'Is AV really so complex? Or is it just confusion marketing?' blog discussion

A question about : 'Is AV really so complex? Or is it just confusion marketing?' blog discussion

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's Is AV really so complex? Or is it just confusion marketing? Blog.

Please click 'post reply' to discuss below.

Best answers:

• Thanks Martin! The more people in the public sphere that do their bit not to show their support for either the Yes or No campaigns, but instead tries to cut through the garbage being spewed by both sides, the more informed and empowered the voting public can be!
• i think the adverts for voting against the av are misleading, but i did see one advert that made it easy to understand and that was basically to have av then mps would have to work harder for us, and when they make a commitment to us as a country and pledges, then they have no choice but to go through with it, otherwise they risk being voted out, and the majority of this country are working class and maybe this would mean that they would have to aim a lot of their policies to us, i.e helping with unemployment, housing and the nhs because as you know it is this element who is most affected by these issues.....
• As hjones2 said, it will do away with the safe seat scenario, and the current system will allow a candidate with 40% of votes to stand no matter if the other 60% would rather have someone else other than that candidate, AV makes sense to me, but as Martin puts it, those who are opposed to it are going to say it's so complicated it's not worthwhile, but that would be expected, making it clear would do them no favours.
  But then again, if you prefer for one party to govern as you don't like the idea of coalitions, then I guess AV isn't the way. Maybe, I guess it depends on how people vote.
• I am into the strict practicalities of the count. I don't like the idea that whoever is doing the count will always have to reshuffle the votes a few times before telling us the result.
• great post, I'm actually against it myself, mainly for economic reasons, but so many people are confused about it there needs to be more transparent information out there. I will support the result of the public vote but my fear is that most people still don't understand it.
• It is vastly expensive and doesn't fix what is wrong with FPTP, PR would fix these problems but have others of its own. I think it should be a choice of either PR or FPTP, IRV (instant run off voting, or AV, whichever you want to call it) is worse than either, I will never support anything that undermines the principle of one person one vote in such a way.
• Against AV for several reasons although it is refreshing to see a post that is not overly bias for a change.
  The problem isn't how we vote but who there is really to vote for!
• Much as I don't like first past the post, there are several things about AV that concern me, and as so far no-one has sent me anything about I think I'll be making an uninformed guess.
  My main concern is that the reason that AV is so attractive to certain politicians is that it ensures them a role they would never usually get in a FPTP system. There are sections of our society that will only vote for either the Conservatives or the Labour party, and could never bring themselves to vote for the other party. Therefore their second vote may possibly, by default fall to the only available major political party, the Liberal Democrats.
  I have no axe to grind either for or against PR/AV. Personally I think we would have a more democratic system if we just picked a person randomly from each constituency - no political parties, no funding and backhanders. 5 year parliament, no possibility of the same person holding the job twice.
  I know that the financial markets would probably punish us for it though as they would not believe that a government picked like this would honour its debts.
• Another point on Confusion Marketing comes from those despicable "Vote No to AV or the Baby Dies!" posters claiming that introducing AV will cost Ј250,000,000
  What the No Campaign have done firstly is include Ј130m in that figure for the cost of buying and installing voting machines. Why? Well because that's what the Australians use and they have AV. But we are *NOT* going to have Voting Machines, we have a piece of paper and a pencil, just as we have had for generations and nobody is planning on changing that.
  So suddenly over half that Ј250m disappears leaving Ј120m
  Then they have included the Ј90m cost of the Referendum, but don't mention that this amount will be spent whether, at the end, we get AV or FPTP.
  So that Ј120m drops to Ј30m
  After that, they include Ј26m for "voter awareness" although they don't actually explain what that is or why it is needed, especially since, by the end of the Referendum, thanks to coverage in the media virtually all the people will be aware of how AV works.
  So the Ј30m comes down to Ј4m at least some of which they say will be needed for "more polling stations and more officials".
  But *why* do we need more polling stations under AV? We have enough for FPTP (or we should have, despite the debacle at the last elections when people were turned away because the polling stations were closed) and if we don't need more polling stations we don't need more officials. Also, of course, votes are generally counted by unpaid volunteers...
  So that Ј250m they claim will be the "cost" of introducing AV turns out to be smoke and mirrors designed to scare people into supporting a campaign based on lies and misinformation.
• I'm still undecided on the issue. As far as I can see the arguments on both sides are flawed and not necessarily significant. It seems to come down to supporting the system which you think will give your party the most seats, which, in itself, is grossly unfair.
• I'm against any system that gives someone the power of more than one vote. Why should someone who votes Monster Raving Looney have their vote count more than once? Imagine the scenario: 1st choice - Official Monster Raving Looney Party; 2nd choice - Independent Monster Raving Looney Party; 3rd choice - Free skateboards for hedgehogs; and on and on until, finally, their 7th or 8th choice is Tory/Labour/Liberal/Green/BNP or whatever.
  "First past the post" may be far from perfect but at least it doesn't give power to the idiot minority.
• IMHO it's a mechanism to get the Lib Dems more seats.
  Tory voters generally don't Labour and vice versa. Some of these will have the LD as their 2nd choice.
  Therefore any seat where Labour or Conservative don't win outright can have the LD vote "winning" the seat.
  i.e. 40% Con, 40% Lab, 19% LD, 1% others as 1st choice. 2nd choice for half the Con and Lab voters is LD.
  In round 2, we lose the 1% others from the race.
  Round 2 gives 40 Con, 40 Lab (no 2nd votes), 59 to LD who then win.
• AV would not have any effect on 'safe seats'. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote from first preferences then second preferences, etc don't get taken into account. In that sense both systems are the same.
• i read somewhere that AV will mean that MPs should try to include everyone in their policies.. probably something to do with their seats not being safe or something. Problem I see is that MPs are already trying to please all the voters all the time and then failing to do so if elected because there was no way of being able to keep all the promises.
  If an MP comes round your house, and asks what can they do for you, and you say 'I want my local bus service to run twice per hour instead of once per hour', and teh MP says 'sure, we'll do that for you', then you're going to be very sceptical.
  True case: My local libdems are 'promising' to fix the bridge tolls over the severn for 3 years. Problem is that there is so much legislation over the way the bridges are run that I'm pretty sure it would be illegal to do this, or take years to implement. They're not even allowed to take card payments for goodness' sake! It's like Labour when they said they wanted a new vat rate to put on fuel to offset the 2.5% rise... they knew it couldn't be done, but this kind of rhetoric will still come as a positive in so many people's eyes.
  So it comes down to this... you may not be able to fool all the people all the time, but there's a good chance of fooling stupid people a lot of the time. So this is the MPs target audience.
  Hence why there is so much voter apathy.
  As for AV vs FPTP, I really don't know. I'm not sure either is particularly right, but I'll have to think on it further.
• It's only not complicated because you are a supporter of it.
  Why not just say 'vote yes to AV' rather than this form of confusion marketing?
• VOTE AV.
  It's the only way ANY of the minority parties are ever going to get a chance.
  The system as it stands is a con.
  If there are 100 seats and a party wins the proposed majority, say 55% (55 seats), then they gain power.
  If there are 45,000 voters in the 45 constituencies that DIDN'T vote for the party but only 30,000 voters in the 55 constituencies that did vote for the party, they still win even though only a minority voted for them.
  Also, in each seat it is rarely the candidate that polled the majority of the vote that wins. If there are 4 candidates and A gets 40%, B gets 30%, C gets 20% and D gets 10% then less than half of the voters voted for candidate A yet candidate A wins even though 60% of the voters effectively voted against him/her.
  How is that right??