Finding things to complain about in The Guardian is hardly difficult, but here are two little blemishes that bleed deep:
First we have a quote from editor Alan Rusbridger in 2013, touching on the AV referendum:
They came up with such a weak version of proportional representation that they could not get anyone excited or enthused.
And second, a report from earlier this year on a Guardian staff ballot:
Staff of the Guardian and Observer have voted in favour of Katharine Viner… using the single transferable vote system… he successful candidate is guaranteed a place on the shortlist of three that will go forward to the next round of interviews conducted by the Scott Trust.
Claiming that AV is a form of PR, or that you used STV for what turns out to be a single-winner election, is incongruous at best, and probably just plain wrong. And, of course, the article doesn’t mention that Labour was the party that “came up with” AV as a 2010 election commitment.
If you want to get technical, it is true that AV is essentially STV-1 (STV electing a single member). But the two names are used distinctly with good reason. STV-1 is a degenerate case, with less complexity and none of the proportionality of its multi-winner siblings. Important connotations of “the single transferable vote system” do not apply to AV, and vice versa. Even if this kind of equivalence was intended, the bold passages still needed qualification in order to make sense to the Guardian’s general readership. It seems far more likely the editorial process just got it wrong.
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