UK: AV Referendum, your vote?

Kilgannon wrote: Snow Dog wrote: Kilgannon wrote: ^ because they might get eliminated as lowest placed candidate So if my first choice was BNP but he didn't get first place...it goes to my second choice? If your first choice was BNP your vote wouldn't move to your second choice unless BNP got eliminated. So, your votes go 1) BNP 2) UKIP 3) Conservatives The votes are counted for round 1, and are as follows Labour 25% Lib Dems 18% Conservatives 18% BNP 17% UKIP 15% Green 7% Green gets eliminated, their votes get redistributed to their second choices. YOUR VOTE is still BNP. The second round is counted: Labour 32% Lib Dems 18% Conservatives 18% BNP 17% UKIP 15% UKIP eliminated, votes distributed, yours still BNP, third round: Conservatives 33% Labour 32% Lib Dems 18% BNP 17% BNP eliminated, votes redistributed including yours, your second choice is UKIP, but they've been eliminated so they look to your third choice, and allocated accordingly, fourth round: Conservatives 50% Labour 32% Lib Dems 18% Lib Dems go, votes redistributed, yours now with Tories, last round: Conservatives 51% Labour 49% Tories win.

Kilgannon wrote: Pleasure

Snow Dog wrote: Kilgannon wrote: Pleasure Cider Country......Somerset?

Bristol, still much cider

While far from perfect, I prefer proportional representation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

Still AV seems better than FPTP.

akamaisondufromage wrote: These adverts on this site for no to AV are realy f**king pissing me off!  Say no to Nick Clegg expensive complicated etc.  Makes me more likely to vote Yes   Can we get rid please?    Just cos people don't like Clegg they shouldn't use that as a reason to vote No to AV.  And too complicated? they think we're all too stupid! f**kers!

lazland wrote:  Too right!. On issues such as this, the site should either not bother, or include a reference to the other side for the sake of balance.

Trouble is, those ads will be automatically selected via keyword detection - the admin don't individually select which ads will appear. The No campaign have had a LOT more money than the Yes campaign to spend on advertising and other forms of aggressive campaigning which is why you won't see Yes ads on this page any time soon.

Not to select a PM, no, they do that at Party level but they actually use AV already for that, I gather.  Tell me if I'm wrong here?  Of course, that depends on which party wins the General Election, which I believe would use AV it was brought in.

However, if it does come in, it'll be used to select councillors and MPs in local elections.


Edited by James - May 04 2011 at 14:37

Padraic wrote: So basically you're to be left with two parties in Parliament with AV.

No, there'll be about as broad a spread as there currently is (mostly Labour and Tory, a reasonable chunk of Lib Dems, a scattering of MPs from Irish, Welsh and Scottish parties and, if we're lucky, a Green or two). AV is a system which will certainly benefit the major parties more than the minority parties, but not to the same ludicrous extent as FPTP, where an MP can win their seat on less than 30% of the overall vote.

FPTP doesn't work in any other situation except (general) elections. Using FPTP principles the Tory party "won" the most seats in parliament so should have formed the Government without the help of the Lib/Dems. But they couldn't do that because they didn't have a majority and could lose every house vote since more MPs oppose them than support them. On reflection that strikes me as a "good thing" because that is the result of the FPTP voting system anyway - more people oppose the elected candidate than support him so it seems logical that any bill, white paper or statute that he presents to Parliament should be met with representative (proportional) opposition. Perhaps a solution is that every MP's vote is only worth the same percentage as his winning electoral vote - perhaps then MPs would see the logic of AV a little clearer.

The Hemulen wrote: Padraic wrote: So basically you're to be left with two parties in Parliament with AV. No, there'll be about as broad a spread as there currently is (mostly Labour and Tory, a reasonable chunk of Lib Dems, a scattering of MPs from Irish, Welsh and Scottish parties and, if we're lucky, a Green or two). AV is a system which will certainly benefit the major parties more than the minority parties, but not to the same ludicrous extent as FPTP, where an MP can win their seat on less than 30% of the overall vote.

Sorry, I was being a bit obtuse yesterday.  I see that all this does is insure whatever MP gets elected in a "district" or whatever you call it gets a majority vote as a result of AV.

Doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, what are the pitfalls that you guys see with this?