspect at the start of this debate I would have abstained as I thought neither system was worthy of my vote [ which is a waste but would have turned up to do it] but I agree it probably will kill electoral reform for a generation if it is a no vote.
Av is such a crap system though and is barely beter than FPTP
Yes |I can accept the argument I vote as often as others [though i did not at the start] but I am not comfortable with people being able to keep swapping sides and just want my vote to count. As a green neiter FPTP or AV helps me and I just end up doing an anti tory vote or a mor eelaborate anti tory vote [ though I may have to add the lib dems to that as they seem to have no honesty/integrity once in a a coalition and could do anything for power.
As i am sure you can tell i am still not sure nor masively conviced but yes it probably will kill any chance of electoral reform so a tactical vote seems to make some sense

Funkynick’s debunking of the “people who vote for the winner only vote once” theory is spot-on, and exactly the way th Australian system was explained to me recently. It’s an election in multiple rounds, conducted on one ballot paper.

Also, this:

I think whoever wins this referendum will take it as a signal of far more than just the question on AV… if it goes for AV, then I can see that the question of going to a full PR won’t be too many years away, however if it goes against AV, I think that electoral reform is going to be dead for a generation.

perfectly sums up why I’m voting “yes”. AV is not a great compromise, but it’s the one that was wrung out of an unpromising political situation. Nothing better is on the table. 🙂

I actually think parties like the Greens will do far better out of the AV system than they do with the present system, although it probably couldn’t get much worse for them really!!

A lot of people who like the Green party never vote for them because they never have a chance of getting elected anywhere, except Brighton obviously! Now, if you have a voting system in place where you can vote for someone like the Green party, but also know that if they lose badly you’ll be able to vote for someone else in later round, then I think more people will do that.

Now, they might still lose, but they would have won a higher proportion of the vote in doing so, which in turn will make more people think about voting for them the next time… it should also have the effect of giving a reasonable idea of who people really want to vote for across the country from the first round results. You never know, it might turn out that those that go on to eventually win need to take that sort of information into account.

Yep. Most exciting thing about AV is that we don’t know how it would change voter behaviour. Potentially pretty exciting.

A lot of people who like the Green party never vote for them because they never have a chance of getting elected anywhere, except Brighton obviously

The Green Party was a no hope party in 1997 when Labour won a landslide and they got less than 3% percent of the votes in Brighton Pavilion. So what made people vote for a “no hope” party to the point where they became the largest party in a consistency ?

Exactly… although some folks bring up the idea that this could also lead to a rise in the vote of the BNP. It almost certainly will do, but I’m not sure it will make that much of a difference to the BNP to be honest. I think that due to the type of party they are most folks who want to vote for them will vote for them already…

It’ll almost certainly help UKIP as well, and while I certainly don’t agree with their policies, I think that having more ideas across the whole spectrum in politics can only be a good thing.

ernie… who knows… I’ve not been to Brighton for many years, but I’d guess it had something to do with wanting to get Labour out, not really liking the Conservatives, and also having the leader of the Greens as their candidate. I seem to recall hearing that they ran a very targeted campaign down there too.