The basic idea behind alternative voting is that if a party doesn't get enough votes to get elected, then their voters will be able to have their votes transfered to an 'alternative' preference; in other words, you can now try to vote lib-dem, and when that doesn't work, you can have your vote transfered to another party.
Sounds cool, no?
No.
See, the parties that drop out first are the smaller ones. So, you can vote for the green party, or the BNP, or the Monster Raving Loony party, and you can even vote "green OR IF THEY DON'T GET IN monster raving loony OR FAILING THAT I'D LIKE MY VOTE TO BE TRANSFERRED TO ukip" or whatever... but these small parties, catering, democratically enough, to what some people want, will always be 'knocked out' and silenced, and your vote will be transferred elsewhere, bouncing around from party-that-isn't-going-to-be-given-any-power to party-that-isn't-going-to-be-given-any-power.
Until it reaches one of the big three, in which case it'll 'get stuck there' as those parties -- Lib Dem, Lab, and Con -- are too big to be knocked out. If they are, it'll be right at the end so your vote will ONLY be transferred to another big party or ignored.
Rather than wasting your vote, AV steals it; unless you don't vote for one of the big 3 at all, in which case AV will waste your vote anyway.
An example:
Lets say you vote like this, with your choices ranked in order of preference:
1 green party
2 yellow party
3 red party
4 lib dem
5 monster raving loony party
6 conservative
0 BNP
0 UKIP
Now, lets say the results of the vote are like this:
26% Labour
25% Conservative
24% Lib-Dem
10% monster raving loony
5% yellow
4% UKIP
3% green <-- your vote is here
2% BNP
1% red
0% ignored
OK, what happens first is that the red party, having lost, gets knocked out and it's votes redistributed. for the sake of example, lets assume that every single red voter wanted yellow as their second choice.
26% Labour
25% Conservative
24% Lib-Dem
10% monster raving loony
6% yellow +1%
4% UKIP
3% green <-- your vote is here
2% BNP
0% red -1%
0% ignored
Now the BNP get knocked out. lets say half the BNP had UKIP as their second choice, whilst the others had conservatives down as number 2.
26% Labour
26% Conservative +1%
24% Lib-Dem
10% monster raving loony
6% yellow
5% UKIP +1%
3% green <-- your vote is here
0% BNP -2%
0% red
0% ignored
Now... aww, nuts. it's your number 1 choice, the green party that gets knocked out... not to worry, your vote is transferred, right?
Your vote is transferred to your number 2 choice, the yellow party. And, lets say for simplicity that every other green voter also wanted yellow as their second choice:
26% Labour
26% Conservative
24% Lib-Dem
10% monster raving loony
9% yellow +3% <-- your vote is here
5% UKIP
0% green -3%
0% BNP
0% red
0% ignored
Horray, my vote wasn't wasted! Now UKIP go out. lets just say that their voters didn't have a second preference, so their votes are now dropped:
26% Labour
26% Conservative
24% Lib-Dem
10% monster raving loony
9% yellow <-- your vote is here
0% UKIP -5%
0% green
0% BNP
0% red
5% ignored +5%
Aww... your second choice goes out now. Your vote now would go to your third choice, red, but they're out of the running. So, instead, it goes to your 4th choice, Lib Dem. lets say there's quite a lot of variety amongst the yellow voters as to who is next best:
28% Labour +2%
28% Conservative +2%
26% Lib-Dem +2% <-- your vote is here
12% monster raving loony +2%
0% yellow -9%
0% UKIP
0% green
0% BNP
0% red
6% ignored +1%
Hmm... that 'quite a lot of variety' has rendered down into 'four parties' 'cos the others have been knocked out; apart from 1% of the voters, who are now, therefore, not having their votes counted.
Now MRLP goes bye-byes, and also has a variety of next choices:
32% Labour +4%
32% Conservative +4%
30% Lib-Dem +4% <-- your vote is here
0% monster raving loony -12%
0% yellow
0% UKIP
0% green
0% BNP
0% red
6% ignored
Note that the big three are collecting all the votes (even tho there are a variety of next choices, they -- being big -- are the only ones left not knocked out)
Now it's lib-dem getting knocked out, and your vote being transfered again; 2/3rds of the lib-dem voters prefer conservative over labour, 1/6th prefer labour over con, and the other 1/6 don't like either and so will be ignored. Note that 'prefer conservative over labour' might mean that they have many inbetween preferences, but they're being ignored as all the other parties have been knocked out:
37% Labour +5%
52% Conservative +20% <-- your vote is here
0% Lib-Dem -30%
0% monster raving loony
0% yellow
0% UKIP
0% green
0% BNP
0% red
11% ignored +5%
And the conservatives win!
But... wait... your vote ended up at your last choice. In fact, conservative could easily be most voters last choice. And if you didn't like either Lab or Con, your vote would have been ignored!
What's happening is that, by knocking out the smaller parties first, you almost guarantee that everyones' vote will end up with labour, conservative, lib-dem, or ignored.
Short Version
This is another way of forcing us to 'choose' one of the big parties,
The only good things about it? There's a fractional chance that one of the non-big-three will actually win (fat chance, but slightly better than under FPTP); and Lib-Dem might actually win and therefore give us the Single Transferable Vote system (much better)
Tho why we can't just say that, in the above example, labour get 26% of the vote, cons get 25, etc. etc. and your party (green) get 3% of the vote -- i.e., why can't we have a directly proportional system -- is beyond me.
Completely wrong
As an example of how it can go completely wrong, imagine everyone had put the red party as it's second choice: they'd be clearly the best choice to be in charge, but -- having so few 1st preferences -- they'd have been knocked out in the first round and end up with 0% of the votes.
Also imagine if most people would like any party other than the big three, but can't agree which one. That's right: rather than the AV system determining which one gets power, it will instead steal any votes that it can and transfer them to Lab, Con, or Lib-Dem, or if the voter refuses to co-operate and doesn't rank Lab, Lib-Dem or Con, it'll ignore their vote.
More
Electoral-reform.org.uk
Beeb
No comments:
Post a Comment