I Mean It, Get Out The Fucking Vote #yes2av
So the polls are showing the Yes campaign massively behind the No campaign. I’m already seeing people all over the place criticising aspects of the way the campaign’s been run, like they’ve decided we’ve lost.
We haven’t.
There are two very, very important points to be made here. The first is that polls are usually more accurate *before* an election campaign starts than during. Do you remember ‘Cleggmania’ last year? It evaporated – and the election came out almost exactly as anyone would have predicted in March.
The second is that it’s going to be down to who can get the vote out on the day. Most people don’t care about this referendum one way or another. THEY ARE WRONG NOT TO CARE – this is literally the most important decision they will ever make, and will affect everything from crime policies, to immigration policies, to tax levels, to how healthcare is run, for decades to come. But we’re looking at something like a 30% turnout. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. The No campaign have no real volunteers. They’re reliant on Tory activists and a few of the more moronic Labour people who can’t tell when they’re being used to entrench the Tories in power for another century. They’re winning the air war because they have money and we don’t, but we have volunteers. We need more though.
And this doesn’t even just affect the UK. I have seen two Canadian friends (Plok who comments here regularly and the comics blogger David Uzumeri) beg British people on Twitter to vote Yes, because then the Canadians will take notice and might be able to avoid ludicrous results like the one they just had.
The No campaign DO NOT DESERVE TO WIN. There have been faults with the Yes campaign, and whether we win or lose you can expect to see them gone over ad nauseam. But the No campaign has been built entirely on lies. The No campaign are liars, and they are lying to you in order to keep control over you. The one time I’ve met any No campaigners in real life (three local Tories who turned up for half an hour to do a spoiler stall near ours, before giving up), they joked about all the lies in their leaflets.
Understand this – the decision you make on Thursday will determine the make-up of the government for the next century or more. Do you want another century of the broad liberal-left being split between two, three or more parties, and the Tories winning two thirds of elections while getting around a third of the vote? Of ‘elected’ dictatorships with unshiftable majorities destroying industries or taking us into illegal wars when only 30% of people voted for that party? Because that’s what a No vote will mean. It’s what not bothering to vote will mean. It’s what not getting everyone you know out and voting yes will mean.
VOLUNTEER, NOW! Here’s a list of events in your area. Here are the phonebanks you can help out at. If you don’t do this, you forfeit your right ever to complain again that the government you got isn’t the one you voted for.
No2AV Objections Answered #yes2av #no2av
I’ve been volunteering for the Yes campaign for a while now, and I’ve heard surprisingly few arguments put to me against AV and for First Past The Post. I’ll try, in this post, to answer all of the ones I’ve either seen online or come across while campaigning. Some of these arguments appear strong at first, others pitiful, but they’re all genuine arguments from genuine No supporters. I’ll try to put a case against the arguments, but you may, of course, remain unconvinced.
If you have other arguments, please make them in the comments. However, be aware that I have a fairly strict moderation policy – genuine discussion gets as much free reign as possible, but derailing and acting in bad faith gets you banned.
It’s Too Expensive
I’ll deal with this one first, because it’s the main plank of the No campaign’s advertising, and it’s simply a lie. They’ve taken advantage of the fact that there appear to be no laws regulating political referendum campaign advertising (as opposed to election campaigns) to simply make up a huge number as the new cost.
It’s Too Complicated To Explain
This one comes from none other than David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who has a first class honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford university. Shame that degree obviously didn’t require learning to count. AV is a simple system – it’s a run-off, where the least popular candidates get eliminated, like in X-Factor. Except you rank the candidates in order so you can have an ‘instant run-off’ as they call AV in America. Just keep knocking out the least popular candidates until there’s a definite winner.
FPTP is more complicated, if you’re a voter who wants to influence the result.
Only three countries use AV in General Elections
This is just the argument from popularity. It means we should never be the first to do anything, or even among the first.
AV isn’t a proportional system
No, but neither’s FPTP. However, AV is likely to produce a far more proportional outcome, most of the time, because more people’s votes will count towards the outcome. And it’s far easier to move from AV to a proportional system like STV or AV+ (both of which are very, very similar to AV and would require only minor tweaking rather than a complete overhaul) than it is from FPTP. Anyone who wants electoral reform should choose AV – it’s both an improvement in itself and (if the people of the UK decide it’s what they want) a first step towards an even better system than that.
Nobody likes AV
I do. I’ve dealt with this one here.
I Want To Upset Nick Clegg
If you want to upset Clegg, vote against the Lib Dems in the Council elections at the same time, instead. Clegg, to be honest, isn’t all that interested in voting reform – it’s a big issue for the Lib Dems generally, but his own policy interests have been mostly in the areas of foreign relations (especially Europe) and civil liberties. I’m sure he wants a yes vote, but he won’t be unduly upset if it doesn’t go through.
On the other hand, me, my wife, Floella Benjamin, Eddie Izzard, Tony (Baldrick) Robinson, the leadership of the Labour party, Tony Benn, Colin Firth and my mate Dave (to take a random sample of vocal Yes supporters) *will* be upset if the No campaign wins, while Nick Griffin, Ian Paisley, David Cameron, Simon Munnery and Mark Millar will be upset if the *yes* campaign wins.
But rather than making decisions on major constitutional reform based on which public figures it’s likely to upset or cheer, why not decide based on the issue itself?
I want to end the coalition government
Thought experiment. You’re a Lib Dem MP. Your party’s in the odd position of both being in government for the first time in its history and having the lowest poll ratings it’s had in twenty years. You’ve just lost a huge number of council seats in a horrible local election, *AND* on the same day you discover that people have voted to keep the same unfair voting system which is biased against your party and which you’ve campaigned against all your life. Do you:
a) think “Oh, well now’s the *perfect* time to force a General Election! I like nothing more than losing my seat and seeing my party wiped out for a generation!” or
b) Not do that, and keep your job for at least another four years?
I like strong government
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of strong government – after all, the strongest form of government is dictatorship. I prefer a weak government that’s the servant of the people, rather than a strong one that makes the people its servant.
That said, AV isn’t any more likely to bring in coalitions or hung parliaments. In Australia, they’ve had *one* hung parliament in the last ninety years. In Britain, meanwhile, four of the last ten General Elections didn’t lead to conclusive results, and led to a rerun a few months later, a Labour government propped up by the Liberals, a Tory government propped up by the Ulster Unionists, and now a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition.
What causes hung parliaments and coalitions isn’t a particular voting system, but who people vote for.
The system we have has worked for centuries!
No, it’s worked for just over sixty years. Before that we had a weird hodge-podge system with some seats being STV or AV and others being FPTP.
It’ll help the BNP!
The BNP are one of only four parties against AV – the other three being the Tories, the DUP and the Communists. This is because AV is an anti-extremist system. It helps small parties that can still appeal to something of a broad base (e.g. the Greens), but small parties who appeal *only* to a small, bigoted minority won’t get anywhere, thanks to the need in AV to win the support of 50% of people who express a preference.
Some people get more votes than others
No, everyone gets one vote in each round of counting. Those whose top preference stays in for that round are counted as voting for that person again, while those whose top preference was knocked out get counted for their next preference.
Winston Churchill didn’t like AV
Churchill also didn’t like votes for women, supported sterilisation of the ‘feeble-minded’, held a number of racist views… and, in short, held all the views one would expect of a member of the Conservative Party who was twenty-seven when Queen Victoria died. While in many ways of course an admirable man, his views as to what was a suitable system for the Britain of the early 1930s might not be the best guide to what is best for the Britain of 2011.
Hitler liked PR, Superman doesn’t. Who do you prefer, Superman or Hitler?
This argument from the comic writer Mark Millar on Twitter was apparently intended seriously. He seems to have forgotten that Hitler was a fascist dictator, and one of the defining features of fascist dictators is their lack of support for democratic elections of any type.
Superman remains unavailable for comment as to his views on electoral reform.
ETA: wonderful Yes campaign postcard:
The Alternative Vote system
In a little under nine months, the British people will be voting on changing our voting system from First Past The Post (FPTP) to the Alternative Vote system (AV).
The Liberal Democrats want to go much further and have the Single Transferable Vote system (STV), while the Tories hate the idea and want to keep things as they are. Labour put AV in their manifesto, but are fighting it now because that’s what Labour do.
So it’s a compromise.
But it’s a compromise that solves one of the two main problems with our voting system, and will make it easier to solve the other one, so I would urge you to vote yes in the referendum.
There are two main areas where our voting system is unfair. The first is proportionality, which AV does little to address. In the last election the Tories got an MP for every 35,000 people who voted for them, Labour got one for every 33,000, the Lib Dems one for every 120,000 and the Greens one for every million or so. That’s not fair, and should be changed, but unfortunately while the Lib Dems and Greens want to change that, Labour and the Tories don’t. I wonder why?
But there is another aspect which is equally unfair, and that is preferentiality. First Past The Post, our current system, is a winner-takes-all system. But it may well be the case that the majority don’t support the winner. Imagine a case where you have three parties – the Evil Bastard Party, the Quite Nice Party and the Very Nice Party. In a constituency, 34% of people vote for the Evil Bastard candidate, 33% for the Quite Nice candidate and 33% for the Very Nice candidate. The Evil Bastard candidate then wins – even though the Quite Nice supporters would rather have the Very Nice candidate than the Evil Bastard, while the Very Nice people would rather the Quite Nice candidate. The vast majority of people are then unhappy with ‘their’ MP, who represents ‘them’.
This kind of thing does happen – my friend Dave often uses the example of Hazel Blears, the Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, who is horribly unpopular. It’s probably fair to say that in that constituency most Lib Dems would have preferred the Tory candidate to her, and most Tories would have preferred the Lib Dem (and the Socialist Worker candidate stood as TUSC/Hazel Must Go!). So that constituency has an MP who 60% of the voters wanted out.
The Alternative Vote fixes that.
How It Works
Everyone is given a ballot on which is listed all the candidates who are standing, The voter then ranks them in order. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the first-preference votes, that candidate is the winner. Otherwise, the lowest-scoring candidate is knocked out, and the second-preference votes from them go to the other candidates. This carries on until one candidate has more than 50% of the votes. This means that whoever wins, more than half the voters think they’re not the worst alternative.
An example – imagine we have four parties (Red, Blue, Yellow and Green) and nine voters who vote as follows:
Voter 1 Yellow Green Blue Red
Voter 2 Yellow Blue Red Green
Voter 3 Red Blue Yellow Green
Voter 4 Red Blue Green Yellow
Voter 5 Yellow Green Blue Red
Voter 6 Red Green Blue Yellow
Voter 7 Blue Green Yellow Red
Voter 8 Blue Red Green Yellow
Voter 9 Green Red Yellow Blue
Round 1 – We have 3 Yellow, 3 Red, 2 Blue and 1 Green first preferences. Green is eliminated as it has the fewest first preference votes, and the votes redistributed:
Voter 1 Yellow Blue Red
Voter 2 Yellow Blue Red
Voter 3 Red Blue Yellow
Voter 4 Red Blue Yellow
Voter 5 Yellow Blue Red
Voter 6 Red Blue Yellow
Voter 7 Blue Yellow Red
Voter 8 Blue Red Yellow
Voter 9 Red Yellow Blue
Round 2 – We have 4 Red, 3 Yellow and 2 Blue , so Blue are eliminated
Voter 1 Yellow Red
Voter 2 Yellow Red
Voter 3 Red Yellow
Voter 4 Red Yellow
Voter 5 Yellow Red
Voter 6 Red Yellow
Voter 7 Yellow Red
Voter 8 Red Yellow
Voter 9 Red Yellow
We now have 5 Red votes, which is more than 50%, so Red wins
Advantages Of The System
The principal advantage of this system is that there is no longer any such thing as a ‘wasted vote’, and allows people to vote *honestly*. The VAST majority of people in this country, in my experience, don’t vote so much out of support for one party but to keep the other lot out. This is one reason, for example, why so many people are screaming ‘betrayal!’ at the formation of the coalition. Many people supported Labour, but because Labour couldn’t win in their seat, they voted Lib Dem to ‘keep the Tories out’, rather than because they actually supported us.
But of course this works every way – there are Tories who vote Lib Dem to keep Labour out and Lib Dems who vote Labour or Tory to keep the other party out. (There don’t seem to be many Labour or Tory supporters who vote for the other big party to keep the Lib Dems out, at the moment, but there probably will be in any future FPTP elections). And there are many, many supporters of smaller parties who know their party hasn’t a chance, so vote for the least-worst option.
But if we have AV, at the next election you don’t have to hold your nose. You put the party you actually support in first place, and then if the Legalise Cannabis And Criminalise Sodomy Party (or whatever tiny fringe party most closely matches your views) doesn’t come first, you haven’t ‘wasted’ your vote, and haven’t failed to keep the party you hate most out.
It also has a number of other advantages:
It brings increased representation for smaller parties, but would still keep out rabid extremists. My guess is that it would lead to more Lib Dem MPs, a couple more Greens, and possibly one or two from some of the hard left parties (especially if the various fringe parties co-ordinate their efforts like in the last election, where RESPECT and the Greens worked together). On the other hand, no party that was *hated* by the majority could get any seats, so AV would actually make it *less* likely that the Bastard Nazi Party would get in. (Other far-right extremists, like Racist UKIP, might get a seat or two, but that’s a small price to pay for greater democracy).
It would also mean that a lot of the negative campaigning – ranging from “X Can’t Win Here!” (because now they can) through to personal abuse against candidates – would have to stop. Currently if you’re a Labour politician in, say, a Labour/Conservative marginal, it doesn’t matter if you alienate every Lib Dem supporter by saying “people who vote Lib Dem worship Satan and think Jo Brand is the funniest one on QI” because you’re trying to persuade people not to vote Lib Dem. Under AV, you want them to give you a high second preference, so you’d be more likely to say “I have the greatest respect for my Lib Dem opponent, and urge my voters to give her their second preference” in the hopes that she’d say the same about you.
It would get rid of many safe seats – at the moment, Hazel Blears and her ilk are immune, because unless everyone who doesn’t want her as MP rallies round a single candidate, she gets in by default. Now, so long as she’s the least popular option, out she goes.
And for those who are unhappy with the coalition, it helps send parties a message. If, at the last election, the majority of Lib Dem supporters had put Labour second, and the majority of Labour supporters had put the Lib Dems second, then both parties would have a very strong incentive to work together, knowing that would be what their supporters wanted. On the other hand if the majority of Lib Dem voters had put the Tories second, then it would mean that the Lib Dems would have a clear answer to the cries of ‘betrayal!’
Disadvantages
The only disadvantage I can see – and it’s quite a big one – is that AV is not proportional. But then neither is our current system – and a preferential non-proportional system is better than a proportional non-preferential system like the horrible D’Hondt system we use in the European elections. The system the Lib Dems want – and that I think is the best myself – is called STV (or the British Proportional System), and is both proportional *and* preferential. But the interesting thing is that STV and AV are essentially the same system, except you merge several constituencies together and then have the top few candidates become MPs, rather than just the top one. That means that if AV goes through, it would be pretty trivial to change to STV in the future if enough people want that (and since AV would probably lead to increased representation for parties which want a proportional system, that change might happen in say ten or fifteen years).
So while AV isn’t my favourite system, it *is* my *second-favourite* system, and I’d rather have my second favourite than my most-hated. If you would too, vote “Yes” in May 2011.
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