Referendum

[caddyman]

Referendum Day has crept up on us largely unwanted and uncared for by the British public. I expect turnout will be low, reflecting the general apathy of the population at large and that’s a shame.

Today is only the second time in history that the government of the day has asked the opinion of the public. Sometimes the public lets the government know what its mood is by, ahem, extra-constitutional means, but in general terms the government of the day tends to the paternalistic ‘daddy knows best’ view and does largely as it pleases, making fantastical promises once every four or five years so it can get on with ignoring the population other than to order their lives for them.

Over the years my political views have wobbled from centre left to centre right and back again. In some cases I support one lot, in other cases, I support the others. Right now I am actually glad there isn’t a general election because I can’t think of a single one of them anywhere across the political spectrum is worth their seat in Parliament. They pretend not to be, but they are isolated from the public. The current crop of politicians by and large don’t get it. They need to be made to get it. They need to be reminded that in a country that flatters itself that it is a democracy, they the politicians, are the servants of the people not vice versa.

So on the rare occasions they ask the people a question, the people really ought to answer them. They should turn out and vote and individuals should vote with their conscience. If the result is not what you personally want, well that’s democracy, isn’t it? You can still try to change things.

Whether you plan to vote ‘yes’ or to vote ‘no’ today, you should at least turn up and put a cross in a box. You may be offered another opportunity to give an opinion, but the odds are that you won’t.

I intend to pop along tonight on my way home and vote yes. Not because I like the AV system, I don’t particularly, but it at least attempts to deal with the unfairness of the present system. First Past the Post is not a bad system, but it only truly works when there is a simple two-way choice. There rarely is these days in any election: even if we discard the eccentrics standing for arcane reasons of their own, the minimum choice is between three major parties in most places and in others four or five.

Simply put, ‘yes or no’ doesn’t work if the choice is greater than two. AV isn’t great and we should look for a better voting system. That is not an argument for leaving the one we have in place.

The simple -some would say simplistic- explanation below explains the ‘oh so complex’ AV system that we are though to be too dim to understand quite clearly. I have seen one rebuttal of this: if none of the beer drinkers like the alternative pubs, you still end up with coffee. So the rebuttal to the example is simply that the worst possible result under AV is the only possible result under FPTP.



Whichever way you decide to vote, at least go out and vote.

Oh, and by the way: if you are a member of any of the three major parties and voted for your party's leader, you did it using AV. Edited to add: Unless you are a member of the Conservative Party - see budgie_uk's comment below. I really ought to check these things before I say them!

Comments

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

"Oh, and by the way: if you are a member of any of the three major parties and voted for your party's leader, you did it using AV."

erm, no you didn't, not if you voted in the Conservative party. They don't use AV. They use multiple round voting, which is completely different if only because you know how everyone else has voted when you get to cast your second vote.

Or, as Wiki has it:

"If more than two candidates stand, then MPs first hold a series of ballots to reduce the number to two. On each round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. (If two or more candidates tie for last place, as happened in the 2001 contest, then the ballot is repeated, and if the tie remains, all bottom-placed candidates are eliminated.) Candidates may also withdraw between rounds (this also happened in the 2001 contest).

The series of ballots by MPs continues until there are only two candidates remaining. At this point the all-member ballot begins; this lasts for some weeks. To be eligible to vote, an individual has to have been a paid-up member of the party for at least three months. The candidate who tops the poll is declared leader."

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

What about other drinks such as tea or wine?

Also that rather silly poster actually points out the obvious - beer vs coffee, then any idiot can see it is beer that wins hands down! Why not break down the "coffee shop" to say, Coffee Repulic, Starbucks and Costa Coffee? Breaking that down, each coffee venue might only get one "vote" each, and thereby leaving The Red Lion. The Castle and The Queen's Head to fight it out under AV!

Hoenstly, what an insult to intelligence!

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

I wish you'd be a politician. I like your voice of reason!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

What about other drinks such as tea or wine?

If you change the graphic to read 2 votes for beer, 2 votes for wine, 1 vote for tea, 2 votes for water and 3 for coffee, you still get coffee under the FPTP system, despite 70% voting against it. So the underlying unfairness of 'yes or no' to a multiple choice question is still exposed.

We would have to make the graphic a little more complex to show the second and third choices to rank the other votes under AV to see what the eventual outcome would be, but the point of the graphic as it stands is to highlight the basic unfairness of settling in favour of the largest minority only.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

It's apples and pears isn't it? Beers vs coffee does not equate to 'which pub' vs coffee! Under FPTP, it is bleeding obvious that 7 beers wins over 3 coffees!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

True enough. And yet you'd be drinking coffee whilst wistfully dreaming of beer. Much like the 60+ percent of voters who vote for someone other than the party that wins a general election.

It's nearly always a minority vote that gives the majority government.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

"And yet you'd be drinking coffee whilst wistfully dreaming of beer."

I don't think we're talking about the same thing! Which is why that particular poster is terribly misleading. Under FPTP - where you are voting either for beer or coffee - then, the minority will be drinking beer and wistfully dreaming of coffee! (which would be fair).

Anyway AV doesn't give you PR, so why bother? (AV would have given Blair in 1997 even more seats - i.e. AV would have given rise to an even less proportionate result!)

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

But the choices aren't Beer, Beer, Beer, Beer, Coffee in the poster as much as the choices are where you could go to get them. Much the same as the choices could be five different parties that will give you Capitalism, Capitalism, Capitalism, Capitalism, Racism rather than beer or coffee. All the people that vote for somewhere to get Capitalism, would end up with Racism in that scenario. Much the same as everyone who voted for somewhere to get beer would end up at somewhere you could only get coffee.

Just because there are pretty pictures, doesn't mean there aren't words on the poster.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

I'm glad he isn't. He's worth more than that.

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Good point, well made!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I would prefer PR, to be honest. Or more to the point, but unrealistically, I would prefer all MPs to be independent and vote on eacjh issue by conscience.

The present system is designed to support the locality and give it a voice nationally. Unfortunately, the national side decides the spread of candidates through the party system, so people usually (though not always) vote for the party rather than for the individual canidate. In some places a plastic cup could win the vote if you painted it the right colour.

I've heard the assertions about Blair's and even Thatcher's majorities being fundamentally different under AV and I accept that there would have been differences.

I just don't understand how the statisticians quantify those differences and decide how past results would have come out under AV since we didn't have the opportunity to rank our preferences. They are simply guessing as far as I can see, though I am willing to reconsider that view if anyone can point me to an analysis of how they calculate these things where it would seem no data exist.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

Ta!

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

Yep - why not read the words! It says (claims): "FPTP gives you coffee when 70% of you would rather go down the pub"

Coffee vs pub - apples vs pears.

I would have hoped that in your hypothetically bizarre scenario can work the other way too - i.e. 5 different parties that give you Racism, Racism, Racism, Racism, Capitalism - and lo and behold, Capitalism wins under FPTP (because voters aren't as stupid as you suggest)! Anyway, in the real world, where we have had many many instances of that kind of scenario under our current FPTP i.e. Con, Lab, Lib Dem, UKIP, BNP - BNP have not won a single parliament seat. Go figure.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

I would vote for AV if I believed it was fair and democratic. In particular, I cannot accept as "fair" that somebody else's voted could be counted two, three or even four times. Under the proposed AV we won't achieve a good level of PR partly because it won't be compulsory to fully ballot all candidates.

Also, what in the end are we voting for? FPTP at least does refelct popularity. Under AV, we seem to be promoting the least un-popular candidate (since second or third preference votes could be used to decide on the eventual winner). I do agree with Nick when he said AV is a "miserable little compromise"!

Re: analysis of past elections - they are based on projections, so yes, guess work or as they put it, "best guess". The statistic: "in 1997, Labour would have won 452 seats rather than 419" could have come from the 1998 Jenkins commission on electoral reform. (I've also seen it quoted in the parliamentary reseach paper - AV and Electoral Reform dated 2 March 2011 - but not sure if actual sources are given).

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Let's translate that to reality.

FPTP is fine where there are only two candidates. There's a general view (which may be wrong) that Labour and LibDem voters have more in common with each other than they do with Tory voters and are more likely to vote tactically under the current system. In effect they split the progressive vote, in some cases an overall majority, so that the Conservative candidate wins the seat on less than 50%. AV (or Instant Run-Off as other countries call it) allows for clearer expression of preference and ensures that the winner has at least some support from a broader range. It may well mean that the least disliked candidate (or party) gets in, but perhaps that's the politics we have at present.

As for "why bother?", a Yes vote would articulate clearly the current widespread unhappiness with the political system and allow for further change later. A No vote will be interpreted as there being no appetite for any change at all.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

I think people should vote YES only if they believe in the perceived benefits of AV, and not just blindly for the sake of "change".

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Ah, for me at least (and many others I've talked to) one of the perceived benefits is that it is the first step towards a more desirable outcome.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

Well, that's fair enough. At the end of the day, the beauty of our system is that people can vote for whatever reason they want!

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

I can't believe we won't be getting a referundum on The Lords...

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

I can believe it.