Do you understand AV?

[doodles]

Now I may be being particularly stupid, forgive me but I have been making royal fairy cakes all evening, but why can't the person with the most votes win

[hermanmunster]

well they can do if they get more than 50% of the first preferences ... easy peasy in some areas but if 3 candidates get about a third each it needs a bit of sorting methinks.

[aliportico]

Now I may be being particularly stupid, forgive me but I have been making royal fairy cakes all evening, but why can't the person with the most votes win

Trouble is, if one person gets 36%, one gets 34% and one gets 30%, imo that doesn't give them a clear mandate, or make them a particularly accurate representative of that constituency. I read an article comparing it to X-Factor: if after the first episode's phone-in voting 11 people got 8% and the other one got 12% and was declared the winner, that wouldn't be very satisfying

[push-pull-mum]

Yes - I undertstand AV (but being mostly Irish helps - they've had a form of PR over there for years.) It should lead to more mature consensus politics - and hopefully there will be less tactical voting.

Not likely to forget our, in all other respects honest and upright, Liberal Democrat MP telling me to my face last year that voting for him would be the best and only way of keeping the Tories out. Hmm....

Fortunately I didn't believe him. And will be quite happy to put him as my 2nd preference vote in any subsequent election.

Remember - any information you receive from the Vote No to AV campaign will be written deliberately to make the system sound as incomprehensible as possible.

Oh - quick jump on one of my favourite hobby horses - whichever way you vote, guys, just make sure you get out there and vote.

[zvrk]

With AV you put your 1st,2nd,3rd preferences, but I only need one , does it mean if I don't mark 2nd,3rd etc my vote could be void?

If you are (for example) Labour voter you are not going to put Conservatives or any other party down (at least I think ) or vice versa.

[mike1880]

I'm in favour because it means most peoples vote will actually count for something, under the present system the overwhelming majority of people (including me) might as well wipe their bottom with their ballot paper and flush it down the toilet for all the difference their vote will make.

Can the 4th place candidate win? Hypothetically. There'd have to be at least five candidates, s/he'd have to get enough 2nd choice votes from each eliminated candidate to overtake the 3rd, 2nd and 1st placed candidate in each successive stage. So possible, but not wildly probable.

I know it's not proper PR but imho that's a big advantage. It will still mean the successful candidate has been locally selected (so far as current party selection rules permit) and has been specifically chosen by local people. Proper PR means people will only directly elect (at best) a proportion of candidates, the rest (or maybe all!) will be selected from a central party list by the parties, not the voters, and imho that stinks.

And no, you don't need to put a preference against everyone - only the ones you think are actually worth a vote (it just gets better and better from my point of view! Now all we need is a "none of the above, they're all equally lying, hypocritical, toadying weasels" box and I'll be completely happy).

Mike

[WP]

Not likely to forget our, in all other respects honest and upright, Liberal Democrat MP telling me to my face last year that voting for him would be the best and only way of keeping the Tories out. Hmm....

Fortunately I didn't believe him. And will be quite happy to put him as my 2nd preference vote in any subsequent election.

That's the killer argument for me. Under the current system I have to guess whether my preferred choice has a chance, and if not decide between wasting my vote giving him/her moral support or voting for a less attractive candidate who seems to have a chance in order to keep out the one I like the least. Basically I have to do the preference calculation myself before voting, and I could easily get it wrong. (What if my preferred candidate really did have a chance, but everyone thought like me?) That may be simple for the counters, but it's far from simple for voters. With preferences I could just express what I mean: "I prefer A, but if he/she doesn't have enough support I'd rather have B than C".

Interestingly there are only 2 countries in the world operating this system - I think Australia is one of them and apparently someone told me they are thinking of scrapping it but am not sure about that if they have already spent millions on counting machines?

Australia has been using this system since 1918, and there's no serious suggestion of abandoning it.

[surreymum]

Good descriptions of all the different systems on the electoral reform society's website

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

although they are biased in favour of change. I found it helpful to get my head round all the different versions.

[BoltBlue]

Now I may be being particularly stupid, forgive me but I have been making royal fairy cakes all evening, but why can't the person with the most votes win

Because the current system, to some is unfair, as is AV.

Take an example of an imaginary country with 1000 people.
The area is split in 10 regions, each with 100 people
There are 2 tribes: Red and Blue.
There are 51 red tribe members and 49 blue tribe members in each region.

The red tribe members hate the blue tribe members, by hate I mean really hate.
In each region there are 2 candidates, a red tribe and a blue tribe.
This means red tribe members vote for red tribe candidates and blue vote for blue.

Election result:
In each of 10 regions, the red tribe candidate wins as they get 51 votes and blue get 49.

Election result 10 red seats. Blue = 0 seats.

Blue do not have a single seat in parliament, although 49% of the population voted for them.
They have no representation or say in the government.

This is what happens in first past the post.
AV would result in the same.... as there are just 2 candidates.
Even with 3 tribes one tribe could be left with zero seats.

How do you get a government that represent the tribes or the actual votes casted?
The answer is simple. The seats in parliament are in the ratio of the votes.
51 seats for red and 49 for blue. Is this fair?

Neither first past the post or AV will ensure this.
But, proportional representation means you could end up voting for a party and not a candidate.
A lot of people do that anyway.
Although this may appear fairer, it often results in weak government, and compromise (not a bad thing).

Do we live in a democracy when 49% of votes could result in zero seats and zero say?
That is exactly what we have!
Some argue that first past the post is not true democracy.
I will let you decide.

I hope this helps.

[turtleglos]

Rather than changing the voting system,politicians should start telling the truth and giving out factual information so that we can all make an informed choice. Perhaps then we would have some change as people can decide who they agree with on policies that are important to them and vote accordingly. Imho, at the moment it doesn't make any difference as all politicians are the same, there is little/no difference in policies and most appear to be in the game for what they can get out of it, not what they can put back in and AV won't change that!