From a reader's letter in the FT:
Australia’s voting system is no paragon; it helps unpopular governments stay in power. (1) In last year’s national election, 62 per cent voted against Labor but that is the government they ended up with. The ruling Labor party received just 38 per cent of the popular vote, while the Liberals got 43.7 per cent. The Greens polled 11.6 per cent of the vote and other parties the remainder. (2) Who governed was decided on the preferences of the least popular candidates. (3)
Righty-ho.
1) The man prefers the Liberals and so is a bit miffed that his party didn't get in, and he imagines that under FPTP, the Liberals would have won. That completely disqualifies him from the debate. I don't like the Lib Dems, but the fact that AV might tend to favour them is not an argument against AV as such. In fact, my favourite voting system is multi-member constituencies, which would tend to favour the Tories, whom I hate just as much as the Lib Dems or Labour, so what?
2) Does he have any reason to assume that the most of the 11.6 per cent of people who voted "Green 1, Labour 2" would not have voted tactically for Labour under FPTP?
Nope, thought not.
3) The notion that "Who governed was decided on the preferences of the least popular candidates." is an outright f-ing lie. Correct would be "Who governed was decided on the second preferences of those who would have preferred the Greens, but were prepared to settle for Labour". The opinions of the "least popular candidates" (i.e. Green party candidates) had nothing to do with anything at all, they were eliminated and it was ordinary people who were allowed to go for their second-best.
Twat.
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14 comments:
One other daft thing in the original letter was where the letter writer claimed that 62% voted against Labor. Neither FPTP or AV allow you to vote against anything. They only allow you to vote for something.
So if Labor got in, a majority must have voted for it. Maybe it wasn't the individual voter's favourite option but it was definitely the better of the top two realistic choices for the majority of voters.
You're both basically right, and Mr Holberton is clearly a tool. However, it's worth noting that - because AV isn't PR - Labor could still have won the election on a minority of the 2PP vote share, because of the varying seat-by-seat distribution of votes.
As it happened, they won a very small majority of the 2PP share, so a very-small-majority coalition government with independents and greens is *exactly* the outcome that reflects the Will Of The People. But that's luck rather than a necessary outcome of AV.
@john b, Agreed that AV is no PR but it is at least a step in the right direction. If we are sticking with a non-PR system, as we are for the moment, I'd rather have AV than FPTP.
In any case when it comes to PR that are versions that I would welcome with open arms and versions that I wouldn't give a moment's consideration to. PR is a very broad church and I'd far rather have FPTP than the "wrong" version of PR.
The difficulty with the argument that AV is a step in the right direction for those who favour a high level of proportionality is that it probably makes PR less achieveable, at least for many years.
Were AV to prevail after Thursday's vote, the effect of AV would have to be tested before any further change could be proposed. How many general elections would it take before it could be judged a success or a failure? I don't know, but I do know that a further attempt to make such a major constitutional change before the change to AV had been given a fair run would be doomed to failure.
I would prefer a long and serious debate involving all practical options before there is a vote at all on changing the system. Offering the poorest and least proportionate of the alternatives in a rush is no way to undertake constitutional change.
JB, yes, Labour 'could' have won the election with a minority of first + second votes, but the same applies to most governments elected under FPTP so I'm not sure that's relevant.
D, which versions of PR do you not like?
TFB: "Offering the poorest and least proportionate of the alternatives in a rush is no way to undertake constitutional change."
The Tories deliberately chose the teensiest tiniest incremental change they could think of and which is easiest to lie about ("The BNP will decide the outcome of elections", "It will lead to more coalitions" etc), on the assumption that they'll win a "No" in the referendum and thus put off any other chance of reform for a lifetime.
Mark, john b was using '2PP vote' to stand for 'two-party preferred'. This is not just the first and second preferences, but as it suggests everyone who expressed a preference between the 2 final party candidates remaining in the race. Of course because of how the boundaries are drawn, you can still get a minority winner under AV just like we did in 1951 and 1974 under our system. AV is a majoritarian system like FPTP and suffers all the non-proportional faults of 1 MP per constituency systems. Because AV is a preferential system it does however give more power to the voter and more votes count to elect each MP.
Just like to add, if this referendum is lost then the most powerful argument of those who voted NO but support PR will be tested. They suggest that AV would have delayed PR. The last time this argument was used successfully was in 1931...We are still waiting for PR. I don't actually hold out much hope for a referendum on PR any time soon. A defeat here will undoubtedly put any electoral reform on the backburner for a generation. Those who have campaigned for a NO will undoubtedly crow that this is a YES to FPTP.
What is particularly difficult for the ERS and Lib Dems is that their preferred proportional system - the single-transferable-vote is also a preferential system. And what is becoming clear is that the public have been persuaded that preferential systems where you rank the candidates are just too complicated for them to understand.
I personally think AV is pretty simple to understand, but to explain it to someone in 5 seconds as they walk past you in the street is not easy. The press owned by 4 billionaires have been solidly campaigning for a NO, nobody I know has received any info from the electoral commission on this - where were these booklets we were promised, there is nothing in the libraries and the YES campaign have been incompetent. The only info people have received is constant mail-outs from the NO campaign who have not surprisingly made AV look more complicated than the Blackmar-Deimer gambit in chess.
Mark, john b was using '2PP vote' to stand for 'two-party preferred'. This is not just the first and second preferences, but as it suggests everyone who expressed a preference between the 2 final party candidates remaining in the race. Of course because of how the boundaries are drawn, you can still get a minority winner under AV just like we did in 1951 and 1974 under our system. AV is a majoritarian system like FPTP and suffers all the non-proportional faults of 1 MP per constituency systems. Because AV is a preferential system it does however give more power to the voter and more votes count to elect each MP.
Just like to add, if this referendum is lost then the most powerful argument of those who voted NO but support PR will be tested. They suggest that AV would have delayed PR. The last time this argument was used successfully was in 1931...We are still waiting for PR. I don't actually hold out much hope for a referendum on PR any time soon. A defeat here will undoubtedly put any electoral reform on the backburner for a generation. Those who have campaigned for a NO will undoubtedly crow that this is a YES to FPTP.
What is particularly difficult for the ERS and Lib Dems is that their preferred proportional system - the single-transferable-vote is also a preferential system. And what is becoming clear is that the public have been persuaded that preferential systems where you rank the candidates are just too complicated for them to understand.
I personally think AV is pretty simple to understand, but to explain it to someone in 5 seconds as they walk past you in the street is not easy. The press owned by 4 billionaires have been solidly campaigning for a NO, nobody I know has received any info from the electoral commission on this - where were these booklets we were promised? There is nothing in the libraries and the YES campaign have been incompetent. The only info people have received is constant mail-outs from the NO campaign who have made AV look more complicated than the Blackmar-Deimer gambit in chess.
MW, I am, as you know, a believer in the course of action proposed by TFB in his last paragraph.
I have to say that this entire question of FPTP vs AV has degenerated to the level of a farce with claim and counter-claim, rebuttal vs rebuttal.
Roll on 6th May when hopefully we may return to discussing matters of consequence.
@NH
We have n't received any literature on the referendum either.
If you talk to people in pubs etc ,the situation is as you describe: most people don't understand it .
Dan Snow's pro AV party political on the telly was the only one to begin to explain it in lay terms: how a group of serious drinkers get stiffed into going for a coffee
because their votes get split between four pubs .
The AV propaganda has been pitched at too high a level.
'The notion that "Who governed was decided on the preferences of the least popular candidates." is an outright f-ing lie.'
Actually, that may not be quite as incorrect as you say. I've voted in numerous Australian elections and candidates hand out how-to-vote cards listing their suggested order of preferences. My recollection is that the vast majority of voters indeed do follow the suggested voting preference list very closely.
NH: "nobody I know has received any info from the electoral commission on this - where were these booklets we were promised?"
We got one leaflet from El Comm, one from No and one from Yes, so I'm not complaining. Apart from that, agreed.
WFW, I'd also prefer a long and serious debate, but that is exactly what the Tories were trying to avoid. Just you wait until we get an EU In-Out Referendum. The Powers That Be will stick to a few simple catchy lies ("3 million jobs depend on EU", "You'll need a visa to go on holiday", "There'll be no human rights", "The EU spends million on UK infrastructure" etc) and that will be the end of that for another forty years.
DBC, the Yes campaign was a bit half-hearted, and they focussed on this unproven claim that it would make MPs work harder.
Anon, sure, Green candidates may have advised people to vote "Green 1, Labour 2", but the chances are, Green voters would have voted "Labour 2" anyway.
All quite right MW.
You also forgot 3) most of Labour's vote in the final rounds consisted of the 38% first preferences that they got from the start. Other parties including the Greens got 100-43.7-38 = 18.3%. So even if every single one of the voters for "other parties" had given their second preferences to Labour, still two thirds of their vote in the final round consisted of people who put them first. Two thirds of the deciding who governed was done by that 38% who voted Labour 1.
I fear that if there is a significant NO majority tomorrow then ANY further change to the voting system will be well and truely kicked into the long grass as NH points out.
A close NO win could at least keep voting reform on the agenda IF the next administration was another coalition or Labour (unlikely I think they way things look at the moment).
The key thing about a YES win, even though it may need a while to be tested before another change to an even better system, is that it would convince the electorate that CHANGE will not bring the country to its knees and open their eyes to other options. Over coming the inertia of a generally apathetic electorate is crucial on matters such as this.
The reason Aussie parties hand out how-to-vote cards is because the preferences system [*] is mandatory and exhaustive (ie you have to list all 15 candidates from Respect through to the BNP as 1 to 15), so people take their preferred party's recommendation at the unimportant end of the vote order.
Under the proposed UK AV system, you have every right to put "UKIP 1, Monster Raving Loony 2", or even "Respect 1", and give none of the other bastards anything.
[*] except in NSW and QLD state government elections, which are identical to the proposed UK system, and Tasmanian state elections which I think are list-PR.
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