Dan Snow goes for AV

Historian and television presenter Dan Snow has weighed into the the AV / FPTP debate with two very useful videos... One video provides a convenient explanation of how AV works by looking at preferences amongst a group of friends for going for coffee or going to a pub:



The other video provides a valuable historical perspective on the value of the Alternative Vote system:



Take a look!

Daily Politics Alternative Vote Debate (yes, another one...!)

Andrew Neil hosted the BBC's Daily Politics Alternative Vote Debate with Charles Kennedy, Michael Howard, John Prescott and Tessa Jowell.

The 35-minute debate was originally broadcast on 6 April as the four politicians argued for and against the possible change. There will be a UK wide referendum on 5 May on the issue.

The link takes you through to the full video of the debate as four 'big beasts' of the parliamentary jungle (past and present) argue their case. Essential viewing for those (re)-studying the Elections topic in AS Unit 1.

Yes! Verdict at AV debate as Livingstone and Howard clash on voting reform

The Evening Standard Wednesday evening hosted a major debate regarding the upcoming May 5 Referendum on the use of the AV / FPTP voting systems - extensive coverage was given to this in the newspaper the following day...

The line-up was august: former London mayor Ken Livingstone and Cabinet minister Vince Cable argued for the YES to AV proposition, former Tory leader Michael Howard and former rower Martin Cross argued NO to AV.

The result on the night? : Broad support for the YES proposition. Of course, only the result on May 5 actually counts!

Rawnsley: Adopting AV would be a very British revolution

Seasoned political commentatotr Andrew Rawnsley in this morning's Observer decides that AV would not produce a saintly Commons, but would make MPs more representative of their constituents... Amidst other points, Rawnsley starts by underlining the importance of the decision that the nation is about to make:

The referendum is only just beginning to impinge on the consciousness of the nation, but between the politicians the struggle is already intense. Good. With the caveat that it would be more dignified for both sides to eschew comparing each other with the Nazis, a hot debate on this question is exactly what we need. I'm perplexed by those commentators who have adopted a pose of lofty scorn towards the referendum, dismissing it with a sneer through a yawn. They proclaim that the public is not interested in the way we elect our governments. The most condescending even say we ought not to be troubling the poor little heads of the voters with a referendum at all. Really? This is a country that likes to think of itself as a pioneer of representative democracy. We are fond of the pride-swelling remark made by John Bright, in a speech in support of electoral reform in the 19th century, that: "England is the mother of all parliaments."

Yet the people of England, and the peoples of the other nations of the UK, have never been offered any opportunity to set the basic rules of our democracy. This is the first time that the people have been given a say about how we elect members of parliament. If there is a more important subject for a referendum than that, I can't think of it.

Rawnsley is clearly pro-AV and musters several compelling arguments in defence of the idea (one follows):

Far from being hideously foreign, adopting AV would be a very British thing to do. It would not be a revolutionary break, but an evolutionary change. AV preserves the feature of the current system which has most merit – the direct link between an MP and a constituency – while addressing some of the most pernicious flaws of first past the post, such as the fact that two thirds of MPs were sent to parliament last May without the support of a majority of voters.

 His opinion of FPTP is clear:

.... there is a different electoral system in which some votes do count for a great deal more than others. There is an electoral system under which the complexion of the government is usually decided by a minority of voters in the minority of seats that are swing marginals. There is an electoral system which induces politicians to pander only to this minority of voters rather than encouraging them to reach out more widely. There is a system under which extremists, whom the majority would never want to see elected, can nevertheless win seats with minority support.

That system is called first past the post.

Do read the whole article as an excellent example of the pro-AV perspective.

totalPolitics: The myths of the alternative vote

In another totalPolitics article published today, Alan Renwick charts how both sides in the referendum are guilty of pushing some dubious claims.

Thus, the NO campaign:

The prize for the biggest porky goes to the No campaign. They claim that the AV gives voters for minor parties (they always helpfully add ‘such as the BNP’) multiple votes, while the good, honest mainstream voters get just one vote. This is just nonsense. Under the AV, every voter gets one vote, and no one’s vote counts more than anyone else’s.

The No camp is exploiting confusion over the AV’s system of vote transfers. Candidates who win few first preferences are eliminated, and their voters are reallocated to other surviving candidates according to lower preferences. So it might seem that a voter who first supported the BNP or the Greens or the Monster Raving Loonies is given a second vote when that candidate is eliminated. But it’s completely untrue to say that they have two or more votes.

And the YES campaign:

Does the Yes camp do any better? With their roots in the intellectually earnest Electoral Reform Society, we might hope so. However, they are not immune to a little airbrushing of the facts themselves.

Ever since the expenses scandal, the electoral reform lobby have been pushing the argument that changing the voting system to get rid of safe seats would prevent such abuses in the future. There’s actually no evidence that MPs in safe seats were more likely to abuse the expenses system - and the worst offending MPs could be removed whether they were in safe seats or not. Still, safe seats have other undesirable effects, so reducing their number is no bad thing.

The trouble for the Yes camp is that AV wouldn’t significantly change the number of safe seats. Certainly, the claim made in the Commons by one rather excitable Liberal Democrat that “AV would end safe seats” is simply untrue. In many seats, the winning candidate would still get more than 50 per cent of the vote under AV and these seats would remain just as safe as they are today.

Worth reading completely in order to clarify potential points of confusion and to achieve a balanced view of electoral reform.