First Past the Post or AV

[Marmora Man]

Just a thought - and no doubt ??? could answer me if he was posting these days but isn't AV rather like going for an each way bet. Not confident enough to plump your all "on the nose" to win you share your preferences among many alternative politicians, secure in the knowledge that one of them will come in and you will have "backed" them.

Doesn't really have a huge effect on the race but does affect the betting and odds - or in politics the number of clearly articulated policies that will be delivered by a strong and confident executive.

[Alan Dale]

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[mockney piers]

"Doesn't really have a huge effect on the race but does affect the betting and odds - or in politics the number of clearly articulated policies that will be delivered by a strong and confident executive"

I have to say I can't recall a time when policies have been clearly articulated like they have done in the coalition (presumably because the details have to be thrashed out in fraught meetings behind closed doors beforehand.)

Labour's massive majorities never seemed to overcome their basic paranoia about not being a natural ruling party and they showed anything but confidence.

They also failed to clearly articulate policies but spun spin, dipping their toes in policy waters until the Sun or Mail kicked, then quietly put those policies out to pasture or U-turned if they'd gone far enough. (and certainly enough with the mixed metaphors already Piers)

Frankly I think relating the electoral system to policy creation is entirely non-sequitur.

As for the betting analogy the less said the better; of course never having backed a winner (in politics or in racing) perhaps I'm not qualified to comment.

[Loz]

Alan Dale Wrote:

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> Will it slow down the results by much?

>

> More marginals makes better TV but slow results

> would off-set that enjoyment...

Yes, but hard to say by how much. As I said, I have seen this work fine in Australia but there you are allowed to vote at any polling booth, including overseas missions. Since, for AV, you have to really have the ballots all in one place (or at least a very large majority of them) this slows the count down a bit. But they still usually declare a winner within 12 hours or so.

In the UK you only have a choice of postal vote or attend a single polling site, so that should speed the count up compared to Oz by quite a bit.

Of course, should we go electronic polling (as we probably will sometime soon) then results under any system would be near instantaneous, which will take the theatre out of it anyway.

[Alan Dale]

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[silverfox]

It'll be chaos I tell you.

Ballot papers as long as toilet rolls and returning officers running round like the Andrex puppy. Voters, or should we say preferencers, chewing the pencils to splinters as they try to figure out the instructions of how to vote/prefer.

[mockney piers]

It certainly lends itself to electronic voting, and the software itself would be very easy to write; but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the one having to roll out an unhackable, fullproof, secure network to every bingo hall and primary school in the country.

[Alan Dale]

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[silverfox]

I'll cost a fortune in chewed pencils. And what about deforestation?

[Loz]

silverfox Wrote:

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> Ballot papers as long as toilet rolls

Sigh. The ballot paper will be exactly the same size as FPTP. Clueless, silverfox.

And still avoiding my question earlier...

[Loz]

Alan Dale Wrote:

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> I am really wavering on this.

>

> Currently thinking that it's an unnecessary

> expense.

Alan,

What additional expense do you think there will be? .

[silverfox]

All that overtime transferring votes for a start - they'll be raking it in.

(Your earlier question is worthy of a proper reply which would be off topic here. If you'd like to start a new thread I'll happily explore this with you)

[Loz]

silverfox Wrote:

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> (Your earlier question is worthy of a proper reply

> which would be off topic here. If you'd like to

> start a new thread I'll happily explore this with

> you)

A quick answer will do me. I'm reasonably knowledgeable about voting systems. Unlike some.

[Loz]

Just having a look at some stats from the last UK election and 9 people were elected with less that one-third share of the vote. One third! The worst case (a Lib Dem as it happens) was elected with a mere 29.36% share of the vote.

Democracy?

[silverfox]

Nobody asked the other people to vote for the losers. They made their choice and their candidates got less votes than the winner. What's unfair about that? That's democracy - you make your choice and if your candidate doesn't win you accept the result. You don't go around whinging about it and asking to take your vote back so you can give it to someone else.

[Loz]

29.36% - that's not democracy. That's a disgrace to democracy.

[silverfox]

Loz,

You have an advantage over me in that I haven't seen the figures you are so concerned about.

Therefore I'll have to go back to first principles.

Prima facie, the fact that a person was elected to Parliament on 29.36% of the total valid vote is not democratic.

However, in my opinion it is perfectly acceptable and totally democratic.

Why?

Because under FPTP, the system you quote, people are free to vote for whomever they choose. There is no compulsory voting (unlike Australia). So, of those who turned out to vote and didn't spoil the ballot paper (ie, 100% of the valid votes) the winner achieved 29.36%. This means 70.64% of people (the majority) didn't vote for the LibDem candidate.

But here is the fallacy of the pro-AV argument. This 70.64% isn't actually a majority. What it is is a divided mob, each of whom have been given the chance to cast their votes as they see fit. In doing so, by not being able to agree, the LibDem candidate has rightly emerged as the winner.

There is nothing unfair about this. Nobody forced the 70.64 to vote the way they did. Each individual voted freely, whether tactically or otherwise.

The majority isn't some disenfranchised group. They voted for various candidates who were less popular than the winner at 29.36% of the vote. What is unfair about that?

Why should they be given the chance to change their mind because the result wasn't what they hoped?

This is why the AV argument is naive. It starts off from the absurd premiss that the majority have been hard done by when the majority is not some unified whole - rather it is a disunited, fragmented, heterogeneous group pf individuals

[Loz]

The data is at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tdLut_gO0qo_C0JevIxnZ2g#gid=1 - I'm sure you'll find new and interesting ways to misinterpret it.

You can try to dress it up any way you like, but anyone elected with 29.36% of the vote can never be seen as having a mandate to govern. As you correctly noted, a vast majority - over 70% - of the voters voted against this person. How can the wishes of the minority overridden the wishes of the majority in a democracy? That poll cannot ever be said to have delivered the wishes of the people - the fairest result would have been to say that no one won and call it a 'no result'. Because that is pretty much what happened: no result. And there are many more examples from the 2010 election. Many more.

FPTP is faulty. FPTP is undemocratic. It consistently produces a result where there are no winners. In fact, this happened in two-thirds of constituencies in the last election. The 'solution' to this major flaw? FPTP gives the prize to the 'lucky loser' - a person with no mandate to represent.

[Loz]

PS Still waiting for that answer. Has silverfox turned silverchicken?

[Alan Dale]

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[Magpie]

He has you there Loz I'm afraid - a decision needs to be voted on (who should be my MP), the one that got most support won (the lib dems) - seems pretty democratic to me - the remainder haven't been disenfranchised, they were in perfect right to vote for whoever they wanted. The person they voted for could not muster enough support to win - end of.

[Huguenot]

*chuckle*

Silverfox's best mate is a bloke who deletes all his posts when he gets caught with his pants down.

*Puts it in the box marked 'things not to be proud of'*

[Loz]

Magpie Wrote:

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> He has you there Loz I'm afraid - a decision needs

> to be voted on (who should be my MP), the one that

> got most support won (the lib dems) - seems pretty

> democratic to me - the remainder haven't been

> disenfranchised, they were in perfect right to

> vote for whoever they wanted. The person they

> voted for could not muster enough support to win -

> end of.

Wow. I really cannot believe that you think that 29% support is democratically elected. And the reminder that chose to *not* vote for the 'winner' (or lucky loser) of the vote. How have their wishes been followed?

I am really starting to see why the BNP are so in favour of FPTP. Let's face it - they will never have majority support in the UK, so the best they can hope for is a minority following that can split the opposition vote. With AV in place they could never hope to gain seats.

[Loz]

Alan Dale Wrote:

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> I agree with SF.

>

> I wasn't sure before but his calm and reasoned

> explanations have convinced me.

>

> That and the fact that Loz and Huge nought seem

> like fanatical nutters.

Quick question, Alan: if calmly explaining a voting system and the weaknesses in the current system make me a fanatical nutter, what do you call someone that spends hours and hours fastidiously going through a forum deleting hundreds of his own posts? I suppose nutter really doesn't cover that one.

[silverfox]

Loz said,

"...I am really starting to see why the BNP are so in favour of FPTP. Let's face it - they will never have majority support in the UK, so the best they can hope for is a minority following that can split the opposition vote. With AV in place they could never hope to gain seats."

Can you state that with any certainty Loz? I can see many cases where the BNP may get a second preference protest vote. Or the Green Party get a second Preference vote because they'll never get a majority. If minorities won't really benefit under AV then that means there is no benefit to the Green Pary etc under AV and they may as well stick with FPTP.