I’ve already written a post about the Alternative Vote, but I thought I’d write another since the referendum is coming up soon (it’s on May the 5th, so make sure you’re on the electoral register). If you’ve heard me wittering on about it, then you’ll know that I’ll be voting YES. I’ve rarely been so sure of something before.
For those who don’t know about the system, you can easily find many articles online about the subject. But there are some arguments concerning the subject that I’d like to go through.
First of all, the ubiquitous No2AV campaign poster that suggests that AV will cost the country £250 million. This is largely nonsense. First of all, about £80+ million is for the cost of the referendum itself. Ergo, it has nothing to do with implementing AV itself. Even AV is voted down (unfortunately very probable), then we’ll still be paying that much. Bummer.
Next, and the biggest mythical part of the ‘AV bill’, is the estimate that we will need around £90-£120 or so million to allow the input of the votes. That is, No2AV are suggesting that we’ll need to make a move to electronic voting. Huh? That’s not part of the referendum.
And the rest of the money will supposedly go to educating voters on how to vote. The price they estimate is probably quite a bit higher than they suggest (£35 million or so), since they’re basing it on the price of educating voters in Scotland about a different voting system for the Scottish parliament – that’s the Single Transferable Vote, which is a bit different to AV and less complicated. AV isn’t that complicated. There’s diagrams and everything online to explain how it works, not to mention that leaflet you get before the referendum explaining the voting system – which, again, by the way, has nothing to do with implementing AV.
Another myth is that AV is more likely to cause hung parliaments. The evidence points against this (look at Austrailia for instance), and AV isn’t that much of a departure from FPTP. It still largely favours a polarised party system, but it’s slightly fairer in that (in basic terms), it allows voters to express alternative preferences and MPs have to garner the support of at least 50% of the voters.
Meanwhile, we’ve had 2 hung parliaments in post-war times under First Past The Post. This isn’t necessarily to do with the voting system. It’s to do with the fact that people are becoming (rightly) discontented with the major political parties.
That’s not to say that I support coalitions. I think they’re a bad idea. A while ago I was inclined to believe that coalitions would be fair because, in theory, they are supported by more of the electorate. However, coalitions almost always involve an alliance with a party that is smaller than the opposition. Why should a party that is far from winning the election be part of a government and have their policies taken into account? If that’s the case, then it should only be fair that the rest of the parties get some sort of say on policies as well. Why, when Labour garnered more votes than the Liberal Democrats, should they have less control of government?
Finally, another argument that was put forward to me the other was that, ‘what if one person votes for one party while someone else votes for several? Why is that fair?’ First of all, under AV you don’t have more than one vote. It’s a vote that moves from one party to another depending on whether they stay in the contest or not (again, read up on the schematics of AV if you don’t know what it is). You choose several ordered preferences, and if you only decide to pick one, then that’s your choice.
