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

dggar

Bedal wrote: »

This whole business of voting for this system or that system is another way of wasting or taxpaying money. FP or AV should not be the issue. What I do know is that the complete PARTY system should be scrapped. All candidates should be MADE to get out and publish a written commitment of what they will do for OUR COUNTRY. NOT CONS, LAB, LD, GREENS, etc.. These 'policies' published in each area will give us, the people, a chance to make an informed decision on who to vote for. The people who put themselves forward will have three months to sell themselves. We then vote within each bounday for a (one) candidate. Minimum term 5 years. Maximim terms based on performance. It is time these political fat cats earned their living. PS They also have to declare what we must pay them to do this job. NO PRIVILEGES

What sort of setup is going to judge the performance and on what criteria?
What monitoring will there be of the setup that judges the performance to ensure they are doing their job correctly.
I would hate think how much it would cost to fund it.

This suggestion is trying to take politics out of poltics. It's completely unreal.

Guys_Dad

irnbru wrote: »

Under AV everyone has the opportunity to rank candidates in order of their preference.



FPTP is LESS fair than AV, in that you often end up with a candidate that the majority doesn't want.

Given that voter turn out is pretty poor anyway, no matter what system you get, the winning candidate is always the one that the majority didn't vote for.

I actually got elected to an organisation based upon the AV system being proposed. Watching the way the votes swung from round to round, it is obvious that the 2nd and subsequent choices are negative votes rather than positive.

toasted-lion

Amba_Gambla wrote: »

That's a ridiculously skewed and biased explanation. What a choice, 6 pubs or one coffee shop?
If that was real life it would be like having 6 Labour Candidates, 1 Conservative and 1 Lib Dem.

I expected better from someone like Dan Snow

It's just highlighting the fundamental flaw - the real life equivalent is the less extreme but common case of, for example, 1 Conservative then 1 Labour, 1 LibDem and 1 Green as your main parties.

zagfles

toasted-lion wrote: »

It's just highlighting the fundamental flaw - the real life equivalent is the less extreme but common case of, for example, 1 Conservative then 1 Labour, 1 LibDem and 1 Green as your main parties.

But that's nothing like the coffee shop/pub analogy. You seem to be assuming that there are two broad opinion groups and voters will generally transfer within that opinion group. That isn't the case, for instance in all the elections which the Tories won in the 80/90's, more LD voters would have chosen the Tories as their second choice over Labour, and vv for the elections which Labour won, ie the second preferences are in line with general opinion. AV probably wouldn't have changed the result of any election in recent history.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8506306.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/uk_politics/10/alternative_vote/alternative_vote_june_09_notes.pdf

tonyhamm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Fn-v23soQ
The Shocking Truths of AV

Its a crazy system!

zagfles

tonyhamm wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Fn-v23soQ
The Shocking Truths of AV

Its a crazy system!

But that's a very silly scenario. Assuming 100% of voters for each party will all choose the same second preference is daft. In the real world anyone getting 49% of first place votes will win.

jamesd

MainlyBeer wrote: »

Democracy can only work bottom-up, THINK ABOUT IT PLEASE

I have. It's why I'll be voting no and think that anyone who wants a reasonable chance of choosing the national government with their votes should do the same.

The proposed change will let a system that may be good for a local government election bubble up to make coalition governments more likely at a national level. I'm not going to vote in favour of more coalition governments made up from backroom deals by political parties.

My objectives in the last election were, in priority order:

1. Prevent party A from achieving political power, because of its policies.
2. Remove party B from power.

That worked perfectly at a local level - the MP of party B was removed and from party A was not elected - and was circumvented by a backroom deal between political parties to produce a coalition government at a national level that put party A into power anyway.

I'm not going to vote for a repeat performance that sees things like tuition fees and reductions in pensioner income introduced without the electorate actually choosing based on a manifesto, not a backroom deal, who gets in. If that takes a second election, where the voters can see the results of the first and adjust their votes accordingly, that's fine compared to a backroom deal.

tonyhamm

zagfles wrote: »

But that's a very silly scenario. Assuming 100% of voters for each party will all choose the same second preference is daft. In the real world anyone getting 49% of first place votes will win.

In the real world this affects upto 1 in 7 elections under AV.
Its political science. It doesn't have to be every preference, for your party to lose by gaining extra support or win from losing support

For example if the Labour 2nd prefs were 70% LibDem, which according to the British Electoral Survey & YouGov July 2010 poll they pretty much are, then REAL LIFE seats like Northhampton North would still give pretty much the same perverse outcomes under AV.
If we say 2nd preferences would likely be as follows for the parties;
Tory -> LibDem
LibDem -> Tory
Lab -> LibDem
Northhampton North would give such a perverse outcome under AV (2010 GE) (picked at random - there are plenty of seats like this).
TORY 34.1
LAB 29.3
LIB 27.9
If the TORY spent more on his campaign and got more votes, got more support from LAB voters on some theme like immigration, but short of a majority, upto 15% more support, he would lose to the LibDems. If he asked LAB voters not to vote for him, he would win. CRAZY!!! CRAZY!!! CRAZY!!!
AND AS COMPLEX AS HELL!

tomwakefield

tonyhamm wrote: »

In the real world this affects upto 1 in 7 elections under AV.

Do you have a source for this? (preferably demonstrating how that figure is arrived at)

MrChips

But in your example that wouldn't happen. You say yourself that Labour voters aren't interested in voting Tory so it seems very hard to believe that by pushing for extra votes the Conservative candidate would convert more Labour voters than Lib Dems (for whom he is 2nd preference).

However I agree that this aspect of AV is a technical downside, but given all the numerous flaws of FPTP that have been listed on the 14 pages of comments so far, I can't see why anyone would vote to keep FPTP because AV of this!

To my mind it's like the "no" argument when then smoking ban was being touted saying we shouldn't put it in place because a couple of pubs could go out of business. Yes that could be true in an unfortunate small number of places but looking at the bigger picture all other pubs are now such more pleasant and less dangerous places to visit!