A reader's letter from This Is South Devon:
ALMOST everyone I speak to is extremely ignorant about the referendum on the voting system and how AV works.
They do not realise that if they vote for one of the main parties they will only get a second vote when all of the other parties are eliminated.(1)
If no one gets more than 50 per cent, the party with the fewest votes is eliminated. Its votes are then shared out to all the other parties in the order on their ballot paper, ie a second vote. Then the party with the next lowest has its votes shared out, ie another second vote, and so on until one party has more than 50 per cent of the votes cast.
Not only is this all very expensive and time-consuming (2), but there is a danger that a fringe party like the BNP could get elected (3) or have a big say in who does. How can this be fair?
The alternative is to stick to the cheap and simple first past the post system which is easy to understand, has served us very well for more than 100 years and has almost always given us a stable government (4), the envy of many other countries.
Bob Wooller, Brixham.
Twat.
1) AV is like having run-off elections. Everybody's ballot paper gets counted exactly the same number of times, it is merely that some get shuffled from one pile to another and some stay on the same pile.
If your first choice candidate goes through to the next round, your ballot paper stays on his pile and gets counted again, and if you only vote for one candidate, then your vote is counted at every successive round until and unless he is eliminated or wins (so that's exactly the same as casting your first, second, third etc votes for that candidate - and having each vote counted).
2) The extra bit of shuffling might add a couple of per cent to the cost of running an election, big deal. People are always complaining that turnouts are so low (about two-thirds at a general election), so by definition, people would be quite happy to see the cost of the actual counting (a small part of the overall cost) to go up by half anyway (assuming one hundred per cent turnout).
3) That's not what the scientists say.
4) It's probably true that FPTP gives us larger majorities, so at any one point in time our government is more 'stable'. But if you take the longer view, we then lurch between one extreme and the other and each new government wastes its first few years just undoing what the previous lot did. Conversely, if successive governments had smaller majorities, they'd be less adventurous and in the long run, government would be more stable (and we'd save a lot of money changing everything over at regular intervals).
Ergo, even if FPTP leads to more stable governments (plural) AV leads to more stable government (singular). You pays your money etc.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Ignorant FPTP supporter displays ignorance
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20 comments:
"4) It's probably true that FPTP gives us larger majorities, so at any one point in time our government is more 'stable'. But if you take the longer view, we then lurch between one extreme and the other and each new government wastes its first few years just undoing what the previous lot did. Conversely, if successive governments had smaller majorities, they'd be less adventurous and in the long run, government would be more stable (and we'd save a lot of money changing everything over at regular intervals).
Ergo, even if FPTP leads to more stable governments (plural) AV leads to more stable government (singular). You pays your money etc."
I am liking this argument.
Since when was the purpose of a voting system to create "stable" governments?
Also: what is a "stable" government? The voting system creates a government on one occasion. Votes in, winner out. How is the stability of that government affected by the voting system?
Presumably it's a veiled way of saying "majority government". Well that is not a function of FPTP anyway; it's just that we have an electorate that flipflops between Red and Blue. When they don't FPTP gives a minority government too (as we have right now).
In short: agreed. Twat.
Voting is often more about hurling one lot out of power as opposed voting another lot in. Or perhaps casting your vote tactically so another lot don't get in. It's a negative thing. I don't see how AV will chnage this?
Personally I have a vague notion that UKIP could benefit a lot from AV. Since a lot of their policies are 'liberal', they may attract Liberals as well as non-authoritarian Tories. If they can market themselves properly. And by Liberals I do not mean the 'I am too snobby for labour but I'm a socialist' Lib Dem crowd. Mind you the millions of 'looters' New Labour recruited will be looking to secure their entitlements at the expense of the resty of us, and that's a big captive vote.
SW, ta, it only occurred to me a day or two ago.
OP, I don't even think that 'the electorate' flip flops, it's a small group of marginal voters in a small number of marginal constituencies who make the difference.
L, indeed, UKIP are a mish mash of proper liberal versus authoritarian Homeys, but both wings are in favour of 'small government'.
I'm in agreement with Lola.
AV is a "solution" to a non problem. The problem is the party system and the whips.
AC1 - better to sort the boundaries and possibly institute open primaries before setting out on PR?
Under AV UKIP might get a bit more support, but the real winners will be Labour and the Lib Dems as they're more likely to give each other 2nd preference votes.
This will also detach the Tories from their core support as they try and be all things to all men (much like now but worse).
I don't really see the point in AV. As AC1 says, it's a bad solution to a non-existent problem.
I second Scott's comment. Good argument, Mark.
@ACO: agreed. But AV could make the MP keep at least one eye cocked on the voters also. Weakening the Party system is A Good Thing.
chefdave,
I don't really see the point in AV. As AC1 says, it's a bad solution to a non-existent problem.
The point of AV is to try to get the best approximation of what voters in a seat actually want.
Here's my challenge to you: demonstrate that the people of Brighton Pavillion are generally happy with the outcome of the 2010 election based on the results as follows:-
Green: 31.3%
Labour: 28.9%
Conservative: 23.7%
LD: 13.8%
UKIP: 1.8%
(I've dropped the others).
AC1, CD, that's as maybe. But the choice here is simple: AV or FPTP, there's no point dragging in all the other things that are wrong or could be done better.
S, ta.
JT, in some respects, AV might go against smaller parties - who knows? That does not make it a good system or a bad system.
JT, it's a fair question but I think you're missing my point. Under FPTP parties can be a little bit 'outrageous' and partisan because they'll be able to rely on their core supporters to nudge them over the line. This'll change under AV as parties go second vote chasing, the result will be an entrenchment of the status quo at the very moment we need real political change.
As for the Brighton result, I would image that about 75% of those that turned up were happy with the outcome (Greens, Labour and Lib Dems)
Do you really begrudge the only MP that one of the small parties returned?
Mark,
Absolutely. I'm convinced that the Greens would lose in Brighton under AV.
In fact, one reason I'm against FPTP is that with enough parties, and with a national crisis, you're more likely for extremist parties to win seats. Extremists have the benefit of not sharing much perceived political philosophy with anyone else, so their support doesn't get split.
In fact, it may make little difference to how the parties stand. The difference it will make is that parties will have to respond far more rapidly, or small parties will take their seats from them. This is what happened in Australia where the One Nation Party stood on an anti-immigration, anti-market, anti-multiculturalism ticket and won a load of seats. The effect was that the main parties had to adjust their policies to bring back the voters who felt this way.
I don't agree with pretty much anything in the BNP's manifesto (their arts policy is my exception), but I actually think it's terrible that right now, the politicians don't have to give a shit about their voters because they're in safe seats and pose no threat to the Labour MPs in them. I think it would be far better if the politicians didn't just condemn the BNP as "bad", but either debated why their policies were bad, or took account of why people voted for them and tried to bring those people to vote for them.
Sorry, if long comment...
chefdave,
Do you really begrudge the only MP that one of the small parties returned?
Oh, please. you're arguing in favour of small parties, despite the fact that FPTP encourages tactical voting for the 2 main parties in each seat?
But no, I don't begrudge a small party winning power. The Greens won a seat fairly and squarely under a rotten system. Why should I attack the Greens for that, when the real problem is the system?
Now, you can imagine the Greens had 75% of happy voters (although 31% seems pretty far from that). If we just wanted imagination, we could let the Queen decide, or conduct a vox pop in the street.
With AV, we can get a bit more certainty about it. We don't have to imagine, we can know. Isn't that better?
CD: No, because the trade off is that it will dilute the party system.
You say that like it's a drawback - the party system is a sick joke. Remember, a party is just a coalition formed *before* the election.
JT: The point of AV is to try to get the best approximation of what voters in a seat actually want.
I'd say that's the entire point of any electoral system, and to the extent that a system does not achieve that then that system is broken. FPTP fails spectacularly, AV slightly less so.
CD, that's the point, the three main parties are just separate wings of the pro-EU, large state, high tax, Home-Owner-Ist movement*.
Worst case, we have like in Germany where they alternate permanently between Red-Yellow and Blue-Yellow coalitions (with the occasional Red-Blue Grand Coalition to liven things up), at least this will save the massive expense of each new government completely rejigging all the quangos, appointing their mates to run them and then settling back to the same old, same old.
So AV is massively cheaper for the taxpayer.
* Whereby UKIP, Greens, BNP and SNP also have strong Home-Owner-Ist tendencies, I'm not kidding myself. These four smaller parties differ in other respects, of course.
Well, whatever other faults the Green Party may have, it is the only one whose official manifesto states that LVT and Citizen's Income is party policy. So however Homeownerist its membership may be and however daft some its other policies may be, I think that it should be given credit for that.
chefdave,
And AV changes this how?
Because it takes away tactical voting which leads people voting for the 1st or 2nd party in a seat.
Right now, lots of people would prefer UKIP, but if they see that the Conservatives are just behind Labour, they'll switch their vote because they see it as a wasted vote.
The main parties won't be able to know that they get the vicious cycle of people constantly voting for them, that if they don't please most of the people who vote for them over an alternative party, they'll lose their seat.
We'll still end up with a large number of safe seats because AV is a majoritarian system.
No, we won't. People can vote for who they really want and fall back on an OK option. That means that say, a Conservative MP will have to work hard to persuade a UKIP supporter to put him down as a 1st, rather than just knowing that they'll probably vote for him to keep Labour out.
OK it'll change the map a little bit, but 2 or 3 elections down the road it'll be just as predictable as FPTP.
No. The evidence is that plurality voting (FPTP) leads to less parties. It's known as Duverger's Law after the man who studied electoral systems and found that the result of FPTP systems was less parties.
Look at the UK and the US. How many seats don't go to the 2 main parties in the US? How many don't go to the 3 main parties in the UK?
If you take out Northern Ireland (which doesn't use FPTP), it's 10 out of 650-odd. 9 of those go to parties that were created before the war, 1 went to the Greens who were created 20 years ago.
Since 1979, there have been 4 MPs elected to serve who weren't members of pre-WW2 parties on the mainland: Martin Bell, Dr Richard Taylor, George Galloway and Caroline Lucas. A total of 8 elections, 5000 odd seats in total, and a handful of those were from new parties. I don't think any system could be worse for shaking up parliament than the current one.
D, i do give them credit for that, I once met up with their tax guru and we agreed most handsomely on 75% of issues.
but there is a danger that a fringe party like the BNP could get elected
Bollox. It tends to two-party preferred every time.
All quite right, MW. In fact, the Americans call AV "Instant Run-off Voting", which may be a better name for it.
There's no way the BNP would win anything with AV - or even do any better than their current showing. That's why they are against. AV would expose the true extent of the support for small parties, by giving their supporters the chance to put them first, and a "mainstream" party second. That's why the Tories are so terrified of AV. They are scared that a big chunk of their voters really want UKIP, and will put UKIP first and Tories second with AV.
The Lib Dems expect to do well out of AV, with both Tory and Labour supporters putting them second. I suspect they may get a shock - most of the Tory and Labour voters I have met would rather transfer their votes to each other than to the Liberals!
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