Tuesday, May 11, 2010
More dodgy reasoning on electoral reform
I ought to be absolutely clear: I would be inclined to vote in favour of the principle of the alternative vote. I am not saying that I oppose it. But some of the rhetoric makes me despair.One of the constant refrains is that the alternative vote system ensures that each MP is supported by a majority of their voting constituents. This is sadly wrong.It is wrong because it ignores exhausted ballots. This also plays into the claim that you see no 'wasted votes', because exhausted ballots in AV are 'wasted votes' in the sense that the existing system's opponents use the phrase. Suppose all your favoured candidates are knocked out of the race: then your ballot is cast aside, and no longer counts. Instead, you keep going (possibly) until you have only two candidates left, and pile of exhausted ballots which had no vote for either of them. And the winner has the support of more than half the non-exhausted ballots. In other words, MPs elected under AV don't even have the support of 50%+1 of those voting: they have the support of 50%+1 of those whose votes have made it through the multiple rounds of the counting process.I have no quarrel with that system: I do not believe in restricting voters' choices, which our present system does. But I would never try to defend it on the basis that it guarantees majority support, or that it avoids 'wasted votes'. For it does neither.
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There is an exception to that. I believe that most Australian elections require that, for a vote to be classed as valid, every candidate has to be ranked, so there can be no wasted votes; every valid vote has to make it through to the final round of counting.
Ugh. That's worse! To have to vote for someone you absolutely abhor simply to get your vote counted: it's a crime.
And I imagine it must be quite tedious once the number of candidates gets into double figures.
Yes, pity the poor folk who live in high-profile constituencies.
Phil: but AV does make it pretty rare that you'll get an MP without majority support, or that someone's vote will be "wasted". In most constituencies, the number of rounds required to get past the 50% mark will be pretty small - 2 or at most 3.
After all, the London mayoral elections use "Supplementary Vote", which is a bit of a dog's breakfast of a system, but which has produced majority winners on each occasion.
I'm also not sure that "exhausted ballots" would be experienced as "wasted votes" in quite the same way as now. Once people have ranked the parties they favour, they're probably past caring if the final tally ends up being between two they haven't ranked. One local council ward near us is (I gather) now a Conservative vs UKIP battleground. In an AV system, once I'd voted Labour, Green and Lib Dem (say), I'd probably decide the Tory and the UKIPer could fight it out amongst themselves...
Agree with you re the Australian system. The thought of having to put a number - even the last number available - againt the BNP candidate is horrifying. See also: compulsory voting. Terrible, illiberal idea.
AV does make it pretty rare … that someone's vote will be "wasted".
Let's look at some evidence.
In the '08 London mayoral elections, 16.77% of the votes cast had no second preference and were lost as a consequence (src). One in six voters is not 'pretty rare', and indeed was sufficient to mean that Boris Johnson only had the first and second votes of 47.56% of those voting: not quite majority support.
Sorry, Johnson had 56% if you count in Johnson second preferences on Livingstone ballots, so my last claim isn't quite accurate. But the one-in-six thing is a big problem for you.
Hmm. According to Wiki, a total of 2,415,958 first preference votes were cast.
Of those, 1,043,761 voted for Bozza on their first preference, and 257,792 voted for him as second preference. (Some of those weren't counted, though, as their first preference had been for Ken.)
So a total of 1,301,553 people - or 53.9% of those casting valid first-preference votes - voted for Bozza as either first or second preference.
In any event, I still don't think those ballots are "rejected" for not stating a second preference are "wasted votes" in the same sense that my vote for Labour could be seen as a "wasted vote" in Orpington. People have made a choice not to select a second choice. They had the opportunity to do so.
If we had AV, then perhaps I might still choose only to vote Labour (I wouldn't, but for the sake of argument...). So my vote would be just as ineffectual in the final result, but that would be as a matter of personal choice.
To put it another way: AV means that my vote stops counting only when I stop caring. (UKIP? English Democrats? Meh.)
At the moment, once I've voted Labour, I have no way of expressing the fact that I'd still prefer the Lib Dem over the Tory (yes, even now), thanksallthesame.
I'm not opposed to AV. I shall in all likelihood vote for it when the referendum comes. I support it because it reduces, as you say, to first-past-the-post in a very simple way and is therefore a simple improvement.
But this nonsense about eliminating wasted votes is just that: nonsense. It is simply untrue. I won't support bad arguments or propagate factoids just because I like their conclusions.
AV defenders should stop using this as a defence. I quite like 'your vote counts so long as you care': that has the benefit of being true as well as memorable. But 'your vote will always count' is simply untrue.
when the referendum comes.
Heh. Stranger things have happened, I suppose. ;-)
Given the strength of feeling the Lib Dems attach to any sort of electoral modification, I expect it will happen. I bet they'd up sticks and leave if they thought they were getting stonewalled.
Got linked here today, so thought I'd respond to what some people mean by a 'wasted vote'.
Talking, specifically, from a campaigning perspective, I joined the Lib Dems primarily, but not exclusively, to get electoral reform. This doesn't go far enough for me, but it's a bloody good step in the right direction, as it eliminates or reduces the biggest problems with FPTP, including what I mean by a wasted vote.
Canvassing, knock on door: "Hi, I'm Mat, chair of the local Lib Dems, wonder if you'll be supporting our candidate(s) in the election(s) next month?" Response: "Oh, I've thought about it, but I don't think you can win, so I'd be wasting my vote, I'll vote [Labour/Tory] so I know it gets counted".
The reason every Lib Dem leaflet tries to put in a bar chart showing how well they're doing locally (and the majority, contrary to myth, are fairly accurate and honest, I tend to shout at dishonest ones) is to stop people thinking a LD vote is "wasted".
Those people can now put their honest first preference down, while putting the candidate they would have voted for under FPTP 2nd, or even 3rd and below.
Sure, some people won't put down a preference, so their votes will still be discounted. But they won't be wasted, in the sense that most people campaigning or involved are using the term, those people didn't want to transfer a preference.
You are, of course, correct, there will be a lot of discounted ballots due to lack of transfer. But when I, and others, talk about "no more wasted votes", we're mostly talking about removing peoples fear of voting for a minority candidate and letting the greater of two evils in.
That's what most voters who use the term mean when they talk about a wasted vote, and it's what I mean. Inexact terminology, lovely thing innit.
Ye gods, I wish Blogger would sort their commenting out. "request too large, resubmit", hit back, it's gone, but has submitted anyway, but the subscription hasn't gone through. Ah well.
Mat: Yes, that's what I mean by the term, too. (Except in my case it refers to being a Labour voter in a Tory/Lib Dem area!)
I expect I'll vote "yes" in an AV referendum (though I oppose other measures in the bill as currently proposed, esp over re-drawing constituency boundaries). But equally, I expect the "no" campaign will win.
Heh, I grew up in such an area, would've voted Labour in '92 and '97 if it wasn't a tight LD/Tory marginal. Voted Labour in Exeter in '01, but had already joined the LDs. I was very much a tactical "pro-big-tent" voter up until Blair abandoned what "New Labour" was for during the '01 Parliament.
I actually don't mind the boundary redrawing, the current system is obviously both failing and farcical, some of the disparities are stupid and unjustifiable. It's not how I'd do it (preferring STV on Local Authority boundaries), but it was a clearly stated objective of both Tory and Lib Dem parties to reduce the number of MPS and redraw the contituency boundaries, the Tories got by far the most votes, so we're going with their system with amendments.
I actually don't think the no campaign will win, and also think Clegg's wrong to want it held at the same time as other high turnout stuff, if it was on a different day, only those that cared would vote.
And most of those that care are those in favour.
We'll see, I'm signed up to help run the campaign in my area, so...
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