UK AV Referendum Poll

[minionofmidas]

How much do you know about what happened after the Assembly elections in 2007? That Godawful mess was a direct consequence of the halfway-house electoral system; parties fight elections as if they were held under the 'normal' electoral system and that's how most people vote (I know more than a few people, intelligent people at that, who were quite bemused at being presented with two ballot papers). But, of course, the results will never be the same as those held under the 'normal' electoral system. This provides an incentive for parties to lie about their post-election intentions, which is exactly what happened in 2007 and there are all sorts of other obvious problems. Not good from a democratic point of view.

This is an argument to end that insane fptp crap at Westminster too so that it can stop poisoning politics at other levels, right?

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Not necessarily; I think the better remedy would be not to change that ratio but simply reduce the number of regions. Either way, right now there's just too few list seats per region to make the results proportional. It also creates quite a high de facto threshold.

[minionofmidas]

See, and I think the whole point of holding this specific referendum is to take meaningful electoral reform off the agenda for a generation no matter what happens in the vote. It's a win-win for the Tories' Cameron wing.
And of course you don't even get to vote on the related stuff about less variation and a few fewer seats...

[minionofmidas]

See, and I think the whole point of holding this specific referendum is to take meaningful electoral reform off the agenda for a generation no matter what happens in the vote. It's a win-win for the Tories' Cameron wing.
And of course you don't even get to vote on the related stuff about less variation and a few fewer seats...

It's being sabotaged by all sides. The Labour lord's insertion of the 40% turnout rule has killed it already/

Well, if neither vote hurts the objectives of the eminently hateable government of the day , I can just vote my position on the issue at hand - whether I think AV is at least better than fptp. Which it is. So the conclusion to my argument above is actually to call for an aye vote.

The only people who care are the sort of people who not only read the Observer, but actually like it.

[minionofmidas]

Since when is the system used in Australia for millenia "unproven"?

Why doesn't that BBC link show 2010 (oh, and btw, except for 1997 these results look marginally more proportional than the real results to me. And anyways, AV is all about making people's dislikes count as well as their preferences... making statements about its proportionality based on a comparison with first pref.s only is obviously dishonest.)

[minionofmidas]

So will the vast majority - usually pushing to around 80% - of voters, those for Labour or Tory get their dislike registered? No.

Labour voters will, all across the South of England with a few exceptions mostly in the cities.

Of course, we don't know exactly how many South of Englanders, both in ConLab and ConLD seats, are already simulating AV with their fptp ballots. Evidently it's quite a few - Labour and LD support are blatantly not naturally distributed - but it's impossible to pinpoint how many.

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No, no it wouldn't have. It would have made things marginally more proportional but nowhere near actually proportional. It's still basically the same thing as FPTP and still suffering from basically the same defects.
Then again, half the Alliance voters appear to have still preferred Thatcher to Foot and Kinnock, so...

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When comparing a system based on the premise that first preferences only should count with a system based on the premise other factors too should matter, it is intellectual dishonesty to set the parameters of the comparison based on the more exclusive premise. It's quite a common obfuscating tactic.

Nothing personal, of course.

[minionofmidas]

An assumption based off the 2010 electorate which isn't relevant anymore. If Labour haven't already overtaken the Lib Dems in most constituencies in the South, which polls suggest they have, then they'll be unlikely to go on preferencing the Lib Dems again.

Quite conceivably, yeah.

No, no it wouldn't have. It would have made things marginally more proportional but nowhere near actually proportional. It's still basically the same thing as FPTP and still suffering from basically the same defects.
Then again, half the Alliance voters appear to have still preferred Thatcher to Foot and Kinnock, so...

But that's surely the point - the Alliance voters shouldn't have to have picked between Thatcher or Foot - they should've had enough seats proportional to their vote to bring about a coalition. We're getting a system that is essentially the same as FPTP, with even some notable downsides, but dressed up as voting reform for a proportional and mandated government - which is absolute rubbish.
[/quote]Yeah, claiming the results would be proportional (as opposed to "somewhat more proportional") is obvious rubbish.
Maybe I'm just not being exposed to the dumber pro arguments as much as the dumber con arguments?
Though I still don't see the "notable downsides" compared to fptp.

[minionofmidas]

It could shelve demands for proper reform,

That's an issue with the referendum itself, not with AV. And is true irrespective of the outcome.
Remember the Australian referendum on the monarchy?

[minionofmidas]

I assume such people have serious qualms voting at just about every election, presumably not voting a lot, instead preferring to hold out for their dream candidate to register to run in their constituency.

Also, you're pretty much arguing the opinions of those voting BNP or UKIP or ED as a protest shouldn't be taken into account in a democracy (and taking for granted that they would cast a second preference at all, which is doubtful.)

[minionofmidas]

Since when is the system used in Australia for millenia "unproven"?

We aren't having a vote on whether to use the Australian federal system

In that votes that don't rank all choices won't be thrown out, or are you referring to something entirely different here?

[minionofmidas]

Does anyone have any guesses as to what the geography of this referendum might look light? e.g. most pro/anti areas. I haven't thought about this enough yet.

Will certainly be interesting to look at. I suppose the southeastern LD strongholds will be easy to spot and the True Blue shires will be voting against, but outside of that it's anyone's guess. Might see some fascinating and hard-to-explain patterns of some Labour areas voting for and others against by stronger-than-expected margins, for instance.

[minionofmidas]

In closed lists, even voters' ability to rebel against dreadfully bad candidate selection is massively impaired - you'd have to reject the entire list. Closed lists are fairly undemocratic. I'm not talking about "inattractive" candidates - belgian is quite right about those - but for example known corrupts being granted a comeback. It's happened before.

The obvious solution is open lists, of course.

[minionofmidas]

Labour launch their 'no' campaign. Ed, once again, doesn't have the support of the PLP.

Labour launch their 'yes' campaign.

Crick on Miliband's refusal to share a platform with Clegg

Link fixed. Though the original "yes campaign? Site can't be found." was funny.)

[minionofmidas]

He presumably means having to preference everybody, ie the not optional kind.

[minionofmidas]

a referendum on a technical issue?

Not exactly.

[minionofmidas]

I got the electoral commission information booklet today. I see it is on optional preferencing, so "an election can be won under the 'alternative vote' system with less than half the total votes cast", which really defeats the point.

Uh, so having to decide on the order of 7th to 31st preference for joke independents is the point now? Or is it to have more invalid ballots?

[minionofmidas]

...to the unthinking retard.

Oh wait. Damn. That's the bulk of the electorate.


You can get elected with less than 50% if and only if enough* of one of your major opponents' supporters have no preference between you and another major opponent.
In other words, you can't get elected with more than 50% of the electorate against you. Which is the point.

*how much is enough is of course dependent on a number of factors, including just how close the election is.
There'll always be some idiots who only vote for a candidate with no chance, whether you include them in the tally as valid exhausted votes or exclude them as invalid votes, and thus whether a very narrow win is 50.1-49.9 or 49.7-49.5 is entirely a matter of definition and has no effect on the result's legitimacy.

[minionofmidas]

A very high percentage of people (perhaps a majority? Certainly a large minority) will only use one preference anyway.

A very high percentage of people - anyone who can be reasonably certain that their preferred candidate will end up among the top two - will have no reason whatsoever to use more than one preference, so, yeah.

[minionofmidas]

You can get elected with less than 50% if and only if enough* of one of your major opponents' supporters have no preference between you and another major opponent.
In other words, you can't get elected with more than 50% of the electorate against you. Which is the point.

*how much is enough is of course dependent on a number of factors, including just how close the election is.
There'll always be some idiots who only vote for a candidate with no chance, whether you include them in the tally as valid exhausted votes or exclude them as invalid votes, and thus whether a very narrow win is 50.1-49.9 or 49.7-49.5 is entirely a matter of definition and has no effect on the result's legitimacy.

Why not simply hold a runoff when no candidate commands majority support of the electorate?

When the number of continuing ballots is reduced to below 50% of the electorate, back up a count and hold a new election with any remaining candidates.

Why should they? What the hell is the word "simply" doing there?

[minionofmidas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZwOrySIIeY

New campaign ad from the No camp. I love how this is more or less what happened when my politics teacher first explained AV to my class.

If I were on the fence and I saw that ad, it would make me more likely to vote "yes," since its main message appears to be "we think you're stupid."

The entire anti-AV campaign is based on that premise.

Not sure if the other side is better though - we'd need a pro-AV refudiate clone onsite to overexpose me to its arguments.

[minionofmidas]

People understand how the London mayoral election works, right? How is the AV system really any more "confusing" than that?

A lot of people don't, or behave as if they don't.

[minionofmidas]

The difference is that the incentives for strange and/or dirty tactical calculations with multiple round voties are huge and very, very hard to resist to some players.
If people voted "rationally" in these kind of contests it would just be "time-inefficient AV". But they don't.

[minionofmidas]

Sigged.

[minionofmidas]

Why so tight? Turnout differential with the Scottish and NI elections might help yes a bit compared to the polling, but really this thing ought to be over.

[minionofmidas]

"Nick Clegg is toast already. Vote yes to spite David Cameron and George Osbourne!"

That would be rational behavior. Never expect rational behavior from a voter.

[minionofmidas]

And of course...

The No leaflet also says, and this is a verbatim quote, "The only vote that would count under AV would be Nick Clegg's".

is precisely saying "AV produces hung parliaments, so the LDs get to choose who governs." ie, the exact opposite of the same people's other line.