Alternative Vote - Long Overdue Reform, Or A Waste Of Time..?

[MrBump]

A bit of a UK-centric post, but I'm interesting in what people think about AV.

Loads of ad campaigns - if some people are to be believed, AV will kill UK democracy and stop babies being cared for in hospitals..(?!?!)

Personally, I believe that we need voting reform - not entirely sure if AV (or at least this paricular flavour of PR) is the best option, but I think that we need something more representative that First Past The Post - certainly with the current electoral boundaries.

Mark.

[Alex]

Loose the UK centric view and just look abroad - lots of countries where it's working perfectly fine.

[nfe]

We desperately need voting reform. AV will make almost no difference, it's not proportional and you can still win general elections by a landslide with a lower percentage of the vote than whoever comes second.

Need to vote yes however, as anything the gets the ball rolling... It'll almost certainly get a no however, since there's far more money to be flung at the No Campaign, most of the nation doesn't care nor understand and it's getting muddled into the Scottish Parliament elections in Scotland.

[Sifu Ben]

Loose the UK centric view and just look abroad - lots of countries where it's working perfectly fine.

???? Only 4 countries use AV for general elections. I'm somewhat torn myself. It can be argued that first past the post is unfair in some ways, but it is simple. Hung parliaments are very rare, and the transition of power is typically smooth. Countries that don't use first past the post are more likely to have coalition government, and we appear not to like them. However, first past the post does support the 2 party system, which is the real enemy of democracy.
 However, AV is not without it's flaws. For starters it will MASSIVELY benefit the lib dems, which explains why they're so keen on it. Most Conservative voters and most Labour voters will probably put the Lib Dem candidate as their second choice. It will also possibly give disproportionate success to single issue independants.

[nfe]

Quite a number use it for smaller internal elections though, including within the UK and it does work. Though true PR is infinitely superior, and AV can throw up even more biased results than FPTP. Course, it encourages far more effort locally from MPs since they need 50% of the vote, which is a huge bonus, given most UK citizens currently appear to completely misunderstand the voting system and think they vote for a Prime Minister.

Coalition governments are a good thing in the long run, provided the parties retain their own independence from one another within it, and not just turn out to be spineless yes-men.

[MrBump]

Coalition governments are a good thing in the long run, provided the parties retain their own independence from one another within it, and not just turn out to be spineless yes-men.

I tend to agree - it's very popular to list "hung parliaments/coalition governments" as one of the flaws of AV/PR, but I'm not so sure.  I certainly don't like the concept of adversarial politics that we have in FPTP and the current 2 party state.

[Sifu Ben]

The problem with them is that they're unstable. If you look at places like Canada and Germany, large amounts of effort is spent trying to maintain coalitions, and sometimes they just fall apart, which means you've got to do it all over again. This is wasteful, inefficient, and makes it difficult to effect change and orchestrate long term strategies.

[Jonny]

For a United Kingdom culture that is individualistic, it would appear to be a difficult task to have a coalition. One could argue that a single party leading would provide more stability because they wouldn't have to agree with the other half, as such. Then again I haven't experienced anything but a single party in government so I can't say what's good about a coalition.

However, with everyone prone to moaning about the government, and with two parties more than one in an increasing multicultural country. It could be a good idea for two parties as it would allow more multi-diversity in that there's two views and "two minds are better than one" as they say. But as mentioned before, they could just lead to more moaning, moaning, moaning. Or what Mr. Milliband said this morning about the NHS reform by Cameron.

Though, I have no idea about British politics and I feel like an idiot that I don't so I'll keep an eye on this thread, haha . . .

[nfe]

The problem with them is that they're unstable. If you look at places like Canada and Germany, large amounts of effort is spent trying to maintain coalitions, and sometimes they just fall apart, which means you've got to do it all over again. This is wasteful, inefficient, and makes it difficult to effect change and orchestrate long term strategies.

They can be unstable, but not always. Plenty work fine, and by their nature they are far less prone to extreme, knee-jerk policy making.

Regardless, even a relatively unstable, fairly elected government is far preferable to a more stable, unfairly elected one which is not representative of the electorate and has no mandate.

[Sifu Ben]

The biggest problem in our democracy is poor voter turnout. First past the post would be much less problematic if we had compulsory voting.

[nfe]

Compulsory voting + FPTP in the UK = Eternal Labour government and almost exclusively Labour MPs.

Preferable to the current coalition, but a government who could be positive they weren't getting voted out would obviously lead to disaster.

Compulsory voting + PR would be fantastic.

[Dmoney]

when is the Scottish Election? May? any predictions?

I'm not sure what I want out of FPTP or AV... I agree that AV isn't PR as laid out in the initial lib dem campaign.
My first worry was that giving it the go ahead would lead to the constituency boundaries being redrawn in a way that would bias a vote... not entirely sure about if AV or PR would solve the issue, but I read something once about cutting part of a historically labour area away and lumping it in with a neighboring area with a high proportion of conservative voters, effectively makes the labour votes in that area null and void... i'm not explaining it well at all, but at some points this reorganisation of constituencies to strategically benefit one party was on the cards.

[Nadz1lla]

I have no idea when it comes to politics. But Stephen Fry is all thumbs-up for voting Yes, so that's what I'm going to do. Most if not all the things he says are spot-on and I agree with loads of his points on most subjects, so I think I'm safe by following a kindred spirit there.

His debate against the Catholic Church being a force for good in the world was absolutely on the mark, for example.

[Plexi Ken]

when is the Scottish Election? May? any predictions?

5th May, same as the AV referendum.

My prediction (in order) -
SNP
Labour
Conservative
Green
Lib Dem

So, no change - the SNP & Labour will share the lost Lib Dem seats. SNP continues as a minority government with 'confidence and supply' from Conservative. The 'interesting' result may be for the Lib Dems who might only get 3-4% of the vote.

[nfe]

Yeah, very little change. The SNP haven't managed to get much passed but they've avoided any high profile arse-ups. Only change will be the LibDem slaughter. From 13 seats down to a couple, I reckon.