The Alternative Voting System explained....

[curiouswombat]

As today is the day the UK have a referendum on their political voting system I thought a Public Information Post might be appreciated... :~)

I live somewhere which toyed with the idea of Single Transferable Vote - which is fairly much the same as AV. We decided against it because we have a multi-seat constituency system and no real political parties and so it was deemed that STV probably wasn't necessary.

However - we get the UK PPBs (Part Political Broadcasts) on our televisions anyway, and the current ones about AV, if I don't have the zapper within reach - and we also watch UK news. So it has not escaped my notice that many UK politicians feel that a lot of Brits can't cope with anything more complicated than a cross.

So - to help you understand AV I have a simple model courtesy of infinitemonkeys;

List the candidates in the order in which you would rescue them from a burning building. When you've listed all the ones you'd bother about, stop.

By the way - the second sentence seems to be the bit the anti-AV people don't mention - they give the impression that you HAVE TO give everyone a number - but you can just choose to replace your previous 'X' with '1' and then, if your candidate doesn't get in your vote won't actually go to anyone else.

There now - I'm sure even you poor people who are deemed too stupid to understand complicated things like politics (Fellow nurses for example...if Andrew Landsley is to be believed) can understand it now!

Comments

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I think AV makes a lot more sense - with first past the post, if you have 5 candidates the winner might only be the choice of 23 or 24% of those who voted - almost certainly of less than 30% - so 70%+ clearly voted against that person. Whereas with AV you might at least get your second choice.

Bit like your mate going to the sandwich shop and you just say 'Get me a bacon and egg sandwich.' If they don't have bacon and egg he might get you something you hate - that's FPTP; or saying 'If they've no bacon and egg I'll have chicken and bacon, and if they've none of those either, then get me a plain egg one.' That's AV.

I'm with you on Alex Salmond - but then, of course, for the Scottish parliament you don't have FPTP either!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I see Alex Salmond is definitely back - good man.

[wormwood-7.livejournal.com]

the second sentence seems to be the bit the anti-AV people don't mention..
No, they don't, but I haven't seen the pro-camp mentioning it much either. They have made a bad job of selling their cause unfortunately, and it looks as if they are loosing. The latest opinion poll I saw, for the Independent, was 66% against AV, 36% for.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

They have made a bad job, haven't they, from what little I've seen. A pity as I think it would give a legislature that was much closer to the politics of the country - for good or bed.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Many cities around here have something called "ranked choice" voting in their local elections, which I think is pretty much the same thing as your Alternative Voting. I listened to a 90-minute presentation on it some years ago and still felt quite confused about how it works. I wish someone could have explained it to me as succinctly as you just did!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It's my pleasure. Politicians seem to go out of their way to make these things complicated!

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit the nail on the head - if you never voted for (for example) the BNP, that means you haven't voted for them. It doesn't mean that thy are more likely to get in does it. They still get their one vote, just like everyone else. :D

I haz voted.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Politics made simple - maybe it should be my role in life!

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

I nearly did a post on the referendum yesterday but decided not to as I don't have a good word to say about it!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

The whole thing seems to be badly thought out, I think - although I admit to having avoided as much of it as possible. But the accusation that it is all too difficult for ordinary people to cope with - as if most people can still only put a X because they are illiterate, does seem to have been made a bit too much!

My husband had come up with a description that my 'ordering sandwiches', as mentioned in a comment above, is based on. But I thought the 'put them into the order you'd rescue them from a building' explanation was good. If I had a vote in the referendum I think I would be in favour of AV - but I really have no axe to grind.

[inzilbeth-liz.livejournal.com]

I think my main objection is that we have enough fudge and compromise with the present system and this would only seem to make things worse.

Your sandwich explanation is very good!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I think the difference is that people would actually be more likely to vote 'for' the person they really prefer - rather than voting for someone they just don't dislike as much as someone else.

In that way the electorate would be much more responsible for the make up of the government - at the moment far more people usually vote against the 'winning' party than for it, and so can say 'well it's not my fault!'

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

I voted Yes first thing this morning, and spent half the week at work trying to convince wavering colleagues. I can only see the logic of FPTP in a two-party system; as soon as you have three or more parties, what I want to do is not simply to vote for one party and thus imply that all the others are equally undesirable, but to express something like "Party A, for preference. But if I can't have A, then C. Party B over my dead body."

One of the best and most succinct summaries I saw was: "Under FPTP, the government you get is the largest minority's best choice. Under AV, you get the largest majority's least worst choice."

(Because you hardly ever, in a multi-party system, get a winning party with more than 50% of the vote with FPTP; under AV you do at least get a government which at least 50% of the population is prepared to tolerate.)

Mind you, round here we also have a Parish Council election worthy of The Archers - two competing slates of independent candidates with vigorous exchanges of views! Am intrigued to see how that one's going to turn out...

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I'm with you - I would be in favour if I had a vote in it.

Your parish elections sound like our actual government elections. We have no real party system - but lots of independents who exchange their views vigorously - it is much more fun than party based politics!

[miso-no-tsuki.livejournal.com]

I and most of family voted "Yes".
*eyes idiot son who forgot to fill in postal vote form 'cos he's at Uni!*
There didn't seem to be much campaign for the Yes persuasion at all. We had several leaflets from the no lot explaining, as lobelia321 put it that the expensive electronic voting machines needed for AV would mean babies would be deprived of Peri-natal care and Servicemen would be denied adequate equipment. (Like they're not now ...)and we'd all be too stupid to figure out how to write numbers instead of an X.
*sighs*
But then you say "multi-seat constituency system and no real political parties."
So you get actual discussion of issues rather than party dogma?
OMG Wombat! You live in Paradise!!!!

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It really doesn't seem to have been well put-over at all. I mean, why would you need a complicated machine - the tellers should surely be able to cope with putting them in piles according to the '1' preference, and then taking the smallest heap and allocating them according to the '2' preferences...!

We have multi-seat constituencies, and some single ones, depending on the population of the area in question. So we get three in our constituency, but my sister only gets 2.

There is, or possibly was, a Manx Labour party - one MHK belonged to it - but then he decided he didn't want to be associated with some of the ideas of the UK Labour party - he was more in tune with the Liberals. (This was about 4 or 5 years ago.) So he left the Manx Labour party and formed the Liberal Vannin party - and I think one of the other MHKs might be in it too. Although the original one might well have left it again now...

So - yes - we have a government made up from all independents!

[1c2k3p4p5c.livejournal.com]

I find myself somewhat bemused by concerns about AV. In Australia our preferential voting system works very well. It is probably a bit more complicated to count than FPTP but we seem to manage it without machines. I really liked your burning building example.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I can't understand all the fuss - it seems to me to give a better representation of the people - which is supposed to be the idea...

[cbtreks.livejournal.com]

From what I've been hearing about AV, it sounds like a good idea. And I saw a excellent poster online yesterday at http://www.letsavabeer.com/ that explains it so succinctly. It made perfect sense to me. (And since I've tried and failed to make that a link 3 times, it's not a link - sorry!)

I don't think it'd work with our Electoral College, though. 'Cause we don't actually vote for an candidate, even though it looks like we do. (The EC's kind of a mess because while they usually go with the popular vote, they don't always. Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush all lost the popular vote but won the EC vote and became President.) I bet it would work with non-presidential elections, though - and might get some people to vote who wouldn't otherwise, because they know their candidate is going to lose anyway, so their vote would be wasted.

[cbtreks.livejournal.com]

Oh look - it's a link! I think it's time to wander over to Netflix now.... :-)

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

That seems a very good representation!

I find your presidential system - amusing? The way Americans often speak about their great democracy but have such a weird voting system that the person who wins is often the one with fewer votes... out of two.

I think any form of transferable vote would encourage the electorate to vote - and vote honestly - actually put their preferred candidate at the top whereas under a first past the post system they will often vote, not for the person they like most, but the one they dislike slightly less than another.

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

Sadly - and I agree the public information aspect of the campaigns has been woeful - it doesn't look as if we're going to get AV.

I am really annoyed with the BBC - all the media, but there is an argument that the public service broadcaster has the biggest responsibility - for deciding almost exclusively that the "story" was all the political infighting, or vox pops about most people's complete ignorance or apathy about the issue, rather than properly explaining the two systems and the potential pros/cons of both. It's not as though there weren't excellent independent analyses of the likely political implications out there - Alan Renwick from the University of Reading for example produced a very balanced one (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CBsQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.psa.ac.uk%2FPSAPubs%2FTheAlternativeVoteBriefingPaper.pdf&rct=j&q=reading%20university%20analysis%20alternative%20vote&ei=e7DDTYSoFMi2hQfQ-qjrAw&usg=AFQjCNG27EQniuahCP3Wgf2QeajJr43sZQ&sig2=yIL7sj_BDvGmjt_vBN56pg&cad=rja) (pdf) - but it's too late now. Sigh.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I agree - there seems to have been very little actual information at all. Just lots of in-fighting making the news, and almost nothing explaining what AV actually is - hence people actually believing it would require special machines to count the votes and so on.