Exact what is AV?

[Jeneral2885]

People have been ranting about AV and making MPs work harder by getting 50% of the vote. %0% of whose vote?

See:

http://www.av2011.co.uk/Q1.html Basic Explanation

But:

http://www.av2011.co.uk/Q1detail.html So whose votes are counted?

[T_i_B]

1. Most people will have already had the electoral comission booklet

Which explains AV and FPTP pretty well.

In all honesty I haven't seen any leaflets from either of the 2 warring factions, which is suprising given how important this issue is. I'd hate to think that as a nation we are sleepwalking into an inferior voting system.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. I've had a 'yes' leaflet; there's quite a strong yes campaign in this area

Not surprising, when there were 3 Lib Dem MPs in contiguous constituencies here until the last election, and my borough council is overwhelmingly Lib Dem.

[T_i_B]

5. You'd have thought there would be more round my neck of the woods.

My constituency border's Nick Clegg's, and Chesterfield had a Lib Dem MP until last year. Plus there are a few Lib Dem's on the council where I live at the moment.

And even if there are some very staunch Labour areas round here, Labour is not short of pro AV types. Maybe they are more interested in kicking the Lib Dems out of Sheffield town hall then electoral reform?

And my own Labour MP spoke in favour of AV at the election hustings at the last general election, although she's since done a huge U-turn on the issue and is now opposed to AV.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/29/no-to-av-support-114-labour-mps?CMP=twt_gu

All I've seen so far is a pro AV rally outside Sheffield town hall, and lots of backbiting on Twitter.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. While I agree with that site that STV is preferable, I think their examples are unrealistic

They choose some fairly weird numbers to say "this is why AV is not much good". For instance, they imagine a candidate C whose first preference voters divide up their second preference 'honestly' as:
A 600
B 6000
no 2nd preference: 6000

Now, you would think that means that B and C have a fair amount in common, but not A. But then, to try to claim that tactical voting might still happen, they ask us to accept that B's first preference voters 'honestly' divide their 2nd preference as:
A 12750
C 0
no 2nd preference: 0

which implies that voters think A and B have a lot in common, and C is totally different. But they have to come up with an unrealistic division of votes like this to claim that A could ask some supporters to vote tactically in the 1st round. In reality, tactical voting is a risky thing to attempt in AV - it's only worth doing if there's a 3rd party you think you can promote above the 2nd party that you're afraid of, but that means the 3rd party already has to be almost as popular as the 2nd party, for it to work. And, since the 2nd party was almost as popular as your own party (otherwise there would be no point in doing all this), you've just created a new opponent for yourself, with a few more first preference votes than your old opponent had - which have come from your own total.

Worst of all, that site, although saying elsewhere they want STV, not AV, then links, in their 'AV and tactical voting' page, to a Michael White article about Ireland as an answer to 'is this pure fantasy'? But what White describes is "disciplined vote management" in an STV system. It's not the scenario they had put forward at all; it's a description of how a powerful party gets as many seats as possible in a multi-member constituency. It's asking Fine Gael supporters to vary which Fine Gael candidate they put as first choice - which is 'honest' voting for someone who thinks the party is the important thing, rather than an individual candidate. But in no way is it an argument against AV.

[Jeneral2885]

3. Good counter argument

But all I've been hearing from the Yes Campaign is that AV works better because of the 50% pmark. No one fromthe Yes group explained how the 50% will be counted--as the site says--the knock out candidates 2nd preference are the deciding factor. Second, the Yes campaign failed to note whether it is complusory to rank candidates--it is not. So you may end up in a position with a candidate whose 50% votes mostly come from the losing/fringe candidate supproters and not his own.

[Jeneral2885]

6. PSA article with excellent explanation

http://www.psa.ac.uk/PSAPubs/TheAlternativeVoteBriefingPaper.pdf