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Letter: Why Britain needs the Alternative Vote system
Tuesday 15th March 2011, 5:59AM GMT.
Conservative party leader David Cameron and his wife, Samantha leave after casting their vote at the Spelsbury Memorial Hall in his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire.
Letter: So, the date has been set for the referendum on the Alternative Vote system (AV) and the great debate has begun.
In the article “Cameron and Clegg clash on vote views” (Star, February 18), David Cameron describes AV as “unfair”.
In the 2010 General Election, out of 649 seats contested, in only 215 of them – less than one in three – did the winner achieve more than 50 per cent of the vote.
That means in more than two-thirds of constituencies, MPs were elected despite more than half of voters voting against them.
I would not describe that as “fair”, or even democratic.
However, under AV, a candidate would only be elected if more than half the voters showed a preference for him or her over the closest rival.
That is surely more fair.
That is only one of the advantages of AV; I shall write about some of the others at a later date.
The choice we make on May 5 will be the most important event in the history of our electoral system since women got the vote.
I urge readers on both sides of the argument to write and make their views known, so that we can fully debate this issue.
Sean Bayley
Telford
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i vote for 1 person of 1 party, and have no second choice, its simple. Otherwise my alternate vote could goto monster raving loonies if running or worse some extreme party.
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Totally agree with Buckster.
I only vote for one person/party. If that candidate get’s less than the someone else then so be it.
The only truely Democratic way to hold an election is one vote per person. Whoever get’s the most votes wins, there is no way of ensuring that every has at least 50% of the vote as we are a far too diverse nation!
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It matters little who you vote for. Once they are in parliament politicians take very little notice of what the voter wants. Lobbyists have far more sway than the electorate when it comes to policy. That is why New Labour gave priority to 24-hour drinking and casinos when there were far more urgent matters to be dealt with. As Blair also proved, big decisions can taken by the Prime Minister without reference to Parliament so the House of Commons is effectively an expensive and toothless talking shop.
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I do not understand this 50% claim? Yes if the candidate receives more than 50% under AV they get in, but if they do not, how can you then claim that 2nd 3rd choices can be elevated to first choices. Then claim the candidate has the votes more than 50%, they obviously do not as they were not the first choice. The candidate is not then the preferred candidate but second or third best they do not have more than 50% of the votes but a made up 50% by transference. I do not see it as fair to take my vote and use it for someone other than the person I want to be my MP.
The voting system is not the problem, it is the party system where MPs have a greater allegiance to their party whips than they do for the people who put them in power. Added to which the closeness of the main parties on polices, which deny us the voters a real choice, AV will not address these problems only make them worse.
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Vote for AV and carpetbaggers like Clegg will always be the kingmaker.
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Sorry guys, with AV you can stop voting at 1 (if you really want only one candidate) your vote will then be ignored for the final counting though…
AV suffers from some flaws (it can lead to a greater swing in results than FPTP for example) and its not a proportional system so it will only ever select the best compromise candidate rather than reflecting the whole view of the people, but it is an improvement on FPTP.
Most other countries call AV ‘Instant Run Off’ which is a better way of describing how the system selects the eventual winner by progressively eliminating the least popular candidate, buy doing it in a single voting form you can eliminate the various rounds of an Xfactor style Run Off election.
In the US more and more states are adopting AV so as to allow independent candidates outside of the mainstream Democrat/Republican duopoly to have some chance as being elected or (perhaps more importantly) the views of their supports listened to by those in power.
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I’m afraid Messrs. Buckster and James miss a small point.
There has never been a case of “one person – one vote”, especially when over 12 million votes stood for nothing in last year’s election.
This is why the electorate are so disenfranchised with the political system – in fact, if you want it to be accurate, in 2010 it was more “one person – 0.59 votes!”
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A V like the lib/dems a load of rubbish
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