Surely something along the lines of “More than half of MPs are elected with less than half of half the votes of the electorate. Is this fair?”

This could then be customised in those seats where MPs have a plurality but not a majority with their face and “X% didn’t vote for your MP, so why is he your MP?” (where X is a number larger than 50%.

The fairness angle is important to capture for the AV vote. The no campaign will say its complicated which, is patronising, and they will say it will empower a political elite, which is bullshit. But fairness should resonate with the electorate if the AV campaign can get it.

Oh yes and Tom’s poster is pure chutzpah, he’s called white black and black white.

Its the reason why Tom Harris should be sacked and expelled from the labour party – by all means argue against AV, but to carry on doing so in the dishonest way he is is contemptable.. He’s the Nadine Dorries of labour.

Considering the implicit message in the ever-popular “Candidate X can’t win here!” election leaflets is “yes, you might want to vote for this bloke, but it’s a waste, vote for me instead”, how about something that builds on a mockup of that? Tagline: “With AV, he could”, something like that.

Frankly this competition is ideal for a B3ta style photoshop challange, and everyone should be doing their own one anyway. A few thousand individual posters designed with different messages will be more effective than a centrally designed poster produced by the no campaign.

My idea is to rip off UKIP’s election poster – have a picture of opponents of AV with “sod the lot of them – AV makes it easier to get rid of corrupt MPs” then on the back explain the argument in more detail.

I say keep away from the expenses scandal. As far as the case for reform goes. the potential for democratisation is a million times more important than a few thousand pounds going missing.

It’s demonstrable that safe seats were linked to corrupt practice, Reuben. You kill two birds with one stone by approaching the expenses argument 1) that you’re helping to stick it to fat cat style MPs and 2) you’re getting the level of democracy that makes it easier to deal with them yourself each election.

Here is my contribution:

http://don-paskini.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-win-referendum-on-voting-reform.html

I think the key message of the Yes campaign should be “Vote Yes if you hate the Tories”.

How about:

“Did you like voting tactically in the last election? Vote for AV once to end the need for tactical voting forever”

#9

Doesn’t AV mean that voting tactically becomes a key part of every election from now – where you allocate your different preferences is surely a ‘tactical vote’ isn’t it?

#9

That would be just as intellectually dishonest as Tom Harris’ poster.

No voting system removes the need for tactical voting.

In STV, if you think your preferred candidate will come top anyway you can increase the value of your later preferences by not voting for them. Effectively you are getting other people’s votes to do your work for you.

AV encourages you to vote for a party you don’t want to win in order to put pressure on the party you do want to win to move ideologically closer to them. (Of course, if too many people do this, a party no-one wants to win may in fact win!) So anti-immigration Tories might first pref UKIP or BNP even if they want the Tories to win. People like me might be encouraged to vote communist even though we would prefer Labour to communist!

How about…

In exchange for even more seats for our weird combination of closet Tories and straw chewing yokels, we’ll gerrymander you out of parliamentary influence and eternally continue to assist our coalition partners in widening inequality, wrecking the NHS, forcing you to work until you drop until you’re eligible for whatever pittance of a pension we, your betters, feel you deserve. Vote AV”

Sarcasm fans might prefer “Vote AV and keep the Tories out”

“MPs like Tom Harris hate the idea of any kind of reform because it threatens their safe seat fiefdoms and makes it much easier for voters to gang up to get rid of them.”

There’s no reason why Tom Harris should be worried about AV from a personal point of view: he got 52% of the vote in the last election, with the second-placed candidate on only 20%. His seat would still be perfectly safe under AV.

AV won’t get rid of safe seats. It might reduce the number of safe seats, but not by nearly as much as some reformers are arguing. Rupert Read, in the piece linked to, makes a false claim that “almost all” MPs were elected with only a plurality of votes; in fact about a third had an outright majority. Add to those the seats where the MP didn’t quite get 50% but still had such a big lead that, in practice, transfer votes would be very unlikely to overturn it, and you still have a very large number of single-party fiefdoms. There are also be some currently marginal seats (mainly Lib Dem ones) that will probably become much safer under AV.

This issue highlights what will be the central problem for the yes campaign: how to get people excited about a system that on paper seems better and fairer than FPTP, but in practice would probably make very little difference. My own feeling is that supporters of real electoral reform should stay well away from this referendum: if AV is going to lose then there is no point in compromising our principles trying to get it, and if AV wins, better that we shouldn’t seem satisfied with it.

Zeke,

I agree. Those of us who support a proportional system should be campaigning to get that option included on the referendum, rather than convincing people to vote for a system that isn’t proportional and, as you say, will make rather less meaningful difference than we might perhaps hope.

This is also far more urgent as the nature of the referendum will be finalised long before the actual vote takes place, so we have to act quickly.

the potential for democratisation is a million times more important than a few thousand pounds going missing.

Maybe, but its far easier to sell and motivate people on the expenses scandal

My own view is that the right wing media will kill this with their usual scare and frighten tactics. They want a Rigfht wing govt, and anything that threatens that must be destroyed.

Look at what they did to Clegg in the election. His party was put under huge attack and it worked. The Lib Dem vote when down. And he will get the same treatment come the next election.

Like the coalition government?
Then let’s have it forever.

Maybe, but its far easier to sell and motivate people on the expenses scandal

Because an AV voting system eliminates the risk of a parliamentary expenses scandal?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/mp-pay-row-sparks-questions-in-australia-1688074.html

What was that we were saying about dishonesty? AV does little about the safe seats problem – as stated upthread about a third of MPs are in seats so safe that they win 50% or more of the votes as it is. It’s also less proportionate than FPTP. Maybe the line to stick with is that it will screw the Tories – except that this increasingly doesn’t look like happening either. Hmm.

What do we want?
AV
Why do we want it?
Erm…

The pro-campaign should focus on AV as a means to end punch-and-judy politics. AV would mean that politicians would have to appeal to supporters of other parties in order to gain preferences, so they can’t attack other parties too harshly or they risk alienating such support. The pro-side should focus on shifting us to a less tribalist political culture, which is a huge turn-off for most people.

16 – The lib dem vote went up, not down. Just not as much as the polls expected. Probably at least partly due to the pressures of tactical voting.
17 – I don’t think AV is particularly likely to encourage coalition politics. Various analyses suggest they’re going to be a pretty permanent feature of the electoral landscape for some time to come, whether we’re on FPTP or not.

I’m afraid I don’t have any poster ideas :p

Tim, it is an improvement on FPTP to reduce safe seats to 1/3 (and with boundary changes and larger constituencies probably more so). But you are correct about the proportionately of it – it could under some circumstances be less proportional and more majoritarian (something Tom Harris doesn’t know – in the comments on his blog he thinks the opposite). This is a case of AV v FPTP and on balance I think AV is better for the following reasons:

(1) It reduces the safe seat issue
(2) It means politicians have to be more adult, and appeal to voters second preferences.
(3) It increases the space for small parties to keep deposits and encourages more independents.
(4) It at least stops the situation of hated MPs staying in due to split opposition.
(5) the prominent people opposed to the change are generally being arseholes – if it is such a bad idea to change then why lie?

Someone should get Beau Bo D’Or on the case!

Big type:
“THEY USE IT TO ELECT THEIR OWN LEADERS”

Small type:
“Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were chosen as leaders of their parties by a form of AV (Alternative Vote)”

(Photo of Clegg and Cameron)

Big type:
“SO WHY ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR US?”

Small type:
“The Conservatives don’t want to allow British elections to benefit from AV: a fairer and more democratic system than the antiquated ‘first-past-the-post’ one we’ve had for the last 300 years.”

(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/michaelcrick/2010/02/how_av_made_cameron_tory_leade.html … not actually sure about the Lib Dems tho?)

A variation – in England at any rate could be:

It’s good enough for the Scottish Parliament.
It’s good enough for the Welsh Assembly.
It was even good enough for the Conservative Party to elect David Cameron as their leader.
So why should British general elections be stuck with a 300-year-old system?

Tim J: “It’s also less proportionate than FPTP”

At some of the recent general elections the ratios “FPTP votes:seats” would have been more proportional than the ratios “AV first prefs:seats” under the assumptions that FPTP votes would always equal AV first prefs and that Uniform Transfer is – like Uniform National Swing – a reasonable approximation. Neither is necessarily true

At some of the others (2010, for instance, or 1992) the reverse would have been true, and AV would have been “more proportionate”.

I don’t believe it even makes sense to ask which of AV and FPTP is “more proportionate” – neither is a PR system. In any given election one will by coincidence give a result closer to PR than the other, but which one it is will be largely meaningless.

“Vote from hat”, where all votes in a constituency are placed in a (large) hat and one is drawn randomly to give the result is likely to be significantly more proportional than either AV or FPTP, but I won’t support it if it appears in the referendum despite being in favour of PR because it’s terrible in most other respects.

Meanwhile, as a voting system for single-seat constituencies, AV is much better than FPTP for the reasons Planeshift gives at 21.

21/25 – I agree entirely that AV is, in some ways, a better system than FPTP. It’s just that a campaign on its behalf that pushes it as the answer to dodgy expenses, or as an end to safe seats would be based on a flat-out untruth.

Joshua,

Since when have MSPs and AMs been elected by AV? They are elected by the Additional Member System (or mixed member PR, to give it another name), which is actually a proportional system – unlike AV.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_representation

both posters refer to emotions that have nothing to do with the vote that is planned to take place. the anti-intellectualism of both underline for me that referendums perversley and unpredictably strenghten the interests of the rich and the powerful rather than the people in almost all cases. I think im against because it could lead to less propotional elections (see the jenkins report and the dissenting bit at the end by one of its authors. It could also make it harder for minorities to get elected (most people who want reform amongst public want greater variety of voices in the parliament) by meaning they have to get the second preferences of big parties so plaid cymru and greens could struggle and we may not see shock victorys like galloways and richard taylors again, but you cant have intellectual arguments you gotta go with dirty emotionalism maybe im to soft for politics.

What about “We can’t go on like this?” as a tagline..? Worked well for someone else… erm… *cough*

Someone’s probably suggested this already, but I’m too lazy to read every comment. How about getting an independent polling firm to find out how many people voted for a party that wasn’t their first choice, and making a big deal out of that number?

“X% of you voted for someone you didn’t want in power under First Past The Post. Call that democracy?”

Got one. Formatory breakdown of it here – requires additional streamlining.

What do we want? – Fairer votes / fairer democracy / etc.

When do we (the Great British Public) want it? – 1994 (%age of people who votes lib+lab+green). 1997 (same). 2001 (same). 2005 (same). 2010 (same).

When will we get it? – (April?) 2010 (Gov’t of the day put out an AV bill, it only didn’t become law due to parliamentary wash-up)

So why a referendum? – Conservatives being cocks. Vote for it one more time plz. thxbai.

Could quite easily do a lolcats “I can haz AV nao plz”… not sure if it really captures the intellectual and moral argument though.

Advertising agencies and graphic designers have little to fear from Tom Harris. The anti-AV poster has far too many words, mostly superfluous (eg “on May 5″; the dates of elections and referenda are conveniently provided on the polling card sent to every eligible voter and do not require repetition). Posters are not essays. The choice of Antique Olive type on an orange background is reminiscent of Liberal Democrat campaign leaflets.

Nor do the the pro-AV side offer a threat to livelihoods. The mistakes are almost identical to those of Tom Harris, even down to the use of Antique Olive.

All of my criticism can be found in the campaigning guides provided to candidates and agents off all parties. I’m not just making it up.

And I hate it when people say “leave it to the professionals”. But on this occasion, I would concede. And, no, I won’t be submitting my own pro-AV poster…

The best bit about Harris’s poster is the way in which he uses the phrases “us” and “them” above a picture of a polling station and a group of MPs, respectively. Surely the captions should be reversed, considering he is an MP?

To an extent I agree with #33 on this one – if we want a decent market campaign it needs to involve marketing professionals who know what they’re talking about.

The problems I see with what has been suggested so far (and with Harris’s anti-AV poster design) is that all of them contain too much information. Your Joe Public (or even Jane Public) isn’t going to read all that on a poster for a commercial product, so there even less likely to read it on a poster about a political issue which many of them don’t give 2 hoots about. I think with something like a poster campaign, there’s a lot to be said for the Keep It Simple, Stupid methodology.

What we need is something short, sharp and punchy that relates to the pro-AV view and will entice people to find out more about the campaign. It needs to be a hook essentially to get people interested enough in the issue and the ‘Yes’ campaign for them to actually bother voting for it. Overloading them with textual information or even stats doesn’t do that and will turn a lot of people off completely.

Similarly, I’d be wary of going down the Tory hatred route on this one because it will immediately put off a lot of people who did vote Tory but who aren’t natural Tory voters. It also runs the risk of making the idea of AV come across as something that is only of importance to a particular brand of politics – and that’s dangerous in this case as the brand in question happens to be the one that lost the election and the one that a lot of non-politically minded people regard as failing them. It would also provide easy cannon fodder for Murdoch and his ilk in terms of them launching a press campaign against the idea. Do we really want to be handing the opposition an easy means to score points against us and turn the general public against the idea?

The most sensible idea I’ve seen so far is #32′s idea which is short, simple and plays on a fairly well known piece of pop culture that will appeal to a sub-section of society. However, even this idea has it’s flaws as a basis for a poster campaign – namely that it is only on section of the public who will make the connection to lolcats. This immediately limits your appeal to (mostly) a certain age group and socio-economic demographic and that is a *bad* thing. However, that being said, if it were a poster that would be part of a bigger range of campaign posters then it could work….if the other posters are ones that stick with the simplicity but alter the message or cultural reference to appeal to a whole range of voters from across the political landscape.

Andy – is there no marketing budget at all for the campaign? Part of me wonders if it’s worth you guys getting in contact with some London artists and arts marketeers who may be willing to help you out with both the design and the best/most effective way to get the message across for little money.

This is so obvious I’m sure it’s been thought of already, but the slogan could be “AV: it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3″.

Chaise: There’s Ashcroft’s marginals polling, which utterly messed up polling for second and third preferences such that the figures returned are basically useless, but did give an interesting breakdown of AV first pref versus FPTP first pref:

Around 5% of voters for the big three parties would give a different AV first pref to their FPTP first pref.

I don’t think this is especially useful data, though – firstly, it only applies to a bunch of Conservative marginals; secondly, the introduction of AV would increase local campaigning in seats that were previously not targets which might skew this more; thirdly this far out from an election quite a lot of the FPTP first prefs are probably not considering tactical voting and are more likely to be honest anyway.

AV: Vote with your conscience, not tactics.

Picture: Two smug looking politicians with non-denominational rosettes, and a third silhouette.

Poster proposal emailed to takeitback. Enjoy.