So what, exactly, is AV about?
Hello all,
This is my third post on AV. Probably not the last you will hear from me, but if it's any comfort, the AV Referendum is less than three weeks away, and I will return to my less-vocal ways afterwards. Thanks for bearing with me.
So. Another video from the No2AV campaign for you:
Nice, measured and informed presentation on the issues there, I feel.
Anyway, a prominent argument in this ad is that AV is very confusing; and certainly, talking to people about the subject, it seems as though a lot of people still aren't sure what exactly they're being asked to vote on. Some people still don't know what AV is, or how it works; some - critically - get what it is but don't understand why: what the system's hoping to achieve, and why some people think it's better than the existing system. And neither the No nor (to be fair) the Yes campaign are much use. They basically just wave their fists in the air and shout about how their system is fairest.
So in the interest of helping you make an informed decision, I am now going to try and explain AV. Not just how it works, but the logic behind it, and its effects in real terms on the voting process. If you already feel you understand the subject, then maybe you can use this to help make it clearer to others. Fair warning: I am pro-AV, as most readers will already know, but I'm going to try and present this in as neutral terms as possible.
Let's start by discussing the current system.
The Current System
Elections in the UK are currently held under a simple plurality vote, more commonly known as the "First Past The Post" system. The analogy comes from horse-racing, as the No2AV advert above points out. It's not really a perfect analogy, but the thinking is something like this:
In a horse-race, it doesn't matter how close the result is; when they cross the finish line, the animal in the lead - even if it's only by a head - wins the lot. He gets the trophy, the big stack o' cash, a nice bag of oats and a rub-down, while all the other horses go home empty-handed. Hooved. Whatever.
By extension, in First Past The Post voting, the candidate with the most votes - even if she only has one more vote than her nearest rival - wins the entire seat. She represents the entire constituency, including everyone who voted against her, and all the other candidates go home empty-handed. Like the race-horses.
Now, this is a perfectly adequate system, which we've been using for hundreds of years. I'm not going to suggest otherwise. It's simple and intuitive. But horse racing isn't an election. Apart from anything else, an election isn't about seeing which candidate is best at getting votes, but finding out what the people want from their representative, which isn't necessarily the same thing.
The concern - and this is far from a modern issue; politicians and political theorists have been debating this issue for almost as long as we've been using this system - is with all those other votes. It's quite possible, under First Past The Post, to win with a minority; in the example above, Mrs. Brown has only about a third of the votes, which means that around twice as many people voted against her as did for her.
So we have a quandary. On the one hand, Mrs. Brown doesn't clearly represent the whole constituency, since more people voted against her than for her; but on the other hand, she got more votes than any other candidate, so no-one else is clearly better suited. How to solve it?
A number of solutions have been tried around the world, of which instant run-off voting, or Alternative Voting, is one of the least radical. To get there, I'm going to start with one very small change.
A Very Small Change
So we like the system the way it is; we're just worried about winning candidates not representing a majority of their constituency. How about we hold the election exactly the same way, from beginning to end, but if no one candidate gets more than half the total votes, we just scrap the result and try again until we do? Sound reasonable? Just to make sure the winner really has the constituency behind her.
The obvious problem here is that we can reasonably expect all the voters to vote the same way the second time around. Obviously, those are your favourite candidates. So let's make a second small change. When we hold the second vote, the person who got the least votes the first time around (since he's clearly not likely to win, no matter what) is knocked out. Everyone gets a vote again, but Mr. Green's supporters will have to decide which of Mrs. Brown, Miss Blue and Mrs. Purple they most like the look of.
And we keep doing this as often as we have to. If, on the second vote, no candidate gets more than half the votes, we just have to scrap the result, knock out the candidate who got the least votes the second time and run a third vote. We all get a vote again, but this time everyone, including Mr. Green's and Miss Blue's supporters, has to choose between Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Purple.
And this time, someone has to win. There's only two candidates left, so whoever has more votes also has more than half the total. Seems Mrs. Purple has won.
So what's happened? There's no confusing talk of "eliminating" and "reassigning"; we simply scrapped the results when nobody was able to win according to our new condition, dropped the least successful candidate to avoid a stalemate, and held a new vote. We had to do it twice, but the third vote was every bit as much a full vote as the first one, conducted according to the same rules. It's also the first vote to result in a victory, and it turns out that, given the choice between the two, the majority of voters in the constituency chose Mrs. Purple rather than Mrs. Brown.
Alternative Voting
So what's Alternative Voting? It's basically what I just described. All that business of numbering your preferred candidates and of candidates being eliminated and redistributed is just a time-saving alternative to staging three separate votes. If we assume that Mrs. Brown's and Mrs. Purple's supporters will vote for them every time, and ask Mr. Green's and Miss Blue's supporters to tell us in advance which of those two they would vote for if they weren't allowed to vote for their preferred candidates, we can just recount the ballots instead of reopening the polls and achieve the same results.
Fairness
Now, which is fairer? Well, it's one of those things, isn't it? You're choosing between two types of fair.
It's fair to try and make as many people as possible completely happy, irrespective of what everyone else wants. (FPTP)
And it's fair to make sure the majority of people are at least reasonably happy, even if a lot of people don't get exactly what they want. (AV)
But you can't always have both. Sometimes, reaching a compromise means that no-one gets exactly what they want.
So the question is, which of two types of fair do you think is fairer?
Strong Governments
So what about coalitions? Won't this lead to weaker governments?
There will be more coalitions (but, and I think this is important, it won't be back-to-back coalitions all the live-long day; most elections will go to Labour or Conservative as they do at present) and narrow majorities in Parliament, so it may be harder for "strong governments" - governments able to formulate and pursue policy without worrying if it'll be defeated in Parliament - to form.
Again, this is one of those things. Strong governments means bold visions, which can carry the country into a new and exciting future. They can also mean crazed experiments, that destroy the economy and cause misery.
Pursuing strong government (FPTP) means giving the cabinet scope to pursue a grand vision, but trusting them to make the right decisions, since you're pretty much handing them the keys for five years and won't be able to do anything about it in the meantime.
A system that produces weaker governments and coalitions (AV) means requiring the cabinet to justify and argue their visions every single time, but accepting that they will tend to compromise and tread the middle way much of the time.
So the question again is, which do you prefer?
Effects On The Parties
FInally, what would the actual concrete effects be? Who would gain, and who would lose?
The short answer is that we don't actually know how it'll affect results, because we've never recorded who people would choose as their alternative candidates. But we can make a few educated guesses.
First of all, the two big parties hold a lot of seats with minorities; the likelihood is that they'll win most of these anyway, since they're obvious second choices for supporters of marginal candidates, but they will lose some.
The Liberal-Democrats receive a vastly higher share of the votes than they hold a share of the seats, so they will probably end up taking a lot of the other two party's lost seats, especially from Labour. They've taken a hit to their support, since the coalition, but they should still benefit from it.
Most importantly - to me - a lot of people who support marginal parties but don't normally vote for them will stop voting tactically and come out with it, with the effect that parties like the Greens and UKIP will score many more of the first-preference votes. They still won't win in most seats, but they should claim one or two more seats here and there.
So there you go. I hope that's useful. If so, or you think it'll be useful to others, please post it in your Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Let's try and get some kind of reasoned ideas out there instead of shouting and point-scoring. This is too important.
This is my third post on AV. Probably not the last you will hear from me, but if it's any comfort, the AV Referendum is less than three weeks away, and I will return to my less-vocal ways afterwards. Thanks for bearing with me.
So. Another video from the No2AV campaign for you:
Click to viewNice, measured and informed presentation on the issues there, I feel.
Anyway, a prominent argument in this ad is that AV is very confusing; and certainly, talking to people about the subject, it seems as though a lot of people still aren't sure what exactly they're being asked to vote on. Some people still don't know what AV is, or how it works; some - critically - get what it is but don't understand why: what the system's hoping to achieve, and why some people think it's better than the existing system. And neither the No nor (to be fair) the Yes campaign are much use. They basically just wave their fists in the air and shout about how their system is fairest.
So in the interest of helping you make an informed decision, I am now going to try and explain AV. Not just how it works, but the logic behind it, and its effects in real terms on the voting process. If you already feel you understand the subject, then maybe you can use this to help make it clearer to others. Fair warning: I am pro-AV, as most readers will already know, but I'm going to try and present this in as neutral terms as possible.
Let's start by discussing the current system.
The Current System
Elections in the UK are currently held under a simple plurality vote, more commonly known as the "First Past The Post" system. The analogy comes from horse-racing, as the No2AV advert above points out. It's not really a perfect analogy, but the thinking is something like this:
In a horse-race, it doesn't matter how close the result is; when they cross the finish line, the animal in the lead - even if it's only by a head - wins the lot. He gets the trophy, the big stack o' cash, a nice bag of oats and a rub-down, while all the other horses go home empty-handed. Hooved. Whatever.
By extension, in First Past The Post voting, the candidate with the most votes - even if she only has one more vote than her nearest rival - wins the entire seat. She represents the entire constituency, including everyone who voted against her, and all the other candidates go home empty-handed. Like the race-horses.
Now, this is a perfectly adequate system, which we've been using for hundreds of years. I'm not going to suggest otherwise. It's simple and intuitive. But horse racing isn't an election. Apart from anything else, an election isn't about seeing which candidate is best at getting votes, but finding out what the people want from their representative, which isn't necessarily the same thing.
The concern - and this is far from a modern issue; politicians and political theorists have been debating this issue for almost as long as we've been using this system - is with all those other votes. It's quite possible, under First Past The Post, to win with a minority; in the example above, Mrs. Brown has only about a third of the votes, which means that around twice as many people voted against her as did for her.
So we have a quandary. On the one hand, Mrs. Brown doesn't clearly represent the whole constituency, since more people voted against her than for her; but on the other hand, she got more votes than any other candidate, so no-one else is clearly better suited. How to solve it?
A number of solutions have been tried around the world, of which instant run-off voting, or Alternative Voting, is one of the least radical. To get there, I'm going to start with one very small change.
A Very Small Change
So we like the system the way it is; we're just worried about winning candidates not representing a majority of their constituency. How about we hold the election exactly the same way, from beginning to end, but if no one candidate gets more than half the total votes, we just scrap the result and try again until we do? Sound reasonable? Just to make sure the winner really has the constituency behind her.
The obvious problem here is that we can reasonably expect all the voters to vote the same way the second time around. Obviously, those are your favourite candidates. So let's make a second small change. When we hold the second vote, the person who got the least votes the first time around (since he's clearly not likely to win, no matter what) is knocked out. Everyone gets a vote again, but Mr. Green's supporters will have to decide which of Mrs. Brown, Miss Blue and Mrs. Purple they most like the look of.
And we keep doing this as often as we have to. If, on the second vote, no candidate gets more than half the votes, we just have to scrap the result, knock out the candidate who got the least votes the second time and run a third vote. We all get a vote again, but this time everyone, including Mr. Green's and Miss Blue's supporters, has to choose between Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Purple.
And this time, someone has to win. There's only two candidates left, so whoever has more votes also has more than half the total. Seems Mrs. Purple has won.
So what's happened? There's no confusing talk of "eliminating" and "reassigning"; we simply scrapped the results when nobody was able to win according to our new condition, dropped the least successful candidate to avoid a stalemate, and held a new vote. We had to do it twice, but the third vote was every bit as much a full vote as the first one, conducted according to the same rules. It's also the first vote to result in a victory, and it turns out that, given the choice between the two, the majority of voters in the constituency chose Mrs. Purple rather than Mrs. Brown.
Alternative Voting
So what's Alternative Voting? It's basically what I just described. All that business of numbering your preferred candidates and of candidates being eliminated and redistributed is just a time-saving alternative to staging three separate votes. If we assume that Mrs. Brown's and Mrs. Purple's supporters will vote for them every time, and ask Mr. Green's and Miss Blue's supporters to tell us in advance which of those two they would vote for if they weren't allowed to vote for their preferred candidates, we can just recount the ballots instead of reopening the polls and achieve the same results.
Fairness
Now, which is fairer? Well, it's one of those things, isn't it? You're choosing between two types of fair.
It's fair to try and make as many people as possible completely happy, irrespective of what everyone else wants. (FPTP)
And it's fair to make sure the majority of people are at least reasonably happy, even if a lot of people don't get exactly what they want. (AV)
But you can't always have both. Sometimes, reaching a compromise means that no-one gets exactly what they want.
So the question is, which of two types of fair do you think is fairer?
Strong Governments
So what about coalitions? Won't this lead to weaker governments?
There will be more coalitions (but, and I think this is important, it won't be back-to-back coalitions all the live-long day; most elections will go to Labour or Conservative as they do at present) and narrow majorities in Parliament, so it may be harder for "strong governments" - governments able to formulate and pursue policy without worrying if it'll be defeated in Parliament - to form.
Again, this is one of those things. Strong governments means bold visions, which can carry the country into a new and exciting future. They can also mean crazed experiments, that destroy the economy and cause misery.
Pursuing strong government (FPTP) means giving the cabinet scope to pursue a grand vision, but trusting them to make the right decisions, since you're pretty much handing them the keys for five years and won't be able to do anything about it in the meantime.
A system that produces weaker governments and coalitions (AV) means requiring the cabinet to justify and argue their visions every single time, but accepting that they will tend to compromise and tread the middle way much of the time.
So the question again is, which do you prefer?
Effects On The Parties
FInally, what would the actual concrete effects be? Who would gain, and who would lose?
The short answer is that we don't actually know how it'll affect results, because we've never recorded who people would choose as their alternative candidates. But we can make a few educated guesses.
First of all, the two big parties hold a lot of seats with minorities; the likelihood is that they'll win most of these anyway, since they're obvious second choices for supporters of marginal candidates, but they will lose some.
The Liberal-Democrats receive a vastly higher share of the votes than they hold a share of the seats, so they will probably end up taking a lot of the other two party's lost seats, especially from Labour. They've taken a hit to their support, since the coalition, but they should still benefit from it.
Most importantly - to me - a lot of people who support marginal parties but don't normally vote for them will stop voting tactically and come out with it, with the effect that parties like the Greens and UKIP will score many more of the first-preference votes. They still won't win in most seats, but they should claim one or two more seats here and there.
So there you go. I hope that's useful. If so, or you think it'll be useful to others, please post it in your Facebook, Twitter or whatever. Let's try and get some kind of reasoned ideas out there instead of shouting and point-scoring. This is too important.