I first met the Alternative Vote system at College many years ago, and my instant reaction was “Why don’t we use that for Parliament?” It immediately struck me as the fairest and simplest way to elect one person to represent a constituency.
What are we trying to do when we elect a member of Parliament? I believe we are trying to find the candidate who will represent the views of the highest number of constituents as possible. But what happens now? We have loads of people running for election, as well as the main parties we have the Monster Raving Loony Party, Church of the Militant Elvis, New Millennium Bean Party, and others who have no expectation of being elected (I hesitate to list UKIP, the Greens, and the BNP because of their recent successes). All they do is draw votes away from the main candidates without anyone knowing whom those voters would be comfortable having as their representative. And so most MPs get elected on a minority vote. I find that unsatisfactory in a democracy where the view of the majority should hold sway, and a majority means more than half.
Better is the way the French used to elect their president. Everyone goes to the polls and votes for the many candidates, the votes are counted and those candidates who are clearly not going to be President are thrown out and a new election held. So everyone votes again, of course most people vote for the same candidate as they did last time, but those who voted for the lesser candidates have to choose someone else, or not vote. The votes are counted and it all happens again. They could go back time after time at great expense and waste of time. In practice, nowadays the field normally gets narrowed to two candidates for the second vote because those who got enough votes to stay in but can see that they won’t win normally back off. However, here is the principle of the alternative vote.
To save money and time the AV system just asks “If the guy you put first gets thrown out whom would vote for in a second round?”, and third round, etc. Now we could of course, after each round, chuck all the voting papers back in the ballot box and count them all again, just modifying those that have first votes for the rejected candidates. That way everyone’s votes get counted the same number of times and no one gets more votes than anyone else (John Reid take note). However that would waste time because we have already counted most of them so we just write the number down again, and add on the reallocated votes by counting those.
This way in the end the person who is elected will have the support of the majority of those who have votes effective for the last round. I say that because in the old French system people who didn’t come back to vote in the latter rounds didn't get counted, I mean how can you count someone who doesn’t vote?
The arguments I hear against AV sound specious to me. John Reid’s argument that some people get more than one vote is specious, because in effect everyone's vote counts in every round – and that’s fair. Those MPs who say it is too complicated astound me because if they think the British Public can’t get their head round such a simple question as “If that person wasn’t standing whom would you vote for?” they must have a very low opinion of us. And those arguing that holding the referendum is so expensive we should vote for First Past the Post just don’t realize that the money has already been spent.
The only reason I can understand that someone might vote against AV is because they think that their team will lose out. In my opinion it is why David Cameron is against it. He says he has a gut feel that it is wrong - David, that feeling in your gut is that your feel sick at the thought of losing out. And it is generally considered that the Conservatives will lose out because of the “natural” closeness of Labour and the Lib Dems. However this is not clear, and at least one survey has shown that the Conservatives may well do better. The problem with judging the effect is that no one has done exit polls on what the second choices were, so we just don’t know.
But one thing we do know is that in a democracy the view of the majority should hold sway and AV will seek out the majority view.
And the other thing we know is that whenever a party loses out in an election it address the issues that made them less popular and adapts to provide the people with a better option next time – and that is what we want - politicians trying hard to provide the government we want.
The facts are that the AV system is simple to understand, simple to count, and delivers MPs who have to appeal to the majority of their constituents. And that ticks all the boxes for electing a single person to represent a constituency.
Best Wishes and Happy Voting
Adrian
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