I haven’t got a clue what they are!! 😳

Alternative Vote or First Past The Post.

What kind is the home page poll…? 😉

FPTP = first past the post most votes = winner
AV – Alternative vote – you number them 1- whatever. If no one gets 50% of the votes then the candidate with the lowest votes goes out and those votes are recounted for the second choice -.If someoen gets 50% they win if not repeat by eliminating lowest votes there next choice etc repeat till someone has 50% of votes still counted – you dont need to transfer your vote.

Poll is FPTP as ithas three options

AV

Ahh – I didn’t think of that – was trying to work out the biking connection!! 😳 😳 😳

Watch the No to AV advert if you’re unsure. That pretty much convinced me that AV was the right way to go.

http://www.no2av.org/04/referendum-broadcast/

It doesn’t really matter.. until the masses unite and take up arms we will continue to be ruled by the Eton Mafia in one guise or another..

don’t try to kid yourself that in real terms your vote effects your future in any way..

more cake anyone..?

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/how-to-vote-on-this-voting-thing

FPTP.

I don’t like the idea that when there isn’t a majority, the first people to get a say in who should be elected will be those who voted for the BNP, Socialist Worker Party, UKIP etc. [Edited – omission]

Not a great fan of FPTP (see the figures for %age votes against seats – often you’ll see very similar %ages of votes with wildly differing numbers of seats) but the options that we’ve been given are pretty ropey. PR seems more sensible but it’s obviously been vetoed by the Conservatives.

FPTP.

I don’t like the idea that the first people to get a say in who should be elected will be those who voted for the BNP, Socialist Worker Party, UKIP etc.

And how does that happen under AV?

AV for me.

Lifer, should have said “In the cases where there is no clear majority”.

According to the leaflet I’ve had through the door the first votes to be examined for second options are the least popular parties. Round here that will be the above list…

That doesn’t equate to them having ‘first say in who should be elected’ just that their first choice is eliminated.

AV is no better or worse than FPTP, but, vote against it and the chance to get a better voting system for a generation will have gone.

Lifer, not going to get into a long argument about this, but that seems to be what the booklet the Electoral Commission sent out says.

If there’s no majority, you go to the least popular parties first. Their second choices are the first to be taken into account. To my mind that’s rather worse than the third place party forming a coalition – at least a decent number of people voted for them!

Page 6 here if you’re at all bothered:
http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/PDF/England-accessible.pdf

To my mind that’s rather worse than the third place party forming a coalition – at least a decent number of people voted for them!

Why? It prevents parties from representing a constituency based on a minority vote.

tron,

brief explanation of AV.

You rank parties according to preference, everyone has the same choices no unfairness, if you would rather a green mp then vote green, if you don’t want a tory you do not rank them at all, you are able to give a better indication of what your want.

All votes are counted, if one person gets more than 50%+1 the end they have won.

IF not.

The last placed party is deleted from all ballots and a recount begins. All votes are recounted the only difference is that whereever the last placed rider appeared they no longer exist.

Votes recounted, if one person gets more than 50%+1 the end they have won.

if not,

The last placed party is deleted from all ballots and a recount begins. All votes are recounted the only difference is that whereever the last placed rider appeared they no longer exist.

…

Repeat until someone gets more than 50%+1

I think one thing to consider is FPTP, you can get a vast majority who do not want the winner. A vote of 30% regularly gives the win, which means 70% DID NOT WANT THEM, so the choice of the majority has been denied.

AV gives you the least unpopular winner.

How it works is starting to sink in. Whether it is a fairer system locally aside what will the end results be Nationally if for example we’d had this last elections?

Sounds like it would be the two top parties would lose out a little to a third, and judging from the Con ‘No’, Lib ‘Yes’ and Labour ‘confused’ campaigns the Cons would be the biggest losers?

Is that because most Labour supporters would second Libs and vice versa? (which might not be the case any more). Or because most Cons would second no one? Or cos Cons have slimmer majorities etc.

How would it pan out, more likely Labour / Lib coalitions? or is it too complicated to predict?

what mrmo says. A stepping stone to pr hopefully.

Tron, there’s a good, although slightly mathematical, analysis of the BNP issue (and quite a lot of other sensible points) made here.

maybe the greens would get in eventually..?

I find it increasingly hard to believe that our system of democracy or any version of it that our leaders dream up is any fairer than Libyas system.. maybe slightly less bloody and terrifying but certainly no fairer..
an utter swizz..

The Tories are pushing FPTP because they think the peasants are dumb.

I come from Queensland, a place where beer is spelled XXXX because otherwise it would be too hard for us to spell, yet we can manage to work out quite complicated election forms.

Are the Brits really dumber than that?

cheers for link Samurai that is shocking

on the issue of democracy, how can it be democratic when you only get to choose a representative once every few years. With no way of deselecting them if they choose to break the promises on which you choose them. How can it be fair to have a system where some peoples votes mean more than others? How can it be fair to have a system where people vote for representatives but are actually voting for parties.

On top of that we have local councils with minimum rights, a house of lords.

But to get the system right you need to have an electorate who understands politics and understands the consequences of their votes. A system where voters matter and not businesses. I don’t remember BAe voting for Blair but Blair did what he could to help.

@samurai, My god!!! words fail me, those adverts are abismal.

I quite like these:

No to AV leaflet examined

and

and Charlie Brooker’s ‘Fred West with Panda’ flyer:

love the Tories quoting Winston Churchill ripping into AV, but oddly they don’t quote him ripping into FPTP too.

The prime minister, who passed away 46 years ago, is now piously and repeatedly invoked by opponents of the alternative vote, who have discovered that Churchill once described AV as a system determined by “the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates”.

Churchill wrote that “the present system has clearly broken down. The results produced are not fair to any party, nor to any section of the community . . . All they secure is fluke representation, freak representation, capricious representation.”

Anarchy!

Bassspine where’s that quote from please?

lifer I got it from this article

this is pretty funny too… the stupidity whirlpool