On the 5th May 2011 the United Kingdom will vote in a referendum to decide whether to change from the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system to the Alternative Vote (AV) system. Here is my blog post about why I truly believe that the Alternative Vote would be good for the United Kingdom.

Why I will vote “Yes” to the Alternative Vote

AV is more democratic than FPTP

Imagine that you’re living in a place where the Fictional Party MP that was elected by FPTP received less than 50% of the overall vote, that actually means that the majority voted for one of the other parties. This means that more than 50% of the people did not want the Fictional Party to get in. The AV system allows each voter to have a second and third choice, therefore if their first choice just doesn’t have enough support and no one receives the majority, then second choices will count (and then third choices). This is surely more democratic. Of course, in our example the Fictional Party could still become elected through the boost of the second choices, but it allows those people who didn’t get a real say to now have a second chance to say what they would prefer. Lets go through this step by step (I’ve made it top four parties and left out 10% of the votes, just to make things a little clearer to visualise):

1. Alpha Party receives 43% of the first-choice votes
2. Bene Party receives 40% of the first-choice votes
3. Caza Party receives 6% of the first-choice votes
4. Fictional Party receives 1% of the first-choice votes

The above would lead to a count of the second-choice votes of those who voted for the Fictional Party. If they all had the Alpha Party as their second choice then the Alpha Party would be boosted up to 44%, still not 50%. If the Caza Party then all voted for the Alpha Party with their second votes then the Alpha Party would hit the 50% mark and democracy happens. If however those who voted for the Fictional Party and the Caza Party voted for the Bene Party as their second choice then Bene would have 47% and would be a higher percentage than the Alpha Party, but it still wouldn’t hit the 50% mark. So the Alpha Party voters second choice would kick into play, and if 3% of the voters voted for Bene Party as second choice then the Bene Party would hit their 50% mark, thereby allowing the Bene Party to win that constituency as it represents what the majority would prefer. Democracy in action!

Of course the above is just describing two very particular scenarios, and although either the above may happen its actually more likely that the shift of power would not be hugely significant, however it does mean that MPs will need to fight a bit more for their constituencies in places that they’ve only just won. This is a good thing.

AV is just as simple as FPTP

AV is simple for the voters, it is just a case of marking 1, 2 and 3 on the voting slip. If you don’t want to have a 2nd or 3rd choice, then just don’t place them on there - you can simply have a first choice if you wish (a bit like FPTP-style voting). It won’t require any fancy machinery and will be paper based and will use a manual counting system (just as FPTP has got currently) [1] [2].

A chance to progress our voting system

I truly believe that if we vote yes to Alternative Vote then we are progressing. Not only that, but if we vote no in this referendum then I believe that we’re less likely to have a referendum to further refine the voting process (say to AV+ or Proportional Representation), or have direct democracy referendums in the future. Our last national (i.e. UK) direct democracy referendum was in 1975 and was related to the UKs membership of the European Community. Since the new government came into play we’ve had a rather successful welsh-localised referendum on the devolution of Welsh Assembly, this forthcoming referendum on voting, and they will have a referendum for all future EU treaties that are related to powers of EU members (specifically UK) in the EU.

Who is supporting the change to Alternative Vote

• Campaigns:
  • There is a “Yes to Fairer Votes Campaign“, which is sponsored by (just to name a few) Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, Electoral Reform Society, The Electoral Commission and Make Votes Count. It is politically supported by some members of parliament and many of the general public.
• Parties officially supporting a “yes” vote:
  • The Liberal Democrats
  • The Labour Party
  • The Green Party of England and Wales
  • The Alliance Party in Northern Ireland
  • The Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland
• I’m not particularly interested in celebrity-ism, but for those who are. The following celebs are in favour of the Alternative Vote:
  • Eddie Izzard
  • Tony Robinson
  • John O’Farrell
  • Richard Wilson
  • Kriss Akabusi
  • Jonathan Ross
  • John Cleese
  • Chris Addison
  • Nicholas Hoult
  • David Schneider
  • Greg Dyke
  • Billy Bragg

Please do note that there are also a group of Tory MPs who are for the change to the Alternative Vote system, even though the party itself is against it.[3]

The Plea

I humbly request that those who are entitled to vote in the United Kingdom Referendum please do vote “Yes” for the Alternative Vote system. The referendum is on the 5th May 2011, polling cards will be around soon if you haven’t got them yet (contact your council if you haven’t received one in a couple of weeks), polling stations should be close by and are usually open from about 7am until about 10pm. So those who can, please do vote “Yes” for a fairer vote system as its a step in the right direction.

Footnotes

1. As indicated in the Independent Newspaper (“Voting reform will not cause more cuts, Treasury insists“) and the Yes to Fairer Votes
2. If the government eventually did go to machine-based counting systems then it would happen no matter what the voting system employed, and is certainly not related to this referendum.
3. Please see the “Conservative Action for Political Reform group” who wrote a press release welcoming the change to AV. The centre-right think tank “ResPublica” are also supporting the change to AV.

QUICK UPDATE - 19th April 2011

Many people have been saying that First Past The Post is traditional and British… well just because something is traditional doesn’t make it right (e.g. slavery), and just because something is British doesn’t mean people have to like it (e.g. jellied eels).