Simple, but misleading.

The video shows all the cotes being redistributed when, in reality, many of them will be thrown away, reducing the target required and making the majority support claim a joke.

It would have been better without the opinionated hard sell at the end. Simple and tested, by whom (oh, I see, not many)? End tactical voting – what evidence? End extremism? I bet Tory MPs will still be elected (jk). A real choice? Nah, you get to choose between the candidates chosen by small groups of people, that’s Hobson’s Choice.

Anyway, the named checked constituency where the MP got only 29% of the vote is Norwich South (Charles Clarke’s former constituency) which is now held by the Liberal Democrats!

My guess is that the problem was Charles Clarke:

Vote share since 1997
Clarke 51.7, 45.5, 37.7, 28.7
LD 18.6, 22.6, 29.0, 29.4
Cons 23.7, 24.8, 22.7, 22.9

The Cons vote is fairly static, the LD vote has increased since 97, but no change since 2005. Clarke has haemorrhaged votes (2010 Clarke lost 9%, Greens gained 7.5%). Of course, in 1997 AV would have made bugger all difference!

@ 1 Richard blogger

“A real choice? Nah, you get to choose between the candidates chosen by small groups of people, that’s Hobson’s Choice. ”

But you can’t assess AV in a vaccuum. It’s being offered as an alternative to FPTP, which is worse in this respect because it makes it harder for independents and small parties to get votes.

“Of course, in 1997 AV would have made bugger all difference!”

So what? He got more than half the votes. AV is supposed to make voting fairer, it doesn’t fail just because it delivers the same result as FPTP in some cases.

The video shows all the cotes being redistributed when, in reality, many of them will be thrown away,

Except more votes are thrown away in the system we have now. Usually, a much bigger percentage than what the winning party gets

@1. Matthew Rees

“The video shows all the votes being redistributed when, in reality, many of them will be thrown away, reducing the target required and making the majority support claim a joke.” Erm, well…

To be technical, people who don’t vote at all are deemed to have abstained from the election as a whole and to be indifferent as to who wins. We don’t include them in determining whether an overall majority has been achieved (and very few MPs come anywhere near winning with an overall majority of the electorate).

Under AV people who have not marked sufficient preferences can be said to have abstained from further participation in the election (and indeed to be indifferent among the continuing candidates). Therefore the eventual winner always has an absolute majority of votes in the decisive round.

More practically, even when the “exhausted ballots” are discounted the few eventual winners who do not win an overall majority of all valid votes will always come very close to it – while with FPTP the winner may be elected in the teeth of the opposition of the great majority of voters. Do you think that is more democratic than the outcome under AV?

In fact in many constituencies (perhaps even Norwich S in 2010) AV would give the same result as FPTP – but it would confirm that the winner had widespread backing and had not got in by the back door, simply because the opposing vote was split, and would thus confirm their legitimacy. In Norfolk we had:
- two overall majorities (one LD, one Con)
- five where the Con shortfall was less than the Ukip vote)
- one Con where the shortfall would have been made up by the Ukip vote and a fairly small proportion of the LD vote
- one LD who would probably have won with less than 50% of the initial valid vote with transfers from the Greens and anti-Labour transfers from Con supporters – but at least we would have known how many of his votes came from genuine LD supporters and how many were tactical votes from other parties’ supporters – which makes AV results a good deal more transparent, as well as “fairer”, than those thrown up by the haphazard operation of FPTP.

Whew

AV is one of many issues being discussed on our new forum, Cutting Edge UK, which was set up following the closure of the MSN UK political boards on 21st March. An input from contributors to this excellent website would be most welcome:-
http://cuttingedgeuk.proboards.com/index.cgi

Please note the the Cutting Edge UK comments board mentioned in 6. Ivan White is filled with a mish-mash of misunderstandings. Pro-AV contributors should add some balancing comments.