Scaredypants,

What I remember was that the Lib Dems spoke exclusively to the Tories for a while. At the point that there seemed to be a deal on the table they went and spoke to Labour but then very quickly went back to the Tories once further concessions came forward. In other words, they were never serious about doing a deal with Labour but used them in order to get more leverage. There was considerable discussion about that as being “a bit off” at the time.

I seem to remember they (edit: were said to) spoke to both sides at some length, which might suggest otherwise

I seem to remember that they didn’t, which might suggest that you are wrong.

It was called Five Days in May, by Matthew Solon – bumpf here

Alas, no longer available on iPlayer.

toys, the way I see it is that they prob did a deal with whoever offered the best chance of a change in the voting system.

I don’t think so. There was a R4 play about the goings on immediately after the election that was supposed to be based on the “facts” from a variety of insiders and I’m sure that it was more or less as it appeared fromt he outside i.e. Clegg made the principled decision to work with the party with the most seats, which he then stuck to.

I’ll go and see if it’s still available as a podcast.

Hobson’s choice.

Here’s my constituency who shoudl I have voted for then?

They never put out exit poll info until after the polls are closed. You’ll have to wait until about one minute past 10.

I’m not sure who this is meant to support, me or awhiles and thebunk

If it helps Charlie, I often vote Lib Dem (being leftish) but would have to be dragged screaming to ever vote Conservative – hence, I reflect awhile’s analysis.

OTOH if we had AV and a Green candidate (or even an independent with the right sort of local policies) then I’d vote for them with my first preference, whereas now I woudl have to vote LibDem in my constituency just to try to keep the Tories out.

rig,

Other thread AV referendum rehashes some of the arguments either way.

So all the people that don’t bother to vote today (the vast majority I would say), is it going to be taken that they are happy with the system we have and counted as a no vote?

By the Tories, yes.

By everyone else, no.

Brilliant – yes true, I could register for a postal vote and then effectively avoid the whole point of it by traipsing to polling station anyway!

What do you want – the moon on a stick?!

Personally I like the fact that there is a big pile of bits of paper with crosses on, that can be inspected and recounted if necessary.

As things stand you can send off your postal vote as soon as you make up your mind. But if you think that things will be close and that your vote will be vital, but you still can’t make up your mind (for some bizarre reason) until the very last minute, then you have the option to change your plans for the day and make sure you can still vote.

I did and I used it – but it does have distinct disadvantage that you have to send it off before the public debates have finished.

Not true. You can take it along to the polling station on the day.

Hmmmmmmmm… indeed.

Our polling station is church hall at local C of E.
Should the same question be asked?

No.

It’s no wonder we have so many problems with race relations in this country.

What do you suppose the “offence” would be?

Did I mention any of that shit (sorry Bez)?

You asked me to run through the arguments I put to the Jehovas Witnesses.

Surely some boffin can devise a way for these shiny computery things to transmit information to each other and allow us to communicate our votes through some form of inter-connected network, or “internet”?

I think Sony have implemented something like that.

GW,

Basically what I said to the Jehovas Witnesses was the last para of Bez’s last (edit: second last) comment, though not so eloquently.

But it’s not too late to change your mind – get out there and vote!

How can a model based on infinite growth work in a finite world.

It works perfectly, right up to the point that it doesn’t.

And you can bet your boots that any time reform is mentioned from now on the Tories will be saying:

“The electorate were given the opportunity for voting reform and have clearly chosen FPTP as the voting system for this country for all of eternity.”

You need to change your parents.

GW,

Do you want me to run through the arguments I put to the Jehovas Witnesses?

Are you one?

Just had the Jehovas Witnesses at the door. I asked them if they had voted. They don’t vote!

I suggested that voting for a change in the voting system wasn’t the same as voting for a particular party.

They didn’t see it.

Went on to discuss whether they would take part in politics to get rid fo a dictator (they wouldn’t) or vote against Mugabe (they wouldn’t). Neither were they prepared to express a preference for who we should put in charge of keeping the roads mended and the sewers clean. Apparently it will all happen spontaneously once God has established his own government on earth.

I voted Yes, but ironically I suspect that it was a “wasted vote” – no disrespect to anyone who has made a principled decision to vote No, but I suspect that the majority of the population are too stupid/apathetic/lazy/fearful for the Yes vote to win.

My wife is a teacher and was discussing AV with her colleagues yesterday (you would have thought a reasonably thoughtful bunch) – one of them said that she didn’t know enough about poilitics to be able to rank all the parties, another said that you would get 5 votes under AV – honestly, it seems we do indeed deserve the Governments that we get.

Iggy Pop.

But these days he sells car insurance.

Once the lazy bastards who live closer to my kids school than we do stop clogging up the road with their cars every morning so we can’t cycle past, then I’ll know fuel has hit the right price.

Frankly, many town councils have a job getting enough councilors to stand anyway so it’s more a question of who’s prepared to do it.

District councils are a bit better, but not much.

Having attended a couple of district council meetings lately to do with the development of a core strategy document and also a planning application for a windfarm, the ability (or rather lack of ability) of the councilors to even follow the presentations being made by the council officers was frankly embarrassing- half of them to my mind were just too stupid to do the job.

There seems to be an assumption here that centrist policies are what is best for the country.

Good point.

But not that simple.

Almost by definition, centrist policies must be what the majority want? And I am thinking of both Labour and the Tories as being largely centrist here.

But maybe, as you seem to be suggesting, we don’t always know what is good for us, and maybe a few more radical policies would actually be more effective or fairer.

I think that AV would actually allow more of those sorts of policies to be put forward and tested.

For example, the Greens might put forward a range of policies on housing, energy use etc, and even though they might not get elected, a significant section of the population might show their support by voting for them in the first rounds, which would then give maninstream parties a bit more courage to pursue such policies themselves.

BTW Billy Brag and Robert Winston are just about to debate AV on R5Live

To me the simple fatal weakness of AV is that the second preferences of the nutters (ie. the people who would vote BNP or another fringe party as their first choice) become the decisive votes, and the mainstream parties will be forced to pander to them.

Except that you are wrong.

Which of the current parties would be able to “pander” to the BNP without disaffecting an even greater number of their existing voters?

All of the parties do actually have some principles and history, which they won’t just throw aside in order to garner a percentage or two of extremist votes. Their own members wouldn’t let them.

Focussing on ‘the BNP will not win any seats’ is a smokescreen from the yes camp to distract from this!

No it’s not.

Think about the reality for a moment.

For the BNP to win a seat they would have to get the second (or third, or fourth etc) preference votes of nearly all of the second/third/fourth parties in order to beat the other remaining party in the final round.

Do you really think that is going to happen?

Or are you just creating your own smoke screen.

Too many unsubstantiated claims in there. How do you know they fear it as opposed to support the other option? How do you know they don’t understand it?

I think it is pretty hard to argue that people generally do not fear change.

But if you look at the stuff the No campaign is pumping out it is all aimed at generating fear, and given that they probably have a lot of clever people behind the scenes working out the most effective messages to put forward for their cause, I think it is a fair assumption that that has been the outcome of some proper research.

Apart from all of the stuff about how BNP supporters will be in charge, how about the crap about it only being Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea that have AV now – so what? If you want to look at the numbers of people under any particular system then Chinese Communism is the most popular, but I don’t see many Tories advocating that.

Under those circumstances, the second and third preferences of fringe parties (some of whom may be moderate, some of whom may be extremists) become all-powerful, so candidates for the mainstream parties will have to pitch for them. Hence, under AV, the minor parties wield more power – both in the ballot box and on the stump.

But they could do that now. For example, the Tories might want to look tough on immigration in order to appeal to BNP sympathisers (obviously a poor example).

What you are suggesting is not a feature of AV, it is a feature of all political systems.

Probably as well, you’d have had a Fett worse than death.

Not Jango, Django.

I wanted to name my son Django, but strangely it was vetoed by my wife.

50,000 Fall fans can’t be wrong – or can they?

Picasso init?

How does FPTP favour anyone, Tory or otherwise?

FPTP favours the status quo.

It’s psychological.

Because in most seats people believe that only the Tories or Labour can win then they will vote for one of those 2 parties.

WIth AV they get to vote for who they really want without the fear that they are wasting their vote, because they know that once their party is knocked out that they still have a say in each succeeding round until they are finally left with a choice between just 2 parties.

Then they choose the least worst. :D

And the biggest BS of the Yes, campaign is that your vote always counts. But it’s not your vote, it’s your second choice that counts, not the thing you actually wanted. Everyone gets a goldfish, is not a good voting principle

You’ll be unsurprised that I don’t agree with that interpretation either.

It’s true that people may still not be any more likely to get their first choice of candidate, but at least we will know what everyone’s first choice was.

So there won’t be a load of politicians on the media after every election saying “we would have done better if people hadn’t voted tactically” – because everyone will know exactly how many people in each constituency would really have liked the minority parties over the one that got elected. And it should mena that the likes of the Greens will be able to put candidates forward and actually get a respectable show of support even if they don’t win the seat.

Unless a mouse candidate stepped forward.

So, lets get this straight… under AV, the people who put their first priority as an unelectable fringe party, get their second or possibly third votes taken into account – whereas the people who vote for a mainstream party only get one chance to choose.

No.

This is the biggest bit of bull$hit of the whole “No”campaign.

If there is a second round of counting, the votes of the weakest party are redistributed. But that doesn’t mean they are counted twice.

Another way of looking at it would be to say that the weakest party is eliminated then all the votes are counted again. Except that the people who weren’t eliminated don’t really need their votes to be PHYSICALLY counted again as its just been done in the previous round. But they still count.

Everyone’s vote counts in every round of counting until one candidate gets over 50%

I put my 50p/week pocket money in an account untill I could buy a dingy!

Did you sail it up the west coast?

I suspect that AV would do that in seats where there’s a lot of tactical voting now but it will also create as many new ‘tactical voting’ constituencies where they weren’t before

How?

Give me an example of what might happen. I can’t see it.

Impossible to say. You would hope they would sort themselves out sooner rather than later, but there are too many variables for an easy answer.