Why I Think You Should Vote for AV

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Why I think you should vote Yes to AV

Stephen Booth

Monday 11th April 2011

I have seen a lot of misinformation and disinformation in the media of latefrom those who oppose the proposed Alternative Voting (AV) system. I guredI’d write a little article on why I think the UK should switch to AV and peopleshould vote yes in the coming referendum. First a little disclaimer...

A Little Disclaimer

Whilst I am a grassroots member of a UK political party this is by me as anindividual, it has not been requested or endorsed by that or any other politicalparty. I have been a member of various organisations that have used electoralsystems similar to the proposed AV system and seen it in action, I have helpedto run elections using the Single Transferable Vote system. I have read theleaet from The Electoral Commission that has been sent to each householdexplaining how AV works. My view that the UK should adopt AV and thebelow is based on my own experiences and the information contained in thatleaet. I recommend that you read the leaet.

I really do recommend that you read the leaet

Seriously, it’s a quick read and gives a very good explanation of the differencesbetween the current system and the proposed AV system. If you haven’t receivedyours yet, you can get a copy and even more information from http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/5_may.aspx .

What is the current system and what is wrong

with it?The current system is called ”First Past the Post”. It’s pretty simple really.Everyone has one vote and casts it by marking a piece of paper (usually witha cross) against the name of the person they want to vote for. After the pollshave closed the papers are separated according to whose name has been markedand counted. Who ever gets the most votes wins. Simple and all well and neand good where there’s only two candidates or choices. You vote for one or theother (or you could spoil your ballot or just not bother to vote). There are acouple of really major problems with this system where there are three or morecandidates (from memory there’s usually around 7 or 8 in the constituency I

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live in) in that it often returns a candidate most people don’t like (or at least

would prefer someone else) and penalises minor parties.Suppose there are 6 Candidates on the ballot. Candidate A receives 20% of the vote, candidate B gets 19.9%, candidate C 19.1%, candidate D gets 15.1%of the vote, candidate E gets 14.9% of the vote and candidate F gets 10%.Under rst past the post candidate A is declared the winner. But just a sec,80% of those who voted said they wanted someone other than candidate A.80%! That’s a lot, well over half. Also candidate B was only 0.1% of the votebehind candidate A, nearly as many people wanted them although slightly morewanted someone else (but not necessarily candidate A). OK so gures like thatare uncommon and probably unlikely. What is quite common is the winningcandidate polling only 30-40% of the vote and their nearest competitor beingonly slightly behind (i.e. marginal seats).

The current system penalises minor parties by dissuading their supportersfrom voting for them. When there are 6 or 7 or 8 or 10 or 15 (the maximumI’ve seen on one ballot) candidates then unless you think that your preferredcandidate has a good chance of being in the top 3 you might think that you arethrowing your vote away. You’d be right. Under the current system voting fora minor party candidate is the equivalent of writing ”I am a sh” across yourballot paper. This means that a lot of people vote for a party they maybe don’tlike but dislike less than the other two parties in the top 3. Some candidatesplays this up and and include in their election material ”These parties have nochance here, don’t vote for them. Vote for us else the [some party they thinkthe voters will see as a threat] will get in.” In my example above the partythat candidate F belongs to might actually have quite a bit of support, maybeenough to turn that 10% into 20.1%. They don’t get the votes because a lot

of their supporters think they don’t have a chance so vote for a different party,no-one ever knows how much support they really have because their supportersare afraid of wasting their vote and think that if they vote for the party theylike that will allow the party they hate to get in.

So what’s the alternative and why is it better?

The leaet gives a much better explanation than I can but here’s a summary.Same names on the ballot paper, same ballot box. This time rather than justputting an X (although you can still do that if you really want) you can nowrank the candidates in order of preference. You don’t have to rank them all,but you can if you want, you can just rank your top few and leave the rest

unmarked. When the polls close the ballots are collected as before and sortedbut this time according to who has the rst preference marked on each (an X ora 1) and these are counted. If a candidate gets 50%+1 or more of the votes thenthey are the winner and the process stops, we have a candidate that more thenhalf of the people who voted wanted. Quite likely there may be a candidatewho has more votes than any one other candidate but less than 50% of the totalvote. In that situation the candidate who got the least votes is disqualiedan their votes checked for second choices. If there’s no second choice then theballots are discarded (i.e. put away, they’re not thrown away) but those wherethere is a second choice expressed are added to the appropriate pile and to thetotal for those candidates. If one candidate now has 50%+1 or more of the vote

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then they are the winner and the process stops, if not then the candidate who

now has the least votes is disqualied and their votes checked for second, third,fourth &c preferences. They will then be added to the pile (and count) for thecandidate who got second preference unless that candidate has been disqualiedin which case they will be added to the pile and count for the third preferenceand so on, papers with no valid preferences are discarded. This continues untileither one candidate has 50%+1 or more of the votes or, rarely, there are nofurther preferences so no more transfers can be made.

The advantages of this system are that the winning candidate is almostalways going to have been a high preference for over half of the voters (in myexperience the winning candidate is usually one who was rst or second in therst count) and it gives supporters of minority parties to express their rstpreference but still vote for a majority party (who they like but not as muchas the minority party) as second choice so reducing the risk of the opposingmajority party (who they hate) getting in.

But doesn’t this mean some people get more thanone vote?

No! I’ve heard this claim being made on TV by the ’No’ campaigners. It’sdisinformation to scare people into thinking that AV is an attack on democracy.It isn’t, if anything it promotes true democracy. Everyone still only has onevote and only one vote. It’s that that one vote can be transferred to a secondpreference if the rst preference comes last.

Might this let an extremist candidate win an elec-tion?

Possibly. Yes it is possible that a candidate from an extremist party couldget in if they poll at least 50%+1 of the vote in their constituency. That ishow democracy is supposed to work, the candidate who most people want to win should win. If you don’t think a candidate should win then vote against them and get out and campaign against them. Get a blog, get a soap box, get active.That is how democracy should work. Also, bear in mind that an extremist canwin with just 20, 30 or 40% of the vote under the current system so long as therest of the vote is sufficiently fragmented.

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Copyright and License

This article is copyright Stephen Booth, 2011. A non-exclusive license is grantedto anyone who wishes to reproduce this article as a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Derivative-Non-Commercial license (BY-ND-NC, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ ). An exception to the non-commercial clause isgranted to any commercial newspaper, news magazine, news mailing list or newswebsite so long as this article does not constitute more than 5% of the outputon the day that it is published in the form that it is published.

This document was typeset in L ATEX2e a copy of the source le can be madeavailable on request under the same BY-ND-NC license.

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Why I Think You Should Vote for AV