AV then. Yes or No?

Clever Pun

All the no arguments I've seen are ludicrous.. Also how do the parties elect their leaders???

AV is better for multi party system if it's just the 2 then it doesn't really matter.

As an example: It means that someone could Vote green and show support for their chosen candidate, if enough people don't vote the same way the secondary votes count etc
This means smaller parties will gain credence rather than just voting against con/lab in whatever ward you're in.

itboffin

Just line them all up and shoot them, in fact we have a village game fair this weekend i'm sure the local would be more than happy to swap clay pigeons for politicians.

How much money do they cost us each year? :twisted:

Clever Pun

Greg66 wrote:

No.

Once you start pandering to the wishes of people who (a) lose elections and (b) claim that the electoral system is unfair (because they lost, it seems), you'll be fiddling with the voting system until your children die of old age.

so you agree with the daily mail, the bnp and the conservatives*

*see my earlier post

Jay dubbleU

Yes - because Cameron is against it

dhope

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Yes - because Cameron is against it

Noooo, come up with a proper argument please, the Yes campaign has been done poorly enough already

asprilla

Clever Pun wrote:

All the no arguments I've seen are ludicrous.. Also how do the parties elect their leaders??.

You've got to admit that the 'Yes' campaign has been almost non-existent and poor at best. Greg Dyke on Breakfast the other day, arguing for Yes almost made me vote the other way.

SmellTheGlove

No - firstly because we're being manipulated into answering the wrong question.
We should be voting y/n to the question of whether the system should be changed, not to choose one system over another.
A proper discussion about which systems might suit UK has been pre-empted by Cameron's gang of to$$ers and their 6th form f+++ing debating society mates.
Arguments about "a step in the right direction" are a joke. How many more "steps" do people think would come after a yes vote.
Aside from this it's frankly embarrassing that a government that has joined forces with two of Europe's most unpopular leaders to go into a fiasco of a fight in Libya is expecting an adult population to forget its leaders' failures in judgement of recent memory and have a cosy little tinker with a system of election. WTF are their priorities.

rick_chasey

Hairybuddha wrote:

@dhope I didn't actually say that it would lead to a succession of weak coalitions although that is certainly a risk and there is historical precedent in other countries.

.

There are only 3 nations who use AV for national gov'ts - Austrialia, Papau New Guinea and Fiji.

Australia has had one hung parliament since 1940, and that's this one. That's less frequent than the UK with FPTP in the same period.

I have no idea about the other two.

Butterd2

Let's be honest, the Lib Dems want AV because it will benefit them and the Tory's want FPTP because it's benefits them. Anything about one being "more democratic", whatever that means,than the other is bollox.
Labour can't decide if they would like a guaranteed centre-left coalition every election or if they would rather try to win outright which is why they are split.

FWIW I voted No.

itboffin

I bet you YES voters also voted for Boris

didn't you! :twisted:

CiB

Rick Chasey wrote:

I meant it quite literally. I've never come across anyone who wants to keep things are they are as much as you seem to!
Everyone I know would change stuff one way or another.

Pfft. The voting system & the monarchy are fine and need no improvement even if you lot do get it wrong occasionally and present me with a few years worth of Mr Blair. Change? I've embraced - in no particular order: colour TV, video recorders, PVRs, CDs over gramophones, Mini-Disc, MP3, mobile telephones [brill...], disc brakes, front-wheel drive cars, R4 moving to LW and then primarily to VHF, wine instead of beer, ally bikes, carbon bikes, being married, living in different parts of the country, three careers so far & a fourth under wraps; gawd it goes on. I love it when things change, but only if there's a good reason to. And I draw the line at fashionable haircuts & trendy clothes. There are limits y'know.

Anyhoo. Vote No. Someone has to.

rick_chasey

Surely you need a system which is able to recognise the political landscape, rather than one that falsely skews the result.

AV is a little more able to do that than FPTP.

bails87

I thought CiB was trolling?

Is he being serious?

He knows everyone's votes are counted once, right?

I think it's better to have a goverment that most people are happy with, rather than one that a minority are delighted with.

bails87

Oh yeah, and:


If you don't vote how we tell you to, then it's not democracy! :roll:

Hairybuddha

@RickChasey

Historical precedent of coalition Governments in multi party systems. Sheesh :roll: splitting hairs much?



Anyway - I'll post a picture on here of me eating a recently discarded inner tube if we have an AV system by this time tomorrow!

dhope

Not sure that AV will give any different result.
Will make for more interesting stats though, would be nice to know exactly how many put Green as their first choice etc.
It'd still be a wasted vote most of the time in that it'd never change the result, but to actually quantify support would be an improvement.

thegibdog

CiB wrote:

If I vote for Candidate A and see that no other candidate matches my views and therefore doesn't warrant my second, third etc choice vote, that's my vote spent. Meanwhile my wife will probably pitch up with a deep dislike of A (she's like that, sadly) and vote for B, C, D, E & F. That's not right.

It's not whether the other candidates match your views, it's whether you prefer any of them. Do you really feel that all candidates other than A are equal?

CiB

bails87 wrote:

Is he being serious?

He knows everyone's votes are counted once, right?

No. If no outright winner, the people who aren't really bothered but stick 2nd, 3rd, 4th choice etc votes down anyway have more say than me who only wants A to win and thinks the others are a waste of oxygen, as their subsequent preferences are taken into account until there is an overall winner. My decisive single preference is worth less than Mrs Smoker who has 5 goes at it.

Jay dubbleU

dhope wrote:

Jay dubbleU wrote:

Yes - because Cameron is against it

Noooo, come up with a proper argument please, the Yes campaign has been done poorly enough already

OK- Yes because the Dail Mail is against it

dhope

CiB wrote:

bails87 wrote:

Is he being serious?

He knows everyone's votes are counted once, right?

No. If no outright winner, the people who aren't really bothered but stick 2nd, 3rd, 4th choice etc votes down anyway have more say than me who only wants A to win and thinks the others are a waste of oxygen, as their subsequent preferences are taken into account until there is an overall winner. My decisive single preference is worth less than Mrs Smoker who has 5 goes at it.

I think only A is a waste of oxygen, yet in one vote you manage to cast B, C, D, E, F as all being useless. I hate that your vote is worth 5x more than mine.
</troll>

bails87

CiB wrote:

bails87 wrote:

Is he being serious?

He knows everyone's votes are counted once, right?

No. If no outright winner, the people who aren't really bothered but stick 2nd, 3rd, 4th choice etc votes down anyway have more say than me who only wants A to win and thinks the others are a waste of oxygen, as their subsequent preferences are taken into account until there is an overall winner. My decisive single preference is worth less than Mrs Smoker who has 5 goes at it.

Errr....
What about people who aren't really bothered so stick and X next to Mr A because that's who their parents voted for. And people who are very politically aware and so have thought long and hard about their preferences and vote 1-Mr B, 2-Mr F, 3-Mr D.

You're assuming that because someone is capable of nuance that they don't have a valid opinion.

EKE_38BPM

As the info given to the public has been woeful I spent a little time on Youtube trying to learn more about AV.

If you haven't decided how to vote or just want more info, these are the best three that I've watched are:
AV explained by the Electoral Commision - neutral
AV as explained by a housewife to her family - sort of anti
AV used to buy ice cream from an ice cream van - sort of pro

After watching and learning, I'll be voting Yes.

rjsterry

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Yes for me. It's a much simpler system:



I for one am sick of people saying that they would like to vote in a certain way, but that they still vote for one of the two main parties, because they can't stand the other lot.

+1.

I think some of the apathy towards voting stems from the fact that in a number of constituencies, it is almost a foregone conclusion that Party X's candidate will be elected, whether that's Home Counties and the Tories or Labour and inner cities. That apathy then reinforces the situation further.

AV is far from perfect, but if it starts to make election results less certain, then I think that will be a good thing.

The analogy of a friend going to the corner shop to buy something for you has been used to illustrate AV - if they haven't got a flapjack, I'll have a KitKat. While the analogy isn't quite accurate, FPTP leaves many with the option of asking for a KitKat (knowing that there won't be any KitKats) or asking for a Snickers even though they have a nut allergy, or saying, thanks, I won't have anything.

You're very fortunate if you have a candidate whose views match yours exactly - most have to go for at best 'near enough' or more likely 'least offensive of those likely to win'

And (@CiB) we did do this a couple of weeks or so ago.

notsoblue

Hairybuddha wrote:

It is my opinion however that AV would lead to a succession of coalition Governments which is an inherently weaker state than a Government with a strong single party majority.

This is what I don't understand, why are people so against coalitions? My view is that this would reduce the wild ideological swings from Red/Left to Blue/Right every couple of elections. Surely steady state, slow, centrist progression is better than having to restructure society on a regular basis?

greg66_tri_v2.0

Clever Pun wrote:

Greg66 wrote:

No.

Once you start pandering to the wishes of people who (a) lose elections and (b) claim that the electoral system is unfair (because they lost, it seems), you'll be fiddling with the voting system until your children die of old age.

so you agree with the daily mail, the bnp and the conservatives*

*see my earlier post

On this, yes.

I think you'll find I also agree with John Reid, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett and David Blunkett.

Who've you got?

Clegg the diabolical turncoat, and the adenoidal senior prefect.

Oh, and Balls up.

I win.

FACT!

thegibdog

CiB wrote:

bails87 wrote:

Is he being serious?

He knows everyone's votes are counted once, right?

No. If no outright winner, the people who aren't really bothered but stick 2nd, 3rd, 4th choice etc votes down anyway have more say than me who only wants A to win and thinks the others are a waste of oxygen, as their subsequent preferences are taken into account until there is an overall winner. My decisive single preference is worth less than Mrs Smoker who has 5 goes at it.

You are effectively saying if A doesn't win then you don't care who gets elected. That's your choice. How exactly are you losing out?

bails87

notsoblue wrote:

Hairybuddha wrote:

It is my opinion however that AV would lead to a succession of coalition Governments which is an inherently weaker state than a Government with a strong single party majority.

This is what I don't understand, why are people so against coalitions? My view is that this would reduce the wild ideological swings from Red/Left to Blue/Right every couple of elections. Surely steady state, slow, centrist progression is better than having to restructure society on a regular basis?

You mean you'd be happy with a government that represented a majority of society rather than a third of it? You madman!

Hairybuddha

@notsoblue I'm afraid we have a pretty fundamental disagreement there then. As I said earlier, I think a system that allows single party Government with a stronger majority is hugely desirable once every few parliaments.

Look at the difficulty Obama is having pushing through his reform agenda now that his majority is so weak/non existent (and yes, I know the US uses FPTP)

CiB

rjsterry wrote:

And (@CiB) we did do this a couple of weeks or so ago.

Oh. I was away then. Job done then - back to cycling topics.

deptfordmarmoset

Damn, I was so excited about not having a headwind to do battle with that I cycled right past the polling booth...