The referendum is tomorrow, so those of you who dislike our repeated mention of it can rejoice — this is (likely) the last talk of voting systems for some time on the Big Bad Blog.

Before we shut ourselves up, however, we would like to take one last look at the choices. In particular, we are taking a closer look at the Yes to fairer votes and NO to AV sites, and helping you to parse how to vote.

The Caveats

We are going to attempt to be neutral here — both systems have their advantages and disadvantages, after all — but we do have an opinion at the Big Bad Blog, and that opinion is that Alternative Vote is a better electoral system than First Past the Post.

However, we also believe that both the “Yes” and “No” sides have taken up some intensely dishonest propaganda in the lead-up to the referendum. As this is a vote on how we will vote, it is important to us that people vote on the basis of facts, not fiction. We can live with being on the losing side of this referendum … so long as we lose for the right reasons.

Don’t base your votes on these things

Most of the following points are paraphrased from the YES to Fairer Votes and NO to AV websites. Many of the points are actually raised on both sites, disappointingly leading the debate down avenues that have no bearing on the decision at hand.

A couple of the points are based upon what we hear and see when reading newspapers, blogs, or having conversations about politics over a beer.

None, however, strike us as good reasons for voting for or against AV.

Fairness

The most overused word in British politics is out in full force for the referendum. The Yes people actually title their campaign YES to Fairer Votes, thereby ensuring that we never, ever use their slogan. The No side claim that AV will destroy the underpinnings of democracy itself, giving some people a louder voice than others — as though that doesn’t happen under FPTP — while simultaneously giving nobody but Nick Clegg any voice at all.

None of this is actually true.

It all boils down, of course, to how the individual defines a “fair” outcome. Here, for example, is a reasonable set of criteria:

• Every adult citizen is allowed to vote.
• Every voter gets a single ballot.
• No voter need disclose how their ballot was filled to any authority.
• The ballots are tallied honestly, according to pre-existing criteria.

Under the above criteria, both AV and FPTP are “fair”.

While we do not have the definitions used by the Yes and No campaigns, we would not be surprised if “fair” meant to them “the sort of result we want”. As a voter, your definition of a fair voting system probably more closely resembles what we write above: both systems are fair.

MP Accountability

Another reason not to vote “yes” or “no” is over the accountability of our elected officials.

The Yes camp claims that MPs will be more accountable if they must court secondary and tertiary votes. The No camp claims the opposite — that, not needing your vote (on the first ballot), MPs will become completely unaccountable.

The Big Bad Blog has a secret for you: MPs want you to vote for them under First Past the Post. And they will want you to vote for them under Alternative Vote. They don’t enter politics hoping to lose elections — or just win by the skin of their teeth in the sixth round of AV.

A bigger voice … or a smaller one

Again, the “Yes” side claims that you — the voter — will get a louder voice under AV. The “No” side that you will get a smaller one.

The truth? You will still get one ballot, and will be asked to fill it in according to the same rules as every other voter. It will be counted in the same manner as every other voter.

The size of your voice? It will not change.

Tactical voting

The pro-AV camp claims that AV will eliminate tactical voting. The anti-AV camp claim that it will run rampant under AV, and the system will be prone to tampering.

The truth? AV will push tactical voting to the secondary choice — it will remain. And it will be not very much different from current tactical voting, other than that it takes the decision regarding whether or not to vote tactically away: everybody will vote for their actually-preferred first choice and tactical second.

Get rid of extremism

The “Yes” camp claims that extremist parties could never win under AV, as they would need to be listed on second and third ballots — sometimes they can sneak in under First Past the Post.

The “No” camp claims that extremist parties will receive more votes under AV, as voters are no longer encouraged to vote for a party that has a hope of winning.

Both camps are slightly correct, but mostly full of shit — extremists will be extremists, regardless of the voting system. And as long as extremists are fringe groups, they won’t have much of a draw in elections.

The complexity

The No camp claims that placing candidates in order of preference is too complicated for voters, who can do little more than place an X in a box.

The Yes camp counters that ranking things is the way “grown ups” make decisions.

We are left scratching our heads in wonder. Any two-year-old can order their toys from “favourite” to “least favourite”. Get them to five or six years old, and they can even write down the numbers. There is nothing adult or complicated about AV.

And adults make some decisions by ranking things in order of preference. They make others by choosing a single favourite (like in First Past the Post). Still others — choosing a beer in a pub while in a strange part of the world, for example — are made by picking the one that has not been previously tried.

Do not let people try to convince you that AV is complex or special. It’s really pretty simple.

Sending a message

Hope to send Mr. Cameron a message by voting yes? Or Mr. Clegg a message by voting no?

Don’t be silly.

First, if you are going to vote — and you should — you must side with one or the other. You cannot send both of them a message at once.

Second, you are not voting to put representatives of either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat (or any other) party into office, but to choose how such representatives will be chosen in the future. There are no Tory or Lib Dem boxes to check in this vote – or to avoid checking.

Proportional Representation

PR is not on this ballot — there are two choices on the table, FPTP and AV. If you are a fan of proportional representation, that choice is not here — and neither choice makes PR more or less likely for the future.

If the No side wins, opponents of reform will point to it and claim that there is no appetite for voting reform. If the Yes side wins, opponents of reform will gleefully point out how AV was supposed to provide for “fairer” results, “adult” decisions, and accountable MPs. They will wonder aloud as to what the next referendum — though they will likely use the words ‘miracle cure’ – will be.

Balance

The Liberal Democrats are big supporters of AV because they believe it would win them more seats. Other fringe parties think it might be their best chance to win a seat. The No campaign paints a world of unending coalitions, with the third place party holding all the cards.

Little of the above is true.

Had AV been in place for last year’s election, the Conservatives would still have won the most seats, followed by Labour and the Lib Dems. No other party would have won a seat. It is true that the Liberal Democrats would have gained approximately 22 seats, however, at the expense of the other two parties.

On the other hand, in 1997, the size of Labour’s majority would have been greatly increased under AV, giving them an even stronger majority than the one they enjoyed at the time.

Nobody disputes that AV will have an impact on the results — why bother, if it did not? — but arguments that the system creates only coalitions, or cannot give a single party a strong majority, are false.

Coalitions are the result of a public which is very much split as to who it wants to govern them. Majorities are the result of a public who feel quite strongly about who should govern them.

Why you should vote No

The First Past the Post system is about vision. It is predicated upon the manifesto.

A party releases a manifesto in the run-up to an election. They are elected on basis of the contents of that manifesto, which holds within it the party’s vision of the country’s future. If elected, they work to make that vision a reality.

Under AV, such an approach is difficult, and the support for the contents of a party’s manifesto is questionable. As a significant portion of the votes that brought the party to power would (likely) be secondary or tertiary votes, can a party truly have a mandate to bring their manifesto to light?

If you believe that a general election is, primarily, a choice between manifestos, First Past the Post is probably your preferred system.

Why you should vote Yes

The Alternative Vote is about philosophy. It emphasizes the political philosophies of the parties and candidates over the manifestos.

Having a manifesto — a plan — is all well and good, but …

little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain

In the real world, our politicians do not get to deal with some ideal future which allows their vision to come to life untarnished. The real world is a messy place, with changing circumstances and unexpected events.

The real measure of a government is not its ability to carry out its manifesto, but how it deals with unexpected situations. Elections like the recent general election — in which disaster has just struck, in the form of a recession, and we need a plan to deal with it — are rare. Governments like to call elections when times are good, and the plans laid out in front of voters most often have little to do with the issues the next government will face.

So what good is a vision, then, when we need a government that we feel we can trust should terrorists strike, economic calamity hits, or a nuclear meltdown occur?

These are not questions of mandates or manifestos, but philosophies and approaches. By allowing the voter to rank candidates in the order by which they best approximate his or her own philosophy, we achieve a more representative government through AV.

How you should vote

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we believe that the world is an unpredictable place, and a plan — a manifesto — will find cause to deviate in less than a year. Britain is too big, and has too large a place in the world, for it to be otherwise. Look already at the recovery’s setback in late 2010, or the uprisings in the Middle East with the resulting military action and oil price spike.

The game has changed, so must the plan — we believe it to be a better strategy to endorse the plan-makers than the plan itself.

But we understand that others believe differently, and First Past the Post is certainly a better system for manifesto selection. Important though manifestos may be, however, we believe them to be less important than the philosophies and approaches of the politicians who will be forced to make unexpected decisions after taking office.

For this reason, we are voting Yes to AV tomorrow.

As you may be aware, there is a referendum approaching in the UK to determine whether or not to switch from a “first past the post” voting system to an “alternative vote” (AV) voting system.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we have previously voiced our arguments for why an AV system is preferable to the current model, and have yet to hear a convincing argument to the contrary. Indeed, we have yet to hear a single point that was not addressed in our original post.

Still, we understand why some people might still be on the fence, and would like to convince you — if you are such a person — that AV is the way to go. Rather than make further arguments for AV, however, we instead have elected to show you this actual real official video from the people behind the NO to AV campaign:

Believe it or not, this is NOT a parody. It is actually from the NO to AV people.

If the UK voting public is as stupid as the NO to AV people think it is, then they are probably right. There’s no helping us, anyway.

If, however, you disagree with this portrait of the average British voter, then you should vote for AV: we can probably handle it.

Image found at Political Scrapbook.

Here in the UK, there’s a referendum planned for May 5th. That referendum is to decide whether the country should swap the current voting system (known as “first past the post”) for a new system called “Alternative Vote”, or AV.

While the question “why should I care?” is (perhaps) a good one, here at the Big Bad Blog we think a move to AV would be a good idea.

What is AV?

Currently, with First Past the Post (FPTP), when an individual goes to vote they are given a ballot. They mark their most preferred candidate on that ballot, and that’s it. Whichever candidate receives the most votes wins the election.

With Alternative Vote, instead of marking only their most preferred candidate, voters would mark the candidates in order of preference. A candidate needs 50% + 1 vote to win, and if none of the candidates win on the first ballot, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped and the vote is re-tabulated. This continues until a winner is identified.

Why is AV good?

AV does two things, both of them positive.

The first of these is to correct the problem known as “strategic voting”. In a multi-party system, it is inevitable that strategic voting will occur. Traditional supporters of the Liberal Democrats will support a Labour candidate because she is the best chance of beating the local Conservative. A supporter of the UK Independence Party will throw their support behind a Tory candidate in a tight race with Labour because they understand that their party sits on the fringes and has no real chance of winning the seat.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we have a problem with strategic voting.

The need for voters to vote strategically starves parties that are not traditional powers of votes, volunteers and candidates. People who might normally support such parties are instead driven to support the Labour or Conservative parties because they see one of these two parties as the lesser of two evils.

And it’s pretty shitty to have to vote for evil, even if it is the lesser one.

But the alternative (in first-past-the-post) is that votes are split, potentially allowing for a candidate who opposes the majority viewpoint of his constituents to represent them as their member of parliament.

Luckily, the second good thing about AV is that it presents the best opportunity for an MP to represent the majority of their constituents.

This dichotomy of the split vote versus the strategic vote creates a political landscape in which changes are both rare and small. There are no primary elections (like in the US) in which a party can find itself being redefined (as with Tea Party Republicans) or rejuvenated by a young rising star (as with Barack Obama igniting the Democratic grassroots in the 2008 US Presidential election), so a two-party system does not work. Instead, “third” parties must siphon sufficient votes for the big parties to reflect on their political ideologies.

Consider this scenario:

A constituency in which 70% of the population is left wing, 30% are right wing. All 30% of the right wing votes always go to the Conservative candidate, but support amongst the left wing is split as follows:

25% Labour
25% Liberal Democrat
20% Green Paty

In the First Past the Post option, supporters of these parties have two options: they can (artificially) marginalize one of the parties, but win the election (via strategic voting). Or, they can battle it out for supremacy, but ultimately be represented by a Conservative MP (who, with 30% of the vote, has more support than any of the other three parties).

In the current system, either the voters who would vote for the most marginal of the three left-wing parties (the Greens, in this instance) decide to vote differently, marginalizing the political impact of their vote; or the vote is split, and a left-wing constituency is represented inaccurately by a right-wing MP.

Neither of these is desirable. Strategic voting disregards the impact that votes for third party candidates has on majority candidates.

And split votes directly violate the spirit of democracy, as candidates with similar (but popular) ideologies lose to those with less popular (but more unique) ideologies.

In our above scenario, the Green Party would be dropped after the first round with AV voting — given that they are a left-of-centre party, their votes would likely go to the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, and eventually one of them would likely be pushed past the Conservative party and take the seat. The left-wing constituency ends up with a left-wing MP.

All the parties would see that a significant minority (20%) voted Green, and will try to adjust their own politics and policies to attract those votes in the next election. And the Green party would see that they are actually only trailing the Labour party (who eventually win the seat) by 5 points — not 30 or 40, as previously thought — and perhaps even become more relevant in local politics for that constituency. (And, if repeated in sufficient constituencies, nationally.)

Why people think AV is bad

As with everything, there are many out there who do not agree with the Big Bad Blog on this issue. They trot out several talking points, but none of the arguments move the Big Bad Blog much. We explore them here.

There is one that I see that is actually scary: It undermines the “one person, one vote” principle of democracy.

This, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Alternative Vote actually represents. Run-off elections are not uncommon in many parts of the world, and they make sense — if there are a minimal number of votes that must be won, the top candidates are retained (the bottom candidate(s) cut), and the populace is polled a second time.

The Alternative Vote simply streamlines this process to be included in the original ballot.

In our above example, imagine that the 20% of Green voters have their second choice split as follows:

• 10% – Labour;
• 5% – Lib Dem;
• 5% – Tory.

Bringing our new totals to:

• 35% – Labour;
• 35% – Tory;
• 30% – Lib Dem

Some people now claim that those who voted Green have voted twice! This is unfair!

They are right – those people have voted twice. But it’s not unfair, because so has everyone else.

What happened was actually a run-off election. The Green candidate was struck from the ballot, and everybody’s top choice (without the Green candidate) was counted again.

Other arguments are equally weak:

The BNP will get more votes under AV. This is almost certainly true, as some BNP supporters likely vote strategically. But trying to silence a political party should not be the basis under which democratic institutions are built. The BNP would also receive fewer votes if those who vote for the BNP were all shot. This does not make shooting BNP voters to be a reasonable – or democratic – suggestion.

AV is complex. Rank these fruits according to your personal preference: Apple, Banana, Orange, Pear, Strawberry.

You might have had trouble deciding whether you like pears more or less than bananas, but here at the Big Bad Blog, we strongly doubt that you found the exercise hard to follow.

What is complex is trying to game the system by, say, ignoring your second choice for your third so the third choice doesn’t go out on the second ballot. FPTP, on the other hand, is easy to game — if you’re on the left, vote for Labour; on the right, Conservative.

At the Big Bad Blog, we do not want a system that is easy to game, so this “complexity” does not really worry us.

The Alternative Vote is a step towards Proportional Representation. This is simply blatantly untrue. The Liberal Democrats — who are the party that has pushed for AV — want proportional representation, but have settled for a referendum on the alternative vote instead. Because of this, “AV is a step towards PR” is argued.

But AV is actually a FPTP system — it is just such a system with run-off votes, instead of one that causes strategic voting, vote-splitting, and MPs with less than 30% of the vote to head off to Westminster.

How will people vote?

With that said, despite our belief in the superiority of the system, we are expecting the vote for AV to fail for several reasons.

Quorum is unlikely to be met. The Lords have rightly set a quorum for the referendum to be binding. Given that voting is the mechanism by which a democracy is run, it makes sense that the means by which the vote is carried out should not be changed by a small group.

But that very quorum is the thing most likely to cause it to fail. We suspect that most voters are simply voting for a Prime Minister, or voting for the ruling party. They put an X beside what, to them, represents David Cameron or the Labour party, and are done with it. As such, they do not much care whether MPs from individual constituencies broadly represent the overriding political leanings of said constituencies. It is too abstract.

So there is a strong possibility — perhaps even a probability — that quorum will not be met.

The recent election had a 65% turnout, but that was the highest turnout in over a decade for a general election. By-elections, European Parliament elections and local elections tend to get lower turnouts.

It is easy to see how the referendum might not achieve quorum on this basis.

Even if it does, we would have to wonder how the vote would go.

Power in the UK traditionally swaps back and forth between the Conservative and Labour parties. Excepting National/Coalition governments, this has been going on since 1922. More recent history shows the Conservatives gaining power in 1979, and finally being kicked out in 1997 by an electorate in a vote that was more an indictment of the Tories than it was support for Blair’s New Labour.

That Labour party, of course, stayed in power until 2010, where it was voted out. Again, I say Labour was voted out in favour of the current Conservative-led coalition, not that the coalition was voted in. The recession, never-ending wars in the Middle East and an expenses scandal were the root causes of change, not a change in the political philosophy of the electorate.

And Thatcher’s Tories? The beneficiaries of out-of-control inflation in the late 1970s and the “winter of discontent” that preceded the election. And the Labour government prior to Thatcher? A majority of three seats, which took two 1974 elections to achieve.

So both the Labour and Conservative parties do well by the status quo. One left-of-centre party, one right. When the public grows dissatisfied with one, they move to the other. Under the current system, a vote for a third party is thrown away – little more than an act of protest without any real impact.

So the Conservative and Labour parties do not want AV, at all. And neither do their hardcore supporters. Without AV, they get to set the entire political agenda – voters choose between the agenda on the right (Conservative) and the agenda on the left (Labour), without much input into either. AV would change that, and force the mainstream parties to speak to issues in a manner that resonates with the public.

But these parties are also the most popular in the country, with the largest support bases. If they agree on an issue, it may be decided — there is a good chance that people who vote Labour or Conservative in most elections (which is most people) will vote “No” simply because this is what those parties want.

So who will vote “yes”? Supporters of fringe groups will, as will those — like your blogger — who feel that democracy works best when MPs best fit the political views of their constituency.

Unfortunately, we appear to be outnumbered.