The upcoming referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) on 5 May offers the Liberal Democrats a chance to achieve one of their political holy grails – electoral reform, though not in the form that they may have ultimately desired. In the first of our series on the AV referendum, Matthew Elliott from the ‘NO to AV’ campaign outlines their case in favour of the UK staying with the present First Past the Post voting system.
In February this year, when Gordon Brown first mooted the idea of offering the British people a referendum on the Alternative Vote, the electoral reform lobby in Britain were disgusted. Chris Huhne, then Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, wrote in the Guardian ‘not only does AV fail to give voters the power they should have, but it also fails to remedy the unfairness of the present system’. Pam Giddy, then Chair of Power 2010 – before she became the chair of ‘Yes to AV’, fumed on ProgressOnline: ‘without troubling the public for their views he [Brown] has hand-picked a voting system which will not really offer more choice to voters or open up the political system.’
Their anger was understandable. After the disgraceful episode of the expenses scandal and a sharp rise in voter apathy and support for the BNP, the then Prime Minister had dodged making a real decision on democratic renewal and instead plumped for a voting system that the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg would describe as a ‘miserable little compromise’. Yet nine months on Clegg, Giddy and Huhne are now touring the country trying to convince us that the Alternative Vote is actually the answer to our all our woes. If their aim is to engage people in politics, they might like to start by being honest.
‘NO to AV’ is the non-partisan, cross-party campaign against the Alternative Vote in the proposed referendum next May. We are made up of people who would defend the current system, also known as First Past the Post; people who believe in proportional representation; and people who are ambivalent towards the voting system but are dismayed that, in a time of economic uncertainty, Britain is to spend time and money (£90 million according to Nick Clegg) debating the way politicians get elected. What unites us is the belief that the Alternative Vote is a voting system that would not be on the table if it wasn’t the most change that the Liberal Democrats could have wrung out of the coalition negotiations. We don’t want Britain to be saddled with a system that isn’t right for the country and which nobody really wants.
The Alternative Vote is unfair. It breaks the principle of one person, one vote because supporters of fringe parties end up having their vote counted several times while supporters of mainstream parties only have their vote counted once. It artificially inflates the value of third, fourth or fifth preferences, meaning that the candidate coming in third can win. People have a right to know where their vote goes. Voters should decide who the best candidate is, not the voting system.
Alternative Vote is just a politician’s fix, taking power away from voters and allowing the Liberal Democrats to choose the government after each election. The only vote that really counts under this system is Nick Clegg’s. AV will lead to more hung parliaments and broken promises, like the tuition fees U-turn. Our current tried and tested voting system delivers clear outcomes and everyone’s vote is equal. One person, one vote is the fairest way to elect an MP and the most democratic way to choose a government.
We are also concerned that AV would require the introduction of expensive electronic vote counting machines. When these machines have been used in the UK and elsewhere, they have cost several millions and have frequently failed to work. Errors like this would only be borne by the taxpayer.
When it comes to the actual referendum campaign, we are playing catch-up. Those on the Yes side have been around for several decades – such as Unlock Democracy, which grew out of Charter88 (established 1988) – and in some cases even longer, such as the Electoral Reform Society, established as long ago as 1884, (albeit as the Proportional Representation Society, a mission which seems to have been quietly ditched). Once the AV referendum had been proposed by the coalition government, alongside the Liberal Democrats, these groups sprang into action, mobilising their existing networks of support and extracting large amounts of cash through their organisations.
Don’t let the Yes campaign fool you into thinking that their grassroots network has been created since the announcement of the AV referendum – the people they use for their stunts have been part of these overlapping organisations for many years. Yet it speaks volumes that, on the day AV was proposed by the coalition, the Electoral Reform Society put out a press release saying: ‘AV would prove a very modest reform, with second preferences having minimal impact…significant regional imbalances would remain between the main parties.’ They have since changed their tune and are now ploughing significant amounts of money into the Yes campaign.
By contrast ‘NO to AV’ was only established as a campaign back in September. We have had to raise funds from scratch and we have spent the last three months of 2010 putting together a team of people from across the political spectrum, united in the belief that AV would be a backwards step for Britain. We are proud that, with patrons as diverse as John Prescott and William Hague, we can legitimately claim to be the real cross-party campaign in the referendum, as opposed to the narrow special interest groups lined-up behind the Yes Campaign.
Those on the No campaign have cast aside partisan and political differences to work together for a No vote. We are working with volunteers across the entire country – rather than the Yes campaign’s paid regional organisers. We are encouraging the grassroots network that will help deliver that ‘No’ vote next May. We know that there are many out there who will want to campaign against AV in the New Year. We have a new website coming shortly that will be the central hub of our online operation and from there we expect our social networks to grow and our support online and on the ground to expand.
We are confident that as people begin to engage with the AV referendum, support for a No vote will grow. The Yes vote has seen a marked decrease since the AV referendum was first proposed by the coalition in May as people have found out more about the system. Several pro-AV commentators have already decided that the result is a forgone conclusion. But we can’t afford to sit back and let others make this important decision for the future democracy of our country. We can’t afford to let the Liberal Democrats rig future elections in their favour. We can’t afford, in our current economic situation, to spend taxpayers’ money installing a ‘compromise’ voting system that we might ditch four or five years down the line. So on 5 May, we urge UK electors to vote NO to the Alternative Vote.
Click here to respond to this article.
Please read our comments policy before posting.
There is a distinction between an MP being elected on first preference votes only (FPTP) and one elected with a majority of second third and fourth preference votes, which can happen under AV.
The first elects the most popular candidate, the second the least unpopular candidate.
Is this going to make politics more interesting and engaging? Sadly it does seem likely that PR will be on the backburner for many years to come, whatever the outcome.
This anti AV movement is very complacent.
I have been to a few ‘yes to fairer votes’ meetings and they are using something called ‘blue state’ – a phone bank system plus script auto prompting they setup anywhere.
They have thousands of laptops with wireless dongles attached which they setup in pubs and schools etc.. – and their aim is to personally call 4 million core voters and secure the yes vote. They get the details from the the 40 million people on the electoral roll.
If just 5,000 activists across the country go through a 1 min phone call with this system 10 times as in the video link below (10 mins work), thats an amazing 50,000 people contacted. If they spend a 2 hour session doing it (100 mins with breaks etc..) thats 500,000 people.
Do that ten times and thats 5million people contacted.
‘The campaign for fairer votes’ are also getting about £1 million in funding from people like the Rowntree Trust.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdEQK8aeSd0
They are going to be capturing the media by bringing out a zoo of ‘celebs’ like Eddie Izzard, Johanna Lumly coming out in favour of a fairer voting system in TV ads in the run up.
I don’t fancy seeing our electoral system falling into the black hole of AV which means a much worse system than FPTP, safer seats and only two parties as in Australia. What are the ‘No to AV people’ doing about it?
Ha! Look, it’s someone from the Electoral Reform Society!
So Andy White, is AV a
“modest reform, with second preferences having minimal impact”? (as the ERS wrote in May 2010)
Or
“AV would go some way to restoring some much-needed trust in the British democratic process” (as you just claimed, now that your organisation – which has always wanted STV – is giving financial support to the Yes campaign?!)
Andy, when it comes to ‘disingenuous nonsense’ I think you and the ERS are leading the way.
AV doesn’t break the “one person, one vote” principle in the slightest. If 5,000 people vote in a constituency, then 5,000 votes will be counted. This won’t somehow multiply as preferences are transferred. You are trading in the kind of disingenuous nonsense which you can probably get away with when trying to manipulate a lay audience, but this blog is read by an informed audience. They won’t fall for it.
You also have no evidence that the introduction of AV would require the use of electronic voting machines. That’s because there isn’t any. AV counts don’t even take particularly long – the vast majority of results would come in overnight or the following day.
I find it amusing that you try to make a virtue out of the fact that you’ve had to cobble your alliance of “supporters” together in such a short space of time. Is that because you’re struggling to find anyone willing to defend First Past the Post elections besides the politicians and parties the system protects?
British voters want change, and they want a system that ensures MP work hard for them, not for themselves. By forcing candidates to reach beyond their core vote, and to have the support of a majority of those who vote, the introduction of AV would go some way to restoring some much-needed trust in the British democratic process.
Is there confirmed wording for the referendum on AV? I have heard that reducing the number of MPs is incorporated in it, have I heard correctly? Whilst supporting AV, I would be forced to vote No if the number of MPs being reduced is incorporated. It should be a straight Yes or No vote on the Alternative Vote.
The Alternative Vote does not give multiple votes to the supporters of smaller parties and only one vote to supporters of larger parties.
The Alternative Vote tries to simulate many rounds of voting in just one count. That’s why in the US it is called Instant Run-Off.
It gives everybody one vote.
That vote is used in each round of the election.
This vote might be re-distributed if your preferred candidate is knocked out and might be re-distributed again, in each round.
If your first preference candidate stays in the election all the way to the final round your vote is not redistributed but counted for your original choice candidate in each round.
Everyone gets the same; one vote used according to their preference in each round
For a worked example, please see.
http://fairervotesedinburgh.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/vote-early-vote-often/
The only way in which I can at all agree with this is that AV isn’t the ideal system. But we must recognise reality – it is the only alternative system on offer and a ‘No to AV’ will be taken as a ‘Yes to FPTP’ and the debate will be dead for a generation.
FPTP does indeed has the advantage of producing more stable governments, but because it tends to inflate the winning margin beyond what the voters actually asked for – at the last election Conservative MPs were elected by 5:1 over LibDem MPs from a 3:2 vote share. Is that really what the public asked for? It has the major disadvantage of failing to accurately capture anything but a strict duopoly situation, when examined worldwide. That may have been the British political situation once but now, with the non-‘Big 2’ vote at historically high and rising levels, it’s an absurdity. Not just LibDems but UKIP, Greens, Nationalists and regional parties – all are effectively ignored and their voters disenfranchised in all but a tiny minority of cases under FPTP. AV might not be perfect but it at least allows these voters to express their preferences honestly without their preference between electable candidates being ignored.
A vote against AV is a vote for FPTP and for the continuance of the cosy Con-Lab duopoly with no real prospect of changing that. Far from being a ‘politicians’ fix’, AV empowers voters with real power to remove the unpopular without requiring a pre-existing fix between candidates to unite around an opponent. Far from being expensive, the estimated cost of the referendum represents 0.015% of annual government spending – a reasonable one-time expenditure to return power to voters in my opinion.
If we want to reform British politics and permit a real change to develop, we need a voting system which allows people to vote with confidence for parties other than the duopoly if that is what they honestly want. FPTP is not that; AV is.