what do you mean ‘your candidate’ ? – you get to vote for several.

What if he only wants to vote for one candidate? I’m sure there are many people who would prefer not to give even a fourth preference vote to certain parties.

voting ‘No’ for AV is a way of saying ‘the current system is great – no change here please’

No it’s not. It’s a way of saying “I don’t agree with this proposed change”.

point 1: i would guess that’s fine, he can probably do that.

point 2: yes, that is correct. i’m afraid i got carried away with myself.

FPTP is AV in a two party system.

However with the rise of the smaller parties (LibDem, SNP, PC, Green, etc) the system does not allow the voters the ability to select a preference. AV is used by the parties to select their leaders (Cons, Lab and LibDem) so why can’t we have it to select who we want to run the country. In the long term it should lead to more consensus politics, but this will take a few elections before we see any substantial change.

The problem I see is that too many people will see this vote as a vote against the LibDem’s rather than making a positive choice. We can stay with FPTP and we will end up with parties with huge majorities elected by a minority of the public – is that better?

As it was explained by a couple of ad execs on th etelly the other night.. AV is a bit like asking your mate to get you a Mars bar from the shop.. Oh and if they don;t have a Mars bar get me a Twix… No Twix get me a double Decker.. But for **** sake don’t get me a bloody Bounty!

The problem with that is we are likely to end up with a choice of Mars bar, Bounty, dark chocolate Bounty & king sized Bounty rather than the nice selection quoted

No it’s not. It’s a way of saying “I don’t agree with this proposed change”.

Yes but calls for PR in the future will be met with ‘But people didn’t want AV, why would they want PR?’

I’m sure there are many people who would prefer not to give even a fourth preference vote to certain parties.

You can vote for just one candidate if you want you don’t have to put second choices.

Lots of myths and propaganda about this.

For a rational, clear, unbiased view, see here:

http://www.psa.ac.uk/PSAPubs/TheAlternativeVoteBriefingPaper.pdf

Exec summary is good if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

The problem with that is we are likely to end up with a choice of Mars bar, Bounty, dark chocolate Bounty & king sized Bounty rather than the nice selection quoted

How?

In my (extremely) safe Tory seat we have canditates from UKIP, Green, Peace Party, Christian Party and the big 3, for example. That’s quite a range of views.

Yes but calls for PR in the future will be met with ‘But people didn’t want AV, why would they want PR?’

That’s fine by me – I have absolutely no interest in PR, along with lots of others
FPTP has [IMO] served us well as a nation over the years

What if he only wants to vote for one candidate? I’m sure there are many people who would prefer not to give even a fourth preference vote to certain parties.

Then they would only vote for one candidate by putting a “1” next to their preferred choice. Should that person win then they will get their preferred candidate, should that person be eliminated then their vote will be disounted in subsequent counts. This however will have the potential to effectively boost the support for minority parties should the voter’s initial choice be discounted as although the number of votes the minority party would have won’t increase, the total number of votes will have decreased thereby increasing the proportion of votes they would hold. It is however a largely theoretical risk and unlikely to have much of an impact in reality.

AV is used by the parties to select their leaders

there is probably some merit in being led by the least offensive choice rather than a devisive figure – ie it stops a rabid pro or anti european leading the tories for example so you always end up with one who talks tough but wont leave. Anything else would split them.
We dont have to worry about this in an election tbh as we are not trying to unite behind our dear leader.

what do you mean ‘your candidate’ ? – you get to vote for several.

You assume I am willing to support others I am sure you can see why the greens are unique and non of the other parties are similiar enought to get my vote. Granted this is no different from FPTP but it is different from true PR

voting ‘No’ for AV is a way of saying ‘the current system is great – no change here please’

I have no idea how on earth you can infer that my dislike of this system implies I support FPTP – it is a daft point to make.
CPT this is a brave new day for consenus politcis when you and I are in agreement 😉 😯

I have no idea how on earth you can infer that my dislike of this system implies I support FPTP

Yes but calls for PR in the future will be met with ‘But people didn’t want AV, why would they want PR?’

A vote against will bury electoral reform.

How about a system of “negative votes” instead of second choices?

You get one positive vote for the candidate you’d like and one negative vote for the candidate you definitely don’t want (increased to two negative votes in areas with more than 5 candidates standing).

That way you can vote for your preferred party and still block hate parties and no one is left with the dilemma that they’d like to vote Green, but worry that if they don’t back the Tories then the BNP might sneak in.

A vote against will bury electoral reform.

Very deeply, I hope

Why is FPTP so good then, Uplink?

A vote against will bury electoral reform.

even if i accept this as true how on earth does it prove I support FPTP?
One does not at necessarily follow logically from the other. It is possible to both dislike FPTP and AV. Yes some folk who vote against AV will support FPTP but some will oppose AV it is impossible to tell which is which without asking another question. Your inference is nothing more than a guess

It doesn’t prove anything, but it will be used by the ‘No to reform’ camp as an endorsement that everything is fine and no reform is needed.

What’s the worst thing that could happen under AV?

Oh and back to the Doncaster result, remember the turnout was only 35.8%, so Davies actually achieved 8.1% of the available vote. Now there’s a popular mandate. My choice for electoral change would be to add a “None of the above” box to tick, if if won, a rerun would be forced with new candidates required.

I live in a constituency which is a reasonably safe Labour seat, but it’s been Tory recently enough that I can remember it and a low turnout combined with a swing to the right could return it to Tory.

In the last election, I wanted to vote Lib Dem*. Mainly, this was due to their opposition to the Iraq war and their stance on ID Cards, tuition fees and the like.

But, there is a chance that my Lib Dem vote will mean a Tory win. I really, really, really don’t want that to happen. Plus, the Labour candidate is a genuinely good, local candidate who wasn’t MP during the Blair years and isn’t doing rather a lot of consulting for large corporations off the back of their former ministerial position.

Under FPTP, I had to make a decision: do I vote for the Lib dems or (effectively) against the Tories.

Under AV, I could have given the Lib Dem candidate my first choice vote and Labour my second choice.

This diagram sums it up for me:

*I know, I know. It won’t happen again. In my defence, the candidate is a nice guy who bought me a pint once and he’s not standing for council again after the tuition fees decision.

Its tragic, FPTP is shite, AV is still not good. All its done is put me off even more from voting.

What was the reason for not having proper PR ?

miketually – indeed – at the last Westminster election I voted for a party who I really don’t agree with on many issues, as a protest against the incumbent, and with no hope that any other candidate would get close. I’m sure many others did likewise which probably creates a skewed understanding of what the people in my constituency, and across the country were trying to say about policies.

What was the reason for not having proper PR ?

The Prime Minister doesn’t like PR! In general the tories don’t like it at all – which is odd, because without it they’d have 75% fewer MSPs at Holyrood!

As far as I can see the main drawback of PR is that you are not voting for an individual MP any more, and no longer will really have a “constituency MP”. In reality since a huge proportion of the population seem to think they are voting for Milliband/Clegg/Cameron then it may not be a bad idea to clear it up by voting for the party rather than the candidate.

Junkyard – Member

“well they did not give the candidate their vote so yes it would obviously be ridiculous to suggest they don’t support them”

Again, nonsense- at least 50% of the voters have to support a candidate for them to win. The fact that they didn’t give him their first vote doesn’t mean they didn’t vote for him, to say “they did not give the candidate their vote” is simply wrong.

I’m unsure whether you’re trolling here tbh, I’d assume you were if it wasn’t for the fact that an awful lot of people seem to genuinely have this confusion.

Is the vote for AV FPTP, AV or PR 🙂

Oh and back to the Doncaster result, remember the turnout was only 35.8%, so Davies actually achieved 8.1% of the available vote. Now there’s a popular mandate. My choice for electoral change would be to add a “None of the above” box to tick, if if won, a rerun would be forced with new candidates required.

I think you might be onto something.

How about if less than 50% turn out then no MP gets elected.

We could really cut costs and nobody would notice the difference.

Junkyard

Mark nice explanation – however the reality is mars do exist and another system would guarantee you a mars. hence why this is rubbish

Eh, again no.

Stick with the marsbar. 11 people decide to get a sweet but they’re only sold in packs of 11, so they decide to vote to decide which one they get. 3 vote for a mars, 2 for a dairy milk, 2 for a milky way, 1 for a bounty, 1 for a Caramel, 1 for a lovely Frys Mint Creme and one weirdo votes for an apple- he’s a green obviously.

Under FPTP everyone gets a mars bar- 8 people get something they’ve expressed no interest in. Maybe they’re happy, maybe they’re not, you just don’t know. Only 3 get what they voted for.

Under AV, there’s no majority so you look further, and since some people said “I want a bounty/caramel/apple/mint creme, but failing that I’d rather have a milky way” you now have 3 votes for a mars, 6 for a milky way, 2 for a dairy milk. Everyone gets a milky way because a majority have voted for it, 6 people get what they voted for, 5 don’t.

So what’s fairer?

Course, better still is for everyone to get the sweet they actually voted for- that’s PR.

“transferring of your vote”

Correct Junkyard. Your vote is transferred in the run-off, not copied. You are not getting two votes.

FPtP served the historical two-party politics very well, and continues to do so in America. But politics in Britain is moving on and FPtP feels more and more unfair.

I want a modern PR system, but accept that only improved voting is possible under a Conservative-led administration.

Course, better still is for everyone to get the sweet they actually voted for- that’s PR.

Well spotted AV is poorer than PR so if we are going to change lets change to the best alternative so simple even you have got it.

I want a modern PR system, but accept that only improved voting is possible under a Conservative-led administration.

WTF that is staking pro tory views past reality have you not noticed that the leader of the Conservative led administration is campaigning against it.

Junkyard – Member

Well spotted AV is poorer than PR so if we are going to change lets change to the best alternative so simple even you have got it.

Welcome to what I was saying at the start of the thread 😛 But should we throw out an improvement just because it’s not perfection? (and are you still claiming that AV is worse than FPTP?)

poly – Member
As far as I can see the main drawback of PR is that you are not voting for an individual MP any more, and no longer will really have a “constituency MP”.

Depends on the type of “PR”. The Additional Member System used at Holyrood retains a constituency link for the majority of MSPs. I know that there are some drawbacks of this system, but it seems better than the AV system and, since it is already in use in the UK, it seems crazy not to implement it for Westminster elections too.

druidh,

I’m not convinced that the holyrood system is the answer (although it is definitely better than AV, which is an improvement on FPTP). The holyrood system still uses massive constituencies (regions) which means really “minor” parties (or independents) may not get elected any seats even if they have (or could have) generated enough support from across the whole country. It also seems that the average member of the public without an interest in politics doesn’t understand the two votes system and is confused by having one “local” MSP and several “regional” MSPs all supposed to be representing them.

Whilst I can see this loss of local connection as a potential draw back of PR, in the 21st century with modern communications I’m not convinced we need constiuency offices all over the country or people to have a local MP. Indeed if my issue is of importance across the country it should affect lots of MPs not just my local guy. If it only affects me or my immediate locality – it probably isn’t worthy of much parliamentary attention anyway.

The other obvious “draw back” of PR (if you are one of the big two political parties) is that majority rule becomes rather unlikely and coalition type politics will be required. Personally I think this is a good thing; which would be improved if they all accepted that upfront, forced the smaller parties to be a bit more honest about the economics of their ideals and therefore laid out their priorities so the electorate aren’t throwing a tantrum because all their policies don’t get implemented.

Personally I’m all for PR. I believe if AV is rejected by the electorate we will not see another vote on AV/PR in the next 30 years. If AV is voted in, then I expect we will see proposals on PR within the next 3 parliaments.

Personally I’m all for PR. I believe if AV is rejected by the electorate we will not see another vote on AV/PR in the next 30 years. If AV is voted in, then I expect we will see proposals on PR within the next 3 parliaments.

Completely agree.

Welcome to what I was saying at the start of the thread But should we throw out an improvement just because it’s not perfection? (and are you still claiming that AV is worse than FPTP?)

Did I claim it was worse that FPTP? Can you learn to read and understand as well as you can patronise? I have said it is no better than FPTP not that it is worse that is I still dont get any representation for the party I choose – you may think me choosing the party I hate least ,via multiple votes, is an improvement but if we must do electoral reform can we just do it properly to PR which you accept is better.
Imagine a weirdo [does calling the person you are disagreeing with prove an effective strategy in persuading them that your argument is correct or does it make them think you are a knob?] wants to vote green under FPTP I vote green get no MP. Under AV I don’t get a Green MP either so my true choice still does not count – how excited should I be about this change?
Whilst you want to claim that a transferred vote is unqualified support and a mandate for that platform[despite the fact 78% of people initially vote against the candidate and theoir policies] and the person gets more than 50% of the votes still counted [ note this is NOT necessarily 50% of votes cast as some will not transfer leading so it will always be 50% of votes counted but not necessarily votes cast].
Imagine under AV this happens
1. 24 % vote candidate a
2. 23 % vote candidate b
3. 53% dont vote for either and dont transfer their vote – voted for other candidates in previous rounds etc.
Candidate a wins with more than 50% of the votes and the majority supports them. YAH for deomocracy Hopefully you understand my “nonesense” now.
Happy voting.

Northwind +1

Ignoring the incumbents I see it as resulting in:

– FPTP – ancient, primitive, alpha male rules as he’s beaten the nearest contender

– PR – modern, caring, consensus rule via working together

– AV – flawed but more likely to lead to a vote for genuine PR in near future.

Play the long game, vote AV …

…I would suggest that right-wing folk would be liking FPTP and the more socialist folk should be voting (though maybe not liking) AV??

Cheers…is a nice day, must get outside!!

Junkyard – Member
…if we must do electoral reform can we just do it properly to PR…[?]

ideally yes, but we haven’t been given a referendum on PR because yer average tory MP absolutely hates the idea.

(it’ll mean the end of tactical voting, which should mean more MP’s from smaller parties)

but we have been given a referendum on AV, because the tories needed to offer the lib-dems something to get them on side.

no AV referendum offer from the tories = no coalition = hung parliament = a re-vote without Gordon brown = massive labour victory.

The tories had to offer something, but they couldn’t bring themselves to offer full PR.

so here we are.

And we’d be fools not to take it on the hope a PR vote comes along in the near future.

Junkyard – Member

Did I claim it was worse that FPTP? Can you learn to read and understand as well as you can patronise?

I can read fine thanks, you called it the “Worst of both worlds” way back in your first post, remember?

Junkyard – Member

“Whilst you want to claim that a transferred vote is unqualified support and a mandate for that platform[despite the fact 78% of people initially vote against the candidate and theoir policies”

Nobody voted against anyone. I’m not out to be patronising but as long as you’re making comments like this one, or “they did not give the candidate their vote” (when they did) and “some people only get to vote once and others more than once”, it’s pretty tricky not to.

Also, when did I say it’s unqualified support? Of course it isn’t, it’s a preferred second (or third, &c) option. TBH not even a first vote is unqualified support in many cases. Nevertheless, it’s a vote for, and a preference expressed. This is all in response to your “They did not give the candidate their vote” which as I say is just factually wrong.

You’ve got legitimate beefs with AV, and they’re the same as everyone else’s. You’ve also got some false ones. I’m not saying AV is great, I’m just out to correct some misunderstandings/prejudices.

Imagine under AV this happens
1. 24 % vote candidate a
2. 23 % vote candidate b
3. 53% dont vote for either and dont transfer their vote – voted for other candidates in previous rounds etc.
Candidate a wins with more than 50% of the votes and the majority supports them. YAH for deomocracy Hopefully you understand my “nonesense” now.
Happy voting.

Junkyard… what you have just described above is FPTP if the 53% don’t have any additional preferences.

You ridicule that example, but still you are going to vote to keep it?

Nobody voted against anyone

Well spotted however they could have voted for them but chose not to and voted for someone else instead- this is apparently not not voting for them though according to you.

some people only get to vote once and others more than once

well do they transfer the vote or not with AV? What is the difference between AV and FPTP ? additional/alternative voting is the very definition of the scheme yet I am wrong to class it as voting again. Whatever.

what you have just described above is FPTP if the 53% don’t have any additional preferences.

I know thanks – northwind claimed the winner always had a majority I was simply demonstrating this was wrong hence why there was no mention of this from northwind and just the rehashing of old arguments.
Where did i say how I was voting? thinking av is poor is not thinking FPTP is great. I support PR not this fudge version which even the supporters seem to accept it is crap or “not great” whilst trying to persuade me to vote for it.

I support PR not this fudge version which even the supporters seem to accept it is crap or “not great” whilst trying to persuade me to vote for it.

PR isn’t on the table. AV is better than FPTP. Voting Yes on May 5th will show that you want electoral reform, voting No will suggest (to those in power) that you don’t.

Junkyard – Member

I know thanks – northwind claimed the winner always had a majority I was simply demonstrating this was wrong

The winner always has a majority of the votes. I don’t know what you think you’ve demonstrated here?

Again, nonsense- at least 50% of the voters have to support a candidate for them to win

I think i proved that this quote from you – where you accuse me of talking nonesense was in fact false. Yes they need a [simple] majority but they dont need 50% of the voters to support them as you claimed.