Alternative Vote Referendum - May 5th 2011

billysielu said:
Ignored. Their first vote didn't win, and their second vote wasn't counted because it works from "worst first pick" upwards. A majority was reached before it was their turn to use their second pick.
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Ahh, yes, I see. Although it's not like FPTP has a better solution.
 
sanaxe1 said:
It seems quite a few people do not know how the alternative voting would work. So here is a video :

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So to sum it up because most people have become disheartened with our democracy and the **** poor parties monopolising it, we now vote by ranking them from least useless to most useless in order to prevent a hung parliament every election?
 
billysielu said:
It doesn't let BNP voters decide the outcome of an election. That's a better solution!
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No it's not. Despite how I feel about the BNP, their supporters deserve to have the best chance to have a government that represent them. As do we all.

This is quite clear for me, an MP should have at least 50% of the electorate supporting or at least approving of them. FPTP doesn't do that. To me that goes against the principles of democracy.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
No it's not. Despite how I feel about the BNP, their supporters deserve to have the best chance to have a government that represent them.
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Then you'll be voting FPTP, which gives supporters of the BNP the best chance at electing an MP?


This is quite clear for me, an MP should have at least 50% of the electorate supporting or at least approving of them. FPTP doesn't do that. To me that goes against the principles of democracy.
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So you'll happily gain more democracy on paper at the ballot box, at the expense of it when it comes to political brinkmanship when forming the inevitably more frequent coalitions and major parties giving disproportionately large concessions to small parties to win them over (ie the Greens in Germany).
 
Hatter The Mad said:
So you'll happily gain more democracy on paper at the ballot box, at the expense of it when it comes to political brinkmanship when forming the inevitably more frequent coalitions and major parties giving disproportionately large concessions to small parties to win them over (ie the Greens in Germany).
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At the end of the day, I have to trust the people I vote in to make decisions I approve of. Sometimes they will disappoint me, but at the end of the day, unless I run myself, I have to trust someone else to make good decisions. That is the nature of government. Regardless of whether I approve of the concessions made in a coalition, it's important that at least most of the country support the government, even if I'm not in that set.
 
This might interest some of you, if it hasn't been posted already.

http://www.voterpower.org.uk/

My constituency is an incredibly secure tory seat so it won't change much for me, but it will be creating more marginals in other areas of the country. I hate the idea of 'safe seats' that FPTP has created, as it leaves a handful of areas to decide the outcome of the election. If I vote lab/lib, it makes little difference because the tory vote is so high here and therefore my vote gets effectively ignored. AV will be a more democratic process and will hopefully lead to a government that better represents what the majority of people want. My constituency's safe tory seat may be challenged by a strong lab/lib candidate in the coming years and the tories will have to fight to keep their position, as they should have to already.
 
Strong seats will remain just that. AV will have the most effect on marginals where the second preference comes in. In Safe seats the winning party generally has such a large majority that seconds will mean naff all.

For the record I will be voting NO. It isn't because I voted Conservative last election, but rather I think the new system is even more unfair than the current one. Boundaries need to be changed, not the voting system.

I don't understand how any body would want a coalition of losers, or coalitions for that matter. In the right circumstances under AV you could have the second and third parties forming a government. That's just wrong. Also I don't like the fact that people can re allocate their vote if their candidate comes last but the person who wanted the candidate who comes first can't. It is like having another and another go until the person that maybe be someone's fifth choice becomes elected.

Only Papa New Guinea and Australia really have the AV system and 6/10 Australians want rid of it. Says a lot really.

David Cameron also wrote a great piece in the Evening Standard over the weekend.

Once it's clear that coalitions are more likely, politicians will start putting things in their manifestos that they know sound attractive but aren't achievable, because they know that in a coalition they will not be held to account for them. They might even put in things they don't believe in, because they can use them as bargaining chips in coalition negotiations; things they can toss aside in smoke-filled rooms as they haggle and horse-trade with other parties. Can you think of anything that would be worse for our politics? People say the current system lacks accountability - AV would make it worse and would run the risk of leaving a litter of broken promises, meaningless commitments and empty words.

So it really is simple: if you want a system that lets you, as the Americans say, "throw the rascals out" and that also keeps our politicians honest, you must vote on May 5th, and you must vote "No".

The biggest danger right now is that not enough people turn out to vote and Britain sleepwalks into this second-rate system, waking up on May 6th with a voting system that damages our democracy permanently.

But, in many ways, your vote alone is not enough. In the days and weeks ahead, you also need to challenge your friends and colleagues who are thinking of voting "Yes". Ask them why they are voting for it. I bet you none of their arguments will stack up - and you need to take them on.
So when they say: "AV will make every vote count", tell them it won't. It will actually make some people's votes -especially those who vote for extremist parties - get counted more than others.

They'll get two, three, four, perhaps even five bites of the cherry when many others only get one.

When they say: "AV will make MPs work harder and tackle safe seats", tell them there's no evidence for that. In Australia, where they use AV (and incidentally want to get rid of it) nearly half of all seats are considered safe.

And when they say: "at least MPs need to get 50% of the vote in their constituency under AV", tell them that argument is wrong too. The 50% threshold applies to the votes counted, not the number of votes cast in the election. If you decide only to mark down a couple of preferences, and both candidates are knocked out in the early rounds, your ballot paper is thrown in the bin. The only votes that count towards the 50 per cent are the votes that make it to the final round. It's a complete fix.

This referendum really matters. You're not just being asked about how many boxes you want to be able to tick on your ballot paper. You're being asked about how you want our democracy to work. Do you want a system that makes it harder to kick out governments? Do you want a system that encourages politicians to make promises they can't keep? Do you want a situation where people who come second could win?

Winston Churchill described AV as the system which means elections "will be determined by the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates". Our greatest prime minister said "No" to AV - Londoners should do the same.
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http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...crucial-role-in-deciding-our-voting-system.do

Oh and it will cost an extra £250m to administrate.
 
Cameron sounds as pathetic as he did when he used the argument pre-generel election that a hung Parliament would be the worst thing to happen, and would cause chaos. He isn't interested in fairness, or the merits of any particular voting system, he is interested in FPTP because it favours his party.

Rather than accept that the UK population is genuinely split between 3 competing parties and that a coalition is a perfectly *representative* outcome, instead he is desperate to keep FPTP which is the only chance his minority party can wield an outright majority. It's just naked self-interest.

And the 250 million figure is outright lies.

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See the following as examples:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7104332.ece

Cameron: hung Parliament will risk economic disaster

The Tory leader tells The Times that an indecisive result would put Britain’s credit rating at risk, put pressure on the currency and leave home owners and business facing bigger bills.
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Just LOL
 
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And you are so desperate for change you haven't read about Australia and other places that have tried this system. cameron wasn't wrong either. What happened to the stock markets on results day. It is only because he gave massive concessions to a minor party did it stabilise.
 
250 MILLION IS A COMPLETE LIE

Can it be made any clearer? :p

The ONLY source of that figure is based on PROJECTED costs for ELECTRONIC COUNTING MACHINES.

The ELECTORAL COMMISSION have CONFIRMED that there ARE NO PLANS FOR ELECTRONIC COUNTING MACHINES.

Do you understand this? At all? The 250 million is a complete lie and utter fabrication by the No campaign.

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That said, possibly my favourite result would be for there to be a 'No' vote, then the next GE result in either another hung Parliament (lollerskates) or Labour getting an absolute majority with 35% of the popular vote, thanks entirely to the FPTP system - arf arf.
 
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So take away the voting counting machines which will cost £130m (from the spectator article I posted).

They project that it could cost as much as £305m. Take that £130m away and you are left with an additional cost of £175m.

Not a lie.
 
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Yes, they 'project' or in other words completely baselessly speculate, that it could cost 300 million. I mean come on, did you even read the article or are you just repeating the headline like a robot?

In fact, the whole cost of AV (referendum and one election under AV) could exceed £300 million. When Scotland introduced STV (and vote counting machines) the cost of elections jumped from £17 million to £39 million. Such an increase would drive the expense of a general election to £188 million. Including the referendum and voter education costs, the total bill for AV could rise to £305 million.
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Serious WTFlogic...!

Even taking the plucked out of thin air 175 million figure remaining, half of that is the referendum itself which will cost 80million - but that's happening anyway, and is a one-off cost so to include it as a downside is complete nonsense. The remainder is either voter education (because that's a bad thing?) or electronic counting machines, the latter of which is completely discredited.

The cost argument is blatant lies and scaremongering, pathetic frankly.
 
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