AV Referendum - Why vote yes

Regardless of your feelings towards the Liberal Democrats, it is worth considering them as an example of how unfair our electoral system can be.

In the 2010 UK General Election the Lib Dems received 23% of the popular vote, almost a quarter of all votes cast. However the party received merely 8.8% of the seats in parliament. That's less than a tenth of parliament representing almost 7 million voters.

In UK today we are still using an electoral system designed for a two-party politics which has long since ceased to be representative of the nature of Britain. First-past-the-post now only serves to reinforce the old fashioned views of politics as the struggle between two diametrically-opposed forces.

This is no new problem.

FPTP is unrepresentative and unfair.

It seems that the proponents of continuing with FPTP think that people might be catching on to that. The NO2AV tactics are filled with scaremongering & false dichotomy; they are an insult to the people and pressing to the very limit of what is decent.

It may be that these tactics are used because their own arguments don't make any sense. There are two particular examples:

+ Some people get more than one vote. This is a laughable claim. Rather than one round of voting as we have now, where you can win with the support of  as the largest minority, you have a competition that eliminates candidates  round by round. And everyone votes in every round. Have you ever seen the X-Factor? 

In AV, if no candidate can get a majority of votes, whoever comes last is knocked out of the competition. Here is where the NO2AV idea comes into play. They suggest that a vote for an extreme party counts more because you get a second vote when that candidate is eliminated. What they ignore is that if your first preference candidate has not been eliminated, you vote for them again in the second round or the third round for as long as they are still in the competition. All voters get the same amount of votes regardless of how many rounds of voting it takes to get a candidate who better represents the voters of a constituency.

+ That the BNP will get in. Nonsense. It is FPTP that creates opportunities for smaller (and more extreme parties) to get elected. AV weeds out extreme or divisive candidates for ones who can represent the face of a whole constituency, not just the loudest minority in it. Our democracy is about electing one person to represent fifty thousand; one person to represent fifty thousand in debate and vote; it is not about who 'wins' since winning here means the success of a powerful minority in forcing their view at the exclusion of others.

Now AV is not the perfect solution. But it is the first step in the right direction. It means a move towards greater accountability and a more constitutional politics. Right now we have informal ways of holding members to account. It is to Labour's credit that they chose to kick out a candidate adjudged to be corrupt. However it is often the case that voters must go against their tribal or ideological loyalties to punish a corrupt candidate. AV formalises high expectations of candidates. They must appeal to more than just core votes. Parties must back candidates that can appeal to a broad spectrum, something the known to be corrupt or untruthful can't do.

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References:
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+ Peter Tatchell's 'Democracy: we've never had it so bad'; May 2010;

+ Johann Hari's 'If you get the X Factor you'll get AV'; April 2011;

+ John Cleese on PR, from YouTube;

+ The AV Debate with Andrew Neil; April 2011;

- Supporters of YestoAV:
Tim Farron, President of the Liberal Democrat; Simon Hughes, Lib Dem Deputy Leader; Charles Kennedy, Former Lib Dem Leader; Paddy Ashdown, Former Lib Dem Leader; Ed Miliband, Labour Leader; Eddie Izzard; Tony Robinson; Dan Snow; Stephen Fry; Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, John Cleese, Billy Bragg, Eddie Izzard, John O’Farrell, Tony Robinson & Richard Wilson.