'Should we change the general election voting system?' poll discussion

equado

What a great poll! Over 5000 votes in and results neck and neck. Basically shows British voters don't know enough about the two systems. The pro-IRV camp better get their act together and educate the Great British Public if they want any chance of change!

DJ_Mike

Gareth_Lazelle wrote: »

Oh, as a side-note,

In effect 2nd and 3rd choices are weighted slightly differently in AV,

That is not because they count as less than one vote - they clearly do.

It is because by making a party your second or third choice, there is no guarantee that the party will be available for your vote for by the time your second or third choice gets used.

That makes late choices much less valuable than 1st choices to the receiving party, because if they don't get enough first choice votes then 2nd/3rd choices will never count at all.

Assuming a system where everyone places a preference against every candidate, your votes will still be transferred - just that if your 2nd and 3rd choices have already been knocked out, it might be your 4th, 5th, 6th etc. to whom your vote gets transferred to.

I wonder how many people will end up finding out that their last candidate, whom they probably wanted to see not win, ends up with the so-called 'legitimised' 50% vote count because of their vote being counted towards them.

People here are talking about this magical 50% margin like it's going to give massive voter satisfaction. It won't.

I agree that one thing would happen under AV: People would go to the elections in 2015 and vote for their real preferred candidate. Their preferred candidates get dropped as the 2nd/3rd/4th preferences come in (which undoubtedly will be for the more 'safe' bets i.e. Labour/LibDem/Tory, or your 'tactical' votes as they were known). Candidates will be returned from elections whom only a small percentage of people genuinely wanted to see in, but nonetheless have 50% of the vote because that's what AV does. In fact the 'safe bet' parties end up running away with more of the votes under AV. Voters grow disillusioned because they were promised a fairer voting system.

Come 2020, people go back to voting tactically again because AV is a pointless replacement and people see it for exactly what it is - a sham. Only now voter turnout is lower than ever because the system is more complicated and tactical voting has had to evolve.

What a lovely vision.

Freddie_Snowbits

The problem with this AV, is I do not have an alternative. The elctions here are quick, completed in hours and normally invlove the booting out of the incumbants. Simple and has served us all well.

angry

DJ_Mike wrote: »

People here are talking about this magical 50% margin like it's going to give massive voter satisfaction. It won't.

...

I agree that "nobody wins without 50% of the vote" is a poor argument for AV. The winner eventually "getting more than 50%" is nothing more than an accounting trick. Forcing people to either vote for the winner, the runner up, or to drop out of statistics does not mean a happy electorate.
But on election night in 2015, nobody is going to be saying "every winner got 50%; everyone is happy!". This would clearly be silly.

If things happen as you describe in 2015, this is no worse than the current system.
I would suggest though that in many seats, the "preferred 1st choice" WILL get in. Not all, but many.

I don't unserstand why your vision of AV in 2020 requires more tactical voting than the current FPTP system. Could you explain what tactical voting would look like under AV?

You can say "I want X, and if I don't get him, I don't care" in both FPTP and AV.
In AV, you could instead choose to say "I want X, but if I don't get him, I want Y".
AV gives the voter another possibility of how to speak. It does not remove any possibilities.

Freddie_Snowbits wrote: »

The problem with this AV, is I do not have an alternative.

I wonder why there isn't an independant person trying to get elected, Freddie.

I can honestly imagine people thinking the following:
Under FPTP:
"I like the look of that independant guy, but he'll never get in. I'll vote for the one who looks the 'least bad' out of the big two"
Under AV:
"I like the look of that independant guy. I'll put him as choice 1, but for if he doesn't get in, I'll vote for the one who looks the 'least bad' out of the big two as my second choice"

So what I'm saying is, if we moved to AV, in a few years time you might have an alternative.

meher

The ins and outs of av shouldn't actually matter for the moment; the important part imo is to demonstrate that there needs to be a change and seeking to change the voting system would be good enough message. If we don't use of this opportunity, then they would settle for the frst-past-the-post and this debate or opportunty for an electoral reform will never surface any time in the future. It's smply convinient for the politcians to pretend that we don't want a change. We should vote otherwise just to keep them alert, guessing and anxious

DJ_Mike

meher wrote: »

The ins and outs of av shouldn't actually matter for the moment; the important part imo is to demonstrate that there needs to be a change and seeking to change the voting system would be good enough message. If we don't use of this opportunity, then they would settle for the frst-past-the-post and this debate or opportunty for an electoral reform will never surface any time in the future. It's smply convinient for the politcians to pretend that we don't want a change. We should vote otherwise just to keep them alert, guessing and anxious

Neither side of that argument is particularly compelling. If we all vote Yes politicians could spin that we voted for AV so we will happily stick to that and there is no need for further reform. If we all vote No then politicians will spin that FPTP is perfectly good and there is no need for further reform.

Thinking about it, the best possible outcome of this vote would be a tie (or very close to it). That's the only way the message might get through that neither AV nor FPTP is the answer, and give fuel to a real push for true electoral reform.

Freddie_Snowbits

angry wrote: »

I wonder why there isn't an independant person trying to get elected, Freddie.

I can honestly imagine people thinking the following:
Under FPTP:
"I like the look of that independant guy, but he'll never get in. I'll vote for the one who looks the 'least bad' out of the big two"
Under AV:
"I like the look of that independant guy. I'll put him as choice 1, but for if he doesn't get in, I'll vote for the one who looks the 'least bad' out of the big two as my second choice"

So what I'm saying is, if we moved to AV, in a few years time you might have an alternative.

I vote for the person, at the last election, my choice was not selected to go to parliament. I now have an mp who represents the whole constituency.

Under this PC woolie method, if I did not like my mp, who would I turn to, some jumped up one issue person. If so which one?

In this system, we have one for each constituency, not some soviet collective, each arguing about differing little trivial blades of grass.

And if he is not up to the job, we boot the upstart out. Under the soviet collective system, we cannot rid us of the polit bureaux

meher

‘I intend to vote ‘Yes’ to AV with ‘No’ as my second choice.’

source

MothballsWallet

cat4772 wrote: »

There's a few things I'd like to change including making voting compulsory for all eligible but including an abstain option so that the general public can choose not to vote for the candidates available.

You'd have to have the abstain/"none of the above" option or be breaking UN law. The penalty for doing so is now so severe, it's not worth it.

Gordon_the_Moron

angry wrote: »

Hello Gordon,

I think you might have misunderstood how the system works. Counting in your example would go something like this:

"Round 1":
Labour: 40
Conservative: 40
BNP: 1
UKIP: 2
(total: 83)

No clear winner yet, let's get rid of the loser (BNP).
For the one person who voted BNP as number 1, his vote is transferred to his choice number 2. I don't know from your example who that is, but let's assume it's UKIP.


"Round 2":
Labour: 40
Conservative: 40
UKIP: 3 (original 2, plus the one "second choice")
(total: 83)

No clear winner yet, let's get rid of the loser (UKIP).
We now have 3 people who's choices have been knocked out. The guy who originally wanted the BNP has no third choice, so we can't take his views into account any more.
The two people who had UKIP as their first choice... let's say their second choices were BNP for one of them, and Labour for the other.
BNP has already gone, and it looks like that guy didn't have a 4th choice, so, from the three people who wanted BNP or UKIP as their first choice, there is only 1 left who's views we can take into account.

"Round 3":
Labour: 41 (original 40, plus UKIP guy's second choice)
Conservative: 40
(total: 81)


Labour victory.



(somebody please correct me if I've got this wrong, or if you can make it more clear!)

Now, I know this sounds a bit complicated... it certainly took me quite a few goes to get my head round it.
Some people will say that that's a bad thing. [nobody has said so yet, but maybe somebody reading is thinking that]. But I think this is a GOOD thing.
At the moment, you or I, the average joe has to do the complicated bit. "Well, I'd love for X to get in, but the leaflet I got said if I vote for X, Y will get in. I really don't want Y. So maybe I should vote for Z?"
Blegh.

By moving this complication onto the voting system, we move the complexity away from you and I. We can just rank our preferences as we like them, and the wonderfully crafted system takes care of the rest!

Yes your right I wrote that example out in a hurry and didn't check the figures properly but the fact remains you could get the bottom 2 get 1 first choice and no first choice respectively, the bottom one is eliminated and second one down could then have a ton of second choice votes and end up winning, therefore 1 person's first choice of candidate wins the election :eek: