This image seems to be persuading people #yes2av
This image, sadly, seems to be far more successful at persuading people of the case for AV than anything the official Yes campaign have come up with. Reposting to boost the signal. 
(Not sure of the source of this, but @zombywuf on Twitter is the earliest person I can find to have posted this.)
Zatanna post in an hour or two. Klarion post (hopefully) some time tonight.
#no2AV myths busted 1 #yes2av
One thing the No2AV Campaign Against Democracy (principal funders the Taxpayers’ Allowance, political parties in favour – Tories, DUP and BNP) keep saying about the upcoming Fair Votes referendum is that ‘nobody really wants’ AV.
Now, like all myths, there is a tiny grain of truth here, in that some supporters of a Yes vote in the referendum would prefer a different system. The Greens would prefer AMS, the Lib Dems STV (AV with multi-member seats), some of Labour AV+ (AV with a top-up) and so on.
Of course, there are also plenty of people in the campaign – probably a plurality – who prefer AV to all other systems. But even ignoring that, let’s assume that *all* the people in the campaign prefer a different system.
If that’s ‘not really wanting’ AV then I’d love to be the No2AV people’s boss:
Boss Ah, Noddy, do come in. I’ve asked you to come and talk with me about your next pay-rise
Noddy No-Vote Wow! Great!
Boss Yes. What would you say if I asked you if you’d like a ten thousand pound raise?
Noddy I’d say yes, obviously! That’s fantastic!
Boss Ah. Oh dear. That’s a shame.
Noddy Why?
Boss Well, you see, you said you’d like a ten thousand pound raise. But I’ve only got five thousand pounds to offer you. Unfortunately, if you want a ten thousand pound raise, you can’t really want a five thousand pound raise. That leaves you with the only other option, which is a punch in the teeth.
Noddy That is entirely logical and fair.
Boss punches Noddy very hard in the mouth
Noddy Thank you, that is much better than giving me something I didn’t really want.
Of course, this is the basic difference between supporters of the status quo and those of us who want a more democratic system. First Past The Post, the current system, gives a plurality (sometimes as low as 17% of registered voters) exactly what they say they really want (assuming none of them are lying, or ‘tactical voting’ as it’s known), and the rest get absolutely nothing. It’s not surprising, then, that the people supporting it are unable to understand nuance, and degrees of preference. (This is, after all, a campaign whose supporters are Tories, fundamentalists, fascists, and a handful of New Labour dinosaurs like Blunkett).
AV, on the other hand, finds a compromise that’s acceptable to as many people as possible – not everyone gets their first choice, but most people will work out happier than they otherwise would. It’s not surprising that the people supporting AV would be flexible and work together for a goal that might not be everyone’s favourite system but is a hell of a lot better than what we’ve got now. The whole point of AV is that a lot of people getting something they can be happy with is better than a small number getting something they love while the rest lose out.
It might not be my very favourite system, but I wouldn’t be giving up weekends to go and stand in the wind and rain to try to persuade people to vote for it if I didn’t actually want it. It might not be my all-time dream favourite best thing ever, but the choice between AV and FPTP *is* as simple and clear-cut a choice as between a five grand pay-rise and a punch in the mouth. I know which one of those I’d vote for, how about you?
We have three upcoming street stalls in Manchester, incidentally. All are on Saturdays, between 11AM and 2PM:
Saturday 19th February, Saturday 19th March and Saturday 16th April in St Ann’s Square. I’ll be there – feel free to come along and help out.
For those who don’t fully understand AV, I explained it here.
AV: Why You Should Help The Campaign #yes2av
(Testing out queuing posts to post later here, let’s see if this works…I want to get this post up when I’m in work, so that when I get home I can do a different one)
In April I was having a conversation on Twitter with a comic writer, who was debating how to vote in May. The crux of his argument was that he would never again vote for either of the two main parties, because of their behaviour in government, but that he was torn between two other parties. One had a manifesto he agreed with wholeheartedly, but their support in the city where he lived was in single-digit percentages. The other was much more likely to win, but he couldn’t agree with 100% of their policies (though he didn’t disagree enough to rule them out).
I don’t think it’s right that people should have to make that kind of choice. You should be able to go to the ballot box knowing that your vote will make a difference, whoever you vote for, and be able to vote for the party you think is best.
Most of the people reading this blog are people who support minority parties – whenever we’ve had political discussions in the comments here, there have been Greens, and Lib Dems, and Nationalists, and anarcho-syndicalists, and Libertarians, and in fact every flavour of politics except the hard right and the Big Two. A lot of you are tired, depressed and sickened by only being given an effective choice between two very similar parties for government – I know I am.
A Yes vote in the referendum in May can change that. AV will mean that *all* votes will count, no matter how small the party you support. It’ll mean you never have to choose between your head and your heart when voting. It’ll make millions of people who’ve never had a voice in our system have one.
If you aren’t sure, just have a look at who’s on what side. On the “Yes” side are the more reasonable members of the Labour party (Ed Milliband, Ben Bradshaw, Neil Kinnock, Ken Livingstone and the Compass and Progress organisations, as well as Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society) – the referendum was in the Labour manifesto , the Lib Dems, the Greens, the Pirate Party and basically anyone who’s interested in reform.
The only two political parties to have come out for the “No” campaign are the Tories and the BNP. Joining them are a few Labour dinosaurs like David Blunkett, the unelected Lord John Prescott, the unelected Lord John Reid (the one Labour member even more right-wing than Blunkett) and Lord Falconer, who knows all about democracy as he got his ministerial roles through the very democratic process of being Tony Blair’s ex-flatmate from university, without ever bothering with that pesky ‘standing for election’ business.
So this is about as clear-cut an issue as you can get, really. Either you want a more democratic society, or you don’t – it’s a yes or no question on the referendum.
The problem is, Tories and Lords tend to have more money than people who like democracy. So to beat them, the “Yes” campaign has to think big.
So we’re planning the biggest grassroots campaign in British political history. On Saturday we’re opening the first wave of what will eventually be fifty volunteer phone-banks around the country. We’re also, in a couple of weeks, going to be rolling out a ‘virtual phonebank’ so you can call people from your own home.
The plan is that we will be contacting more people for this referendum than all three major parties contacted in the last election put together. And it won’t just be canvassing – we won’t just be phoning people up and asking them which way they’re voting, we’ll be talking with them, finding out what they think and why. It’ll be the most ambitious political campaign in British history, and it’ll be staffed by volunteers. 140,000 people have already signed up to help, but we need more.
I’ll be popping in to the Manchester phone bank on Saturday to help out, and you should help with whichever phone bank you can. Sign up here.
This is the most important political campaign that will happen this generation. This is your chance to make a difference. If you’re tired of not having your voice heard, if you’re tired of being ignored, if you’re tired of a choice between Tweedledum or Tweedledee in government, sign up to help.
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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