'Is AV really so complex? Or is it just confusion marketing?' blog discussion

zagfles

wozearly wrote: »

Not necessarily - for arguments sake, assuming that you have a Right-wing candidate in first place against a Left-wing candidate and a Centre-Left candidate in 2nd / 3rd, and assuming people are voting solely based on political leanings towards left/right, then as the supporters of the 2nd / 3rd candidates are closer politically it doesn't matter which finishes third as each will transfer more votes to the other, making a candidate of their political leanings more likely to win overall, assuming that there are more people politically aligned to the left / centre left than there are to the right.

If not, its all a moot point as the right-wing candidate will win in any event.

If you favour a particular party / candidate that has the largest share of first preferences, then what you definitely don't want is a candidate of similar political leanings coming 2nd. That means the vote is ultimately decided by those who have different political leanings and so its more likely the similar opponent will win than it would be under FPTP.

This is only a bad thing, of course, if you're particularly partisan to your favoured candidate/party. In the round, I'd assume most right-wing voters would prefer a situation where one of two right wing candidates were elected, and vice versa for the left.

AV is ultimately better suited to reflect the wider breakdown of political views /allegiances amongst voters, and to inhibit the ability for a candidate or party who is widely disliked to win. Naturally, some voters and parties are not too fond of that idea.

Yes, if you have 2 broad opinion groups who will transfer within that group, then AV works well. But that's not reality.

For instance polls of LD voters second preferences (before the election) generally showed they'd transfer about 2:1 in favour of Labour to Tories. But recent events will have changed that - the LD vote has gone down, and common sense dictates the votes they've lost will be amongst their Labour-leaning voters. So current LD voters are likely to split more evenly between the 2 main parties or even in favour of the Tories.

GooeyBlob

tomwakefield wrote: »

Perhaps, in an ideal world, everyone would get to vote again in the second round, even people who still have their first choice to vote for. However, this would take a huge amount of time as new voting slips would have to be sent out each round, half a dozen or more elections to attend, and voting in someone could take weeks longer.

Exactly. AV is only going to count the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc preferences of some voters, and not others. The person who gets elected under AV (often with under 50% of votes) will probably be abhorrent to those who supported the most popular candidate.

It seems like you're picking and choosing elements you think will benefit one political viewpoint. You want to remove a simple system with a less fair one which is more complex, yet don't want to go the extra mile to make it as fair as FPTP because that might make it more complex and expensive than AV already is.

GooeyBlob

magpiecottage wrote: »

I was also given a map of the world which showed all the countries which do not have an AV system and, therefore, are, it seems, in line with what the No campaign think we should have.

They included such upstanding members of the international community as China, Libya, Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

All those countries are dictatorships, of course they don't use AV.
Most democracies don't use AV either because it's unfair.

Is that what's on the YES camp's literature? Comparing mature democracies to banana republics and one-party states? Be honest now, do you really think that is any sort of argument?

GooeyBlob

InMyDreams wrote: »

if your first preference is the most popular candidate, you are NOT denied the chance to vote again. You DO vote again. But you get to vote AGAIN for your FIRST preference. Lucky you! How is that grossly unfair???

Because if I vote for the most popular candidate, but he/she gets beaten in the final round, I would like my second preference to go to the candidate who came third in order to stop the one who ended up winning under your flawed AV system. So would thousands of others who voted for the most popular candidate, but our second preferences are not taken into consideration. In fact, in the final round our first preferences only have as much weight as the 4th or 5th preferences of others.

AV is grossly unfair.

toasted-lion

GooeyBlob wrote: »

Because if I vote for the most popular candidate, but he/she gets beaten in the final round, I would like my second preference to go to the candidate who came third in order to stop the one who ended up winning under your flawed AV system. So would thousands of others who voted for the most popular candidate, but our second preferences are not taken into consideration. In fact, in the final round our first preferences only have as much weight as the 4th or 5th preferences of others.

AV is grossly unfair.

In the final round, everyone's vote has equal weight. Why shouldn't it? How are some people less worthy of voting between the two most popular candidates?

edwardB_2

David Cameron seems so passionate about keeping the current voting system, even though he was elected as party leader with what was essentially a multi-round version of AV.

Also worth noting, he would have lost the vote to David Davis if the election had used our current voting system.

irnbru_2

GooeyBlob wrote: »

Most democracies don't use AV either because it's unfair.

What do most democracies use and did they have a referendum to choose it?

GooeyBlob wrote: »

Is that what's on the YES camp's literature?

Haven't had any. Had a leaflet from a some guy called William Norton.

InMyDreams

toasted-lion wrote: »

In the final round, everyone's vote has equal weight. Why shouldn't it? How are some people less worthy of voting between the two most popular candidates?

Nope, I do see GooeyBlob's point and he's right. The problem is that AV won't *necessarily* put the two most popular (or least hated) candidates into the final round. It *might* not because if, as GooeyBlob says, all the people who put the losing finalist as their first choice had put the guy who was eliminated in the penultimate round as their second choice, then you could argue that that guy (who would have come third under AV) could potentially have beaten either of the other candidates in a head-to-head and deserved to get that chance.

But then what are the chances of that guy coming first in a FPTP vote either? I accept GooeyBlob's problem with AV but I don't see how FPTP would solve it.

Neither system is perfect. But in my opinion, AV is bar far the lesser of two evils. It doesn't solve all the problems of FPTP but it solves many more than it creates and is far more representative.

InMyDreams

GooeyBlob wrote: »

Because if I vote for the most popular candidate, but he/she gets beaten in the final round, I would like my second preference to go to the candidate who came third in order to stop the one who ended up winning under your flawed AV system. So would thousands of others who voted for the most popular candidate, but our second preferences are not taken into consideration.

On second thoughts, what you are saying is that you want a say in who *both* the finalists are? How would that be fairer? No one else gets a say in *both* finalists.

GooeyBlob wrote: »

AV is grossly unfair.

No. It has a few unfortunate consequences in *some* circumstances. It's not perfect. But it's a damn site fairer than FPTP for the purposes of electing an MP to represent everyone, including the people who didn't vote for them.

Edited to add - I really liked MainlyBeer's analogy which I haven't seen before.

jamesd

toasted-lion wrote: »

Parties that currently have lots of supporters in terms of policy but not many actual voters do stand to gain: it will no longer be a waste of time to vote for them.

Preventing such parties from more often being in a position to pick the winner of a national election is a big part of why I think that voting no is the best choice at a national level.

Picking who will govern the country is the job of the voters and another election is the right solution, not a minority party deciding who will govern.