Iain Dale yesterday posted a piece attacking the Alternative Vote system which doesn’t bode well for a well informed campaign.
That’s a shame because there’s a sensible debate to be had – with Lib Dems being the first to admit that the Alternative Vote system isn’t the best of all possible options, though most would rate it as a great improvement on what we have now.
Dale writes
There’s a reason only one other country in the world uses AV. It’s a half way house. It tries to be a PR equivalent of the First Past the Post system, but in reality it is no more proportionate than straight out FPTP, and in some cases can be less so.
It simply isn’t true that only one other country uses AV (Australia, Fiji, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea). If we want to choose our electoral system based on which is most used elsewhere, the list system would be a prime candidate – and almost no-one in the UK wants that. I’d hope that the UK could choose a system based on what’s best for us, not what’s most popular elsewhere – though it’s useful to see how a system has worked in other countries in practice.
Dale is right to say it’s a half-way house: that’s the whole point, of course. It’s a compromise between the Lib Dems who favour proper PR with the Single Transferable Vote and the Conservatives who want to hold on to the current First Past the Post system.
The question is whether it’s better that First Past the Post. Supporters of the Yes campaign will argue that it is, and Iain Dale offers no evidence to the contrary.
Dale, oddly, then spends much of the rest of his piece attacking a different voting system – STV. That’s the one favoured by the Lib Dems, but not one that will appear on ballot papers as an option next May.
He finally moves on to attack the list system used for European elections, although he does admit “I realise this is not pure STV“.
Sorry, Iain, it’s not STV at all, and STV isn’t AV. The list system invites you to rank parties and not even vote for individual candidates.
By this stage, AV has been left far behind but Dale still seems to be under the impression he’s providing arguments to vote against it in the referendum.
He argues that few of us know the names of our MEPs, therefore multi-member constituencies must be a bad thing. If we get to have a referendum on STV at some time in the future, that argument will doubtless be wheeled out.
Supporters of STV will, at that stage, point out that few people knew the name of their MEP back when he or she was elected by First Past the Post. They’ll also point out that there’s a big difference between MEPs elected for a whole region and sitting in a parliament that gets virtually no media attention, and one elected for, say, a London borough who’s parliament is in the news daily.
After spending most of his article attacking the Single Transferable Vote system, Iain Dale concludes by saying
So I will be campaigning against the Alternative Vote. It doesn’t do what it says on the tin, and there may be faults in our existing system, but AV won’t fix it.
There are real debates to be had on the merits or otherwise of Alternative Vote and First Past the Post. It will be a shame if, through either ignorance or a lack of confidence in their own case, the No campaign resorts to this sort of misinformation.
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27 Comments
Spot on.
It’s disappointing that Iain Dale – said to be a more insightful conservative blogger – can write a post which claims to be arguing against AV but which fails to actually make any arguments.
How on earth can Dale claim that AV is any “less” proportionate than FPTP? I don’t believe for a moment that he’s completely ignorant of the fact that AV, like FPTP, is not proportionate at all (as any fule kno).
Now that the Taxpayers’ Alliance and their hangers-on in the media will be lumping on the “no” bandwagon, expect a lot more lies and disinformation between now and May from the Tory press and much clicking of needles from those bloggers in Dale’s mutual admiration society.
“Iain Dale yesterday posted a piece attacking the Alternative Vote system which doesn’t bode well for a well informed campaign.”
Nor do the bogus claims from pro-AV campaigners that AV requires winning candidates to gain over 50% of votes.
I’m afraid this debate is not very edifying from whichever side you look at it.
For me, if we discount the bogus or irrelevant claims (e.g. the 50% claim, the stepping stone argument etc) then what FPTP vs AV boils down to is: which system most accurately reflects the way most voters think?
It looks like the main aim of the anti campaign will be to try and confuse the issue. In an interview on the Today programme last month Daniel Kazczynski (Tory MP for Shrewsbury and one of the leaders of the anti campaign) was going on about how AV would lead to wasted votes because people like him wouldn’t use their second preference. Unfortunately the interviewer didn’t ask him about the number of wasted votes under the present system. Nor did he point out that a vote could only be described as “wasted” if their preferred candidate was eliminated before the final round or the fact that many people under FPTP don’t actually vote for their first choice.
It’s going to be a tough campaign with a lot of misinformation.
“proper PR with the Single Transferable Vote”
Sorry, but now *you’re* joining the misinformation game here – STV is not “proper PR” at all – doesn’t guarantee any kind of proportionality, and different variants of STV can produce quite different results. Indeed, the “wrong” party can win a majority, as has happened in other countries with STV. In my local authority area, STV would actually end up being less proportional (in some senses at least) than FPTP usually is.
The only systems that build in any kind of proportionality are divisor systems that rely on party lists. Even most of those don’t provide “pure” proportionality, though they are at least based on the principle. Probably the nearest thing to “proper” PR (i.e. a system that is designed purely to ensure that parliamentary representation is as proportional to votes cast as can be mathematically possible given the size of the parliament) would be a Sainte-Lague divisor based on a single national list without any thresholds.
STV is essentially just another kind of halfway house. Like most preferential systems, it basically does away with the concept of proportionality altogether.
That is not necessarily a decisive argument against it, of course, but I think if you’re going to write a blog post attacking someone for propagandising about electoral systems, you should be a bit more careful in the claims that you make for your own preference.
FactHunter – STV falls into the category of PR voting systems.
You’re quite right that STV, like every other system, has its pros and cons, and its flaws. You’re also right that more pure list systems (of which there are many varieties to keep the maths geeks interested) result in a more proportional outcome.
Lists are only acceptable if they are open – i.e., they give the voter the opportunity to rank the candidates, not have that ranking predetermined by the parties.
@Stuart Mitchell
AV *does* require the winning candidate to secure more than 50% of votes in the final round of voting. The only way this will be less than 50% of voters is if people do not list enough second or third (etc.) preferences. If voters choose to do that then they are essentially abstaining from the later voting rounds.
In the last General Election only 1/3 of elected MPs secured the approval of more than 50% of voters under FPTP.
As a voter in elections, whatever the national result at Westminster, I want to be able to choose between the two eventual front runners in my consitutency (safe Conservative Henley) even if my first preference candidate is not one of them. And I do not want top up MPs from party lists or from different kinds of constituencies in order to produce exact mathematical proportionality
As a might-have-been MP, I know that with AV I would have been elected Liberal MP in the neighbouring constituency of Newbury in 1974. Of course Iain Dale and other Conservatives try to confuse the issue.
As a voter in the referendum I know that the Single Transferable Vote (STV)and the Alternative Vote (AV) are thoroughly confusing terms. “STV” is the Single Transferable Vote (1,2,3.. instead of X) in (new) Multi-member constituencies while “AV” is just the same preferential vote but in (existing) Single member constituencies.
If the alternatives were styled STVM and STVS – for Multi-member and Single member respectively – instead of “STV” and “AV”, the debate between them and FPTP would be clearer but the Conservative cause would be weaker. Expect more confusion and obfuscation from Iain Dale and other Conservatives!
VOTE YES TO STVS AND AV A BALL!!!!
Aside from the av countries listed, many more use a 2-rounds system which is in practice very similar to av.
Indeed. In fact many American elections are effectively AV because of the system of primaries.
It is certainly true that AV is not a proportional system. It is preferable to FPTP in many ways, but there is little evidence that it produces more proportional results. So why on earth Clegg and co think it worth pursuing defeats me.
But there are significant downsides to STV, too. It only works in multi-member constituencies, which are fine in large cities, since it easily argued that Manchester or Birmingham could be represented perfectly adequately (in fact, probably better than under FPTP) by MPs elected in a city-wide STV constituency. But what about rural areas? How big a constituency would you need in the North of Scotland, for example?
There is a lot of academic research which suggests the Alternative Vote, or AV Plus, as recommended by the Jenkins commission, produces the most accurately proportional result. Since it also offers the advantages of being used already in large parts of the UK, and being compatible with the single-member constituencies which still appeal to lots of British voters, I cannot understand why Lib Dems seem so committed to STV, which is so easy to (mis)represent as a hugely complex system.
we should stop calling it AV
just call it the 123 or first, second, third system
Burkesworks – don’t you mean the Tax Dogers’ Alliance?
I’m going to copy-and-paste a comment I made on Facebook earlier because I think it’s relevant here, when discussing as being closer to FPTP than STV, and the difference between proportional and preferential systems. The tag line is that proportional representation gives you fair results from votes cast; preferential voting lets you cast votes fairly:
To my mind, preferential and proportional voting are as important as each other. Non-preferential PR systems like d’Hondt end up being the same old second-guessing nonsense as FPTP, which is how the BNP got elected here in the North-West – because the “anti BNP” vote was split between several parties, all of whom campaigned on an anti-BNP ticket.
PR gives us fairer results from the votes cast, that’s true. But proportional voting lets people vote for the candidate they want to see win, rather than the least worst of the top two. It means that candidates have to be more constructive to try to win second preferences from other parties’ supporters, rather than trying to rubbish them out of existence. It means more than one candidate can stand for the same party without hurting each others’ chances. There’s almost no point in having PR if people still have to guess how everybody else is going to vote, and only the top two parties’ supporters get to actually have a meaningful say.
If the AV referendum is lost, it will put back chances of STV and other preferential PR. If it is won, people will see that the system can be changed – when changes this big happen (such as extension of suffrage), they tend to happen in bunches. We need to build up the momentum for people having a say in how their democracy is run.
Dave Page sums up the case for a Yes vote admirably. Give that man a job in the Yes campaign 🙂
Iain Dale’s article gave no arguments aginst AV. This is quite typical of Tory commentators – one rather suspects the problem is they’re numerically challenged so the little bit of maths involved in understanding AV defeats them. If that’s not the case, then they’re dishonest.
So, we should ask any opponent of AV who talks about lots of things but not the actual mechanics of AV, to answer the question “Are you innumerate or are you dishonest?”.
AV is not a proportional system, but that’s not the issue. If we’re going to have single member constuituencies and not a proportional system, then that’s how the case should be put – what does FPTP have that makes it better than AV? Anyone arguing against AV must answer that.
Here what FPTP means – I keep using this example, but it’s at the basis of AV so it should be central to the argument:
Cuthbert and Dibble are standing as candidates to be MP of Trumpton. 25,000 of Trumpton’s electors prefer Cuthbert to Dibble, 20,000 of Trumpton’s electors prefer Dibble to Cuthbert. The opponents of AV then MUST answer the question – why should it be that Dibble gets elected as MP just because it happens that Grubb is also standing, and 10,000 of those who prefer Cuthbert to Dibble also prefer Grubb to Cuthbert? Why should it be that the presence or absence of Grubb as a candidate makes a difference to whether Cuthbert or Dibble gets elected regardless of anything Cutbert or Dibble do and without the electors of Trumpton varying in any way on their preference of one over the other?
Now that is really what it is all about. It uses numbers and a bit of maths – shock – so are those opponents of AV who can’t talk about what it really means too innumerate to do so? If they won’t talk about this, the most central thing AV is about – they are being dishonest.
Of course, what the opponents of AV are REALLY about, is stopping the likes of Grubb from standing, or forcing people who really want Grubb not to vote for Grubb for fear of splitting Cuthbert’s vote. FPTP works by FORCE to stop people voting as they really want, it means they must vote for one of two limited options for fear that to do anythig else will “let the other lot in”. The case for FPTP is that democracy should be trampled upon because democracy is a bad thing, instead we should have a system which forces people to vote for either the Lords or the Masters, for fear if you vote for anything else you get the Lords in if you preferred the Masters or you get the Masters in if you preferred the Lords.
I don’t want a system where the Lords and Masters tell us we can only vote for them, that’s why though AV still is “local majorities only get any representation” it is better than FPTP.
As I said, that’s what it’s really about, so look at how the opponents of AV are talking about all sorts of other things in the hope of hiding that. Sadly, theLords and Masters have a lot of money and power to use to spread their dishonesty, so it’s highly likely many people will vote on what the Lords and Masters say this is about rather than what AV is about.
It would be nice if we had some sensible people putting the case for AV in clear terms to try and show up the dishonesty of the opponents. I note, however, that Nick Clegg is putting forward the person who ran our general election campaign which managed to lose so much of the support we started off with.
“AV *does* require the winning candidate to secure more than 50% of votes in the final round of voting. The only way this will be less than 50% of voters is if people do not list enough second or third (etc.) preferences. If voters choose to do that then they are essentially abstaining from the later voting rounds.”
That’s a nice bit of sophistry, but the fact remains that winning candidates would _not_ necessarily need 50% of the votes cast.
“But proportional voting lets people vote for the candidate they want to see win, rather than the least worst of the top two.”
Should that read “preferential voting lets people …”?
“simonsez”
Better idea! Because there is of course to be no choice between STVS and STVM.
So, YES to the 1,2,3 or first , second, third system, instead of X voting!
You mention the other countries using AV. Quite frankly, Britain shouldn’t be taking lessons in functioning democratic voting from Hong Kong and Fiji!
@Matthew Huntbach
Excellent analysis. And a good strategy to boot. The question isn’t is AV the solution to all the worlds ills, the question is, and only is, is AV better than FPTP. You’re comments are written in too passive a style to be persuasive, but they can be easily re-jigged to make a positive argument in favour of AV. If the leaders of the Yes campaign take your advice, I think we will be fine.
Sadly we will have to get used to people in the NO camp spreading confusiong as to what the different voting systems will be. This serves their purpose as people will end up wanting to stick with what they know or understand. Rather than getting stuck into complex debates, it’s better just to focus on it being a way to give people more choice and to change the parliment that resulted in the expenses scandal.
mpg
If the leaders of the Yes campaign take your advice, I think we will be fine.
I think I should change my middle name to Cassandra.
There is far too much talk about proportionality, which usually refers to proportionality as between political parties.
That is not the most important issue. What matters is fairness to the voters, and the extent to which their wishes are represented in parliament.
The real advantage of STV in Multi-member Constituencies (STV-MMC) is that it gives the voters greater power to vote for the people they want, not just the party. It greatly reduces the power of the party machines to decide who should be MPs, and even improves the chances of genuinely popular local independent candidates to be elected.
As a result, the composition of the House of Commons would be more likely to reflect the real spread of opinions in the country than it ever does under FPTP, or would with AV. STV-MMC also almost completely does away with the scandalous concept of the ‘safe seat’ – which is what really endears FPTP to Labour and the Tories, whose MPs have over 400 of them between them – forget all this rubbish about the ‘constituency link’; all over the country, people at local authority level live in wards which have more than one councillor, and it seems to work.
AV is a (very) slight improvement on FPTP, in that every MP would have the support in some degree of at least half those who voted in their seat, but it still has most of the drawbacks of FPTP, and in some circumstances can produce even more distorted results. In 1997, for instance, it is likely that under AV T.Blair would have had an even bigger majority.
“RichardP”
If you are going to correctly call “STV” ( STV in Multi-member Constituencies) by the initials STV-MMC why not simplify matters by calling it STVM? And then call “AV” (STV in Single member constituencies) STVS.
STVM verusus STVS is a lot clearer than “STV” versus “AV”.
STVS versus FPTP makes it clear that it includes STV.
As of course does “simonsez”‘s “1,2,3 voting system” versus the present ” X voting system”.
The more clarity there is, the more likely is a Yes vote in the referendum.
STVS is a big improvement on
There can be no FPTP vs AV debate – because FPTP has nothing to say for itself !
There will only be bogus, weasel words from ‘No2AV’ – that’s the one string to their bow.
Witness their new campaign – They complain of the cost of the referendum! What difference does that make to which way anyone votes on it?!?!? Bonkers.
I don’t like STV, but I do like AV. Lib dems aren’t in a position to ‘admit’ that AV isn’t they best option. It may not be the most desirable option in their eyes, but who made them sole arbiters?