It's worth noting the effect of campaigning and good old pester power.
Conservatives have resinded plans to sell off forests and are having agreat big wobble on their plans for the NHS.
Get off your lazy arses and get your voices heard.
Yes or No to the AV Vote? Page 3
If the Tories are campaigning against it, I shall be voting for it. Yes to AV.
N.B. much as I may loath them one can look at both the BNP and EDL as evidence of how minority parties can through succesful campaigning have real influences on the issues they care about.
Quote: Gerry McDonnell @ April 7 2011, 10:27 AM BSTIf the Tories are campaigning against it, I shall be voting for it. Yes to AV.
Worth bearing in mind that the Tories quid pro quo for allowing teh Referendum Bill through was the redrawing of constituency boundaries. So under FPTP the Tories are going to be harder to dislodge in future.
The agenda of the Tory right has always been to bring down the Coalition, knowing that with the LibDems holed below the waterline and labour still discredited they are sure to get an overall majority in a FPTP election.
Labour did pretty much the same thing to increase their control of the Lords. It's all a bit of a game and has been going on since the creation of Parliament.
Quote: Griff @ April 7 2011, 10:21 AM BSTAV allows parties to win a seat even if NOBODY votes for them as first preference, but large numbers of people choose them as second or perhaps third preference. i.e. parties that nobody actually wants enough to vote for, but don't have a strong antipathy towards.
This does not seem democratic to me. If you like a party that much, give them your main vote.
Is it more democratic to elect a candidate that the majority of voters actively voted against? AV ensures that the least popular candidate does not get elected.
And the reason people are reluctant to vote for anyone other than the established party is that they do not want to risk letting the other lot get in. The reality is that under FPTP people do not so much vote for a candidate as against a candidate.
Time to quote Douglas Adams. An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this (...)
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, (,,,,), "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in (...)"
Quote: sootyj @ April 7 2011, 10:16 AM BSTAV or PR are dangerous because they allow immature, unpopular and disenfranchised parties into the system. Where a few single issue fanatics can hold the country to ransom. Just check out the disaster in Israeli and Australian democracy.
That might be true of PR, though it depends on the precise system adopted. It is a distinctly unlikely outcome under AV.
Quote: Timbo @ April 7 2011, 10:59 AM BSTThat might be true of PR, though it depends on the precise system adopted. It is a distinctly unlikely outcome under AV.
I'm not so sure. There's more danger in protest votes in my humble opinion.
Quote: sootyj @ April 7 2011, 11:06 AM BSTI'm not so sure. There's more danger in protest votes in my humble opinion.
Under AV to be successful you need a significant share of the first and second preferences in order to be in the running, and you still require upwards of half the electorate to actively cast a vote in your favour (it is not proposed that voters have to rank all candidates.)
A mock hustings run by BBC Radio5 compared the outcomes under FPTP and AV:
First Past the Post result
Labour 39.0%
LibDem 15.6%
UKIP 3.2%
Green 16.9%
Conserv 22.7%
BNP 2.6%
Alternative Vote
1st Round
Labour - 35.1%
LibDem 15.2%
UKIP 3.3
Green 21.9%
Cons 21.9%
BNP 2.6% - knocked out
2nd round knocked out - UKIP
3rd round knocked out - LibDem
4th round knocked out - Conservative
5th Round
Labour 49.0%
Green 41.7%
No further preference 9.3%
So under AV the Green share of first preferences significantly increases, primarily at the expense of Labour, putting them into joint second place. BNP are knocked out, then UKIP, it is not clear where their vote goes. LibDems go next, and a significant proportion of their vote goes to the Greens enabling them to knock out the Tories. A proportion of the Tory vote then shifts to the Greens, but not enough to dislodge Labour, who have also been picking up votes, from the top spot.
The ultimate outcome is the same as under FPTP, though undoubtedly there will be electoral breakthroughs for UKIP and the Greens, which is not necessarily a bad thing in terms of re-engaging people with the electoral process. What it will mean is that candidates will have to address the concerns of Green and UKIP voters in order to win second votes. The main parties will no longer be able to close ranks and ignore issues that are of concern to the public.
If the current system keeps boggle eyed fascists and lebsbian fart powered turbines out of parliament.
Good.
If on the other hand it results in us adopting a more robust attitude to dealing with the red tape heaped upon us by the unelected and accountable bureaucrats of the EU Commission and in us investing in green technologies that will give our country an economic advantage in the coming decade and insulate us from the effects of spiralling world energy prices, that would be good thing.
Quote: Timbo @ April 7 2011, 11:48 AM BSTIf on the other hand it results in us adopting a more robust attitude to dealing with the red tape heaped upon us by the unelected and accountable bureaucrats of the EU Commission and in us investing in green technologies that will give our country an economic advantage in the coming decade and insulate us from the effects of spiralling world energy prices
Yes, because that's exactly what will happen if we have AV.
Quote: chipolata @ April 7 2011, 12:10 PM BST
Chasing second votes means the main parties have to adopt policies advocated by smaller parties. So AV opens up political debate and promotes change. So it could be an outcome. Certainly there will be more lip service to those objectives, if not actual action.
Hence parties being lumbered with policies they don't believe in and don't really support.
Most modern manifestos are a bullshit soup, do you really want more of the same?
Yeah, all of this toing and froing is very interesting of course, but don't David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg all dress nicely?
*Wonders whether I've grasped the salient points in this debate.*
A huge amount of people have been asking for years for a referendum on our EU membership (amongst many other things)........and I am pro-Europe but would like to get an official reading of the country's opinion on it- not just what the Daily Mail tells us we think.
But, we are always told that referendums are too expensive, time costly and too difficult to arrange. Yet, here we are with a referendum on an issue that only MPs or serious politicos care about......all aranged and paid for within 1 year.
Hmmm.