Why I think you should vote Yes to AV

Stephen Booth
Monday 11th April 2011

I have seen a lot of misinformation and disinformation in the media of late

from those who oppose the proposed Alternative Voting (AV) system. I figured
I’d write a little article on why I think the UK should switch to AV and people
should vote yes in the coming referendum. First a little disclaimer...

A Little Disclaimer
Whilst I am a grassroots member of a UK political party this is by me as an
individual, it has not been requested or endorsed by that or any other political
party. I have been a member of various organisations that have used electoral
systems similar to the proposed AV system and seen it in action, I have helped
to run elections using the Single Transferable Vote system. I have read the
leaflet from The Electoral Commission that has been sent to each household
explaining how AV works. My view that the UK should adopt AV and the
below is based on my own experiences and the information contained in that
leaflet. I recommend that you read the leaflet.

I really do recommend that you read the leaflet

Seriously, it’s a quick read and gives a very good explanation of the differences
between the current system and the proposed AV system. If you haven’t received
yours yet, you can get a copy and even more information from http://www.
aboutmyvote.co.uk/5_may.aspx.

What is the current system and what is wrong

with it?
The current system is called ”First Past the Post”. It’s pretty simple really.
Everyone has one vote and casts it by marking a piece of paper (usually with
a cross) against the name of the person they want to vote for. After the polls
have closed the papers are separated according to whose name has been marked
and counted. Who ever gets the most votes wins. Simple and all well and fine
and good where there’s only two candidates or choices. You vote for one or the
other (or you could spoil your ballot or just not bother to vote). There are a
couple of really major problems with this system where there are three or more
candidates (from memory there’s usually around 7 or 8 in the constituency I

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live in) in that it often returns a candidate most people don’t like (or at least
would prefer someone else) and penalises minor parties.
Suppose there are 6 Candidates on the ballot. Candidate A receives 20% of
the vote, candidate B gets 19.9%, candidate C 19.1%, candidate D gets 15.1%
of the vote, candidate E gets 14.9% of the vote and candidate F gets 10%.
Under first past the post candidate A is declared the winner. But just a sec,
80% of those who voted said they wanted someone other than candidate A.
80%! That’s a lot, well over half. Also candidate B was only 0.1% of the vote
behind candidate A, nearly as many people wanted them although slightly more
wanted someone else (but not necessarily candidate A). OK so figures like that
are uncommon and probably unlikely. What is quite common is the winning
candidate polling only 30-40% of the vote and their nearest competitor being
only slightly behind (i.e. marginal seats).
The current system penalises minor parties by dissuading their supporters
from voting for them. When there are 6 or 7 or 8 or 10 or 15 (the maximum
I’ve seen on one ballot) candidates then unless you think that your preferred
candidate has a good chance of being in the top 3 you might think that you are
throwing your vote away. You’d be right. Under the current system voting for
a minor party candidate is the equivalent of writing ”I am a fish” across your
ballot paper. This means that a lot of people vote for a party they maybe don’t
like but dislike less than the other two parties in the top 3. Some candidates
plays this up and and include in their election material ”These parties have no
chance here, don’t vote for them. Vote for us else the [some party they think
the voters will see as a threat] will get in.” In my example above the party
that candidate F belongs to might actually have quite a bit of support, maybe
enough to turn that 10% into 20.1%. They don’t get the votes because a lot
of their supporters think they don’t have a chance so vote for a different party,
no-one ever knows how much support they really have because their supporters
are afraid of wasting their vote and think that if they vote for the party they
like that will allow the party they hate to get in.

So what’s the alternative and why is it better?

The leaflet gives a much better explanation than I can but here’s a summary.
Same names on the ballot paper, same ballot box. This time rather than just
putting an X (although you can still do that if you really want) you can now
rank the candidates in order of preference. You don’t have to rank them all,
but you can if you want, you can just rank your top few and leave the rest
unmarked. When the polls close the ballots are collected as before and sorted
but this time according to who has the first preference marked on each (an X or
a 1) and these are counted. If a candidate gets 50%+1 or more of the votes then
they are the winner and the process stops, we have a candidate that more then
half of the people who voted wanted. Quite likely there may be a candidate
who has more votes than any one other candidate but less than 50% of the total
vote. In that situation the candidate who got the least votes is disqualified
an their votes checked for second choices. If there’s no second choice then the
ballots are discarded (i.e. put away, they’re not thrown away) but those where
there is a second choice expressed are added to the appropriate pile and to the
total for those candidates. If one candidate now has 50%+1 or more of the vote

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then they are the winner and the process stops, if not then the candidate who
now has the least votes is disqualified and their votes checked for second, third,
fourth &c preferences. They will then be added to the pile (and count) for the
candidate who got second preference unless that candidate has been disqualified
in which case they will be added to the pile and count for the third preference
and so on, papers with no valid preferences are discarded. This continues until
either one candidate has 50%+1 or more of the votes or, rarely, there are no
further preferences so no more transfers can be made.
The advantages of this system are that the winning candidate is almost
always going to have been a high preference for over half of the voters (in my
experience the winning candidate is usually one who was first or second in the
first count) and it gives supporters of minority parties to express their first
preference but still vote for a majority party (who they like but not as much
as the minority party) as second choice so reducing the risk of the opposing
majority party (who they hate) getting in.

But doesn’t this mean some people get more than

one vote?
No! I’ve heard this claim being made on TV by the ’No’ campaigners. It’s
disinformation to scare people into thinking that AV is an attack on democracy.
It isn’t, if anything it promotes true democracy. Everyone still only has one
vote and only one vote. It’s that that one vote can be transferred to a second
preference if the first preference comes last.

Might this let an extremist candidate win an elec-

tion?
Possibly. Yes it is possible that a candidate from an extremist party could
get in if they poll at least 50%+1 of the vote in their constituency. That is
how democracy is supposed to work, the candidate who most people want to win
should win. If you don’t think a candidate should win then vote against them
and get out and campaign against them. Get a blog, get a soap box, get active.
That is how democracy should work. Also, bear in mind that an extremist can
win with just 20, 30 or 40% of the vote under the current system so long as the
rest of the vote is sufficiently fragmented.

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Copyright and License
This article is copyright Stephen Booth, 2011. A non-exclusive license is granted
to anyone who wishes to reproduce this article as a Creative Commons Attribution-
Non-Derivative-Non-Commercial license (BY-ND-NC, http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). An exception to the non-commercial clause is
granted to any commercial newspaper, news magazine, news mailing list or news
website so long as this article does not constitute more than 5% of the output
on the day that it is published in the form that it is published.
This document was typeset in LATEX2e a copy of the source file can be made
available on request under the same BY-ND-NC license.