6 April 2011 (Wednesday) - Electoral Reform

Today I received my leaflet for the forthcoming referendum of the reform of our voting system. I’ve heard several friends and family express confusion at what’s being proposed, so today I’ll have a look at the suggested AV voting system, and (hopefully) I’ll explain why only a twit would vote for it.

(Please note that, as ever, political impartiality is my watchword…!, and apologies to anyone who thinks AV is actually a good idea….)

What is being proposed is quite straightforward really. Take an election with our current system:

	Voter	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Candidate
A		X	X	X
B					X
C						X
D							X	X

Candidate A wins with 3/7ths of the votes cast. More people have voted for Candidate A than any other candidate. He may not have a majority (more than half the total) of the votes cast, but he has more than any other candidate.

This is how we’ve elected members of Parliament for years, but we’re now being offered a different scheme. The crux of the new scheme is that selected candidates must have over half of the votes cast. It works like this:

We get to choose our preferred candidate, and our second choice candidate.  In the grid below X is the voter’s first choice, and Y is their second choice:

	Voter	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Candidate
A		X	X	X	y
B		y	y	y	X	y	y	y
C						X
D							X	X
		X	First Choice
		Y	Second Choice

With no clear overall majority (i.e. no candidate getting over half the total “first choice” votes – the X), a new scheme comes into play.

The candidate(s) with the least first choice votes is eliminated and the votes cast for that candidate are re-examined. In the example given candidates B and C only got one “first choice” (X) vote each and so would be eliminated.

The second choice of vote (y) of those who voted for the eliminated candidates is then given to the remaining candidates. In the example given above the votes re-examined would be those of voters 4 and 5. The “second choice” (y) of those who voted for candidates B and C (voters 4 and 5) now becomes their main vote.

Voter #4 now is voting for Candidate A, and so has given Candidate A four of seven possible votes.

Voter #5 now is voting for Candidate B who has already been eliminated, so we can discount that vote.

Candidate A now has 4/7 of the vote, which is more than half the votes cast and so has won.

In the above example Candidate A would have won on the existing system anyway, but consider this election result.

Voter

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Candidate

A

X

X

X

X

X

B

X

X

X

X

y

y

C

X

X

X

First Choice

y

Second Choice

Candidate A does not have an overall majority – he has 5/11 of the vote. Applying the AV rules, the candidate with least votes (C) is eliminated, and those who chose Candidate C have their votes reassigned to their second choice. In this case Candidate B. Candidate B now has an overall majority: 6/11 of the vote, and so wins. Even though he would not have won in the existing system.

Clear as mud? Good!

This stupid idea sucks fish for many reasons: mainly because demonstrably some people’s second choice has as much weighting as other people’s first choice. Surely it would make sense to allow for people’s actually preferring one candidate over another. Take the second example above. If a “first choice” (X) vote is deemed to be worth two points and a “second choice” (y) vote deemed to be worth one point, then a very different picture emerges:

	Voter	1	2	3	4	5	6	7		total
Candidate
A		2	2	2	1					7
B		1	1	1	2	1	1	1		8
C						2				2
D							2	2		4

Candidate B wins.  But he would have been knocked out in the scheme we are being asked to accept.

Another possible way of voting would be to take into consideration the fact that as well has having a preferred candidate, one may well have a candidate one does *not* want to see elected. A common criticism of electoral reform is that a different way of voting would open the door to extremist parties who the majority of the electorate do not want.

So we might consider the concept of the “anti-vote”: voters have two choices to make on their ballot. They mark the candidate they want (who gets a +1 vote), and the candidate they do not want (who gets a -1 vote):

	Voter	1	2	3	4	5	6	7		total
Candidate
A		1	1	1		-1	-1	-1		0
B					1	-1	-1	-1		-2
C						1				1
D		-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	1	1		-3

Candidate C wins.  But he would have been knocked out in the scheme we are being asked to accept.

I for one am going to vote against the AV system on May 5^th because (as I hope I’ve demonstrated) the system is inherently flawed. I’m not saying the present scheme is perfect – far from it. But the AV scheme doesn’t actually offer electoral reform as such. All it does is try to pretend that a minority candidate actually has a majority.

And an added bonus of voting against the AV system is that it will really boil the piss of the dribbling democraps. Over the last year they have proven themselves to be a bunch of charlatans who have gone back on their word so many times. They have thrown away all their principles and adopted Con-servative party propaganda purely in a shallow attempt to gain political power. The only thing in their manifesto they’ve actually delivered is a referendum on electoral change, so I shall use the referendum as my chance to tell them what I think of them.