The Ayes AV it?

I was working from home yesterday. All in all a productive day (of course). Thursday sees the polls opening for local elections and a referendum on the voting system so Wednesday saw me spending some time reading up on the various options.

I say various options: there's yes to AV. Or no to AV. Two options.

I suspect that the turn-out for the elections will be low. I also suspect that the Nays will have it. The populist media seems anti-AV and has modelled all sorts of "if we had AV" scenarios designed to pander to their audiences' worst fears.

A lot of the material I read yesterday was leading me to think "yes" but the arguments seem to boil down to the simple premise that FPTP is just "not fair". Not fair is a statement made, usually by children, when they can't get something or do something they want but they don't quite know why they should be able to do this.

I think what I don't follow is why someone's second choice vote should carry the same weight as someone else's first choice vote. I think I could understand AV if the second choices counted as half a vote, third choices a third of the vote and so on. Clearly, this would be more complex and cumbersome to administer so the desire to keep things simple will always prevail.

The current system is criticised because parties can be elected to a majority of the seats with a minority of the votes. This leads to voter disenfranchisement and political complacency. The concept of MPs representing a constituency seems outmoded, the world has changed significantly (beyond recognition?) in the last 200 years.

Perhaps the system needs reform. I'm just not sure that AV is the answer.

If the question on the ballot paper asked whether I wanted FPTP to stay, I would say no. Instead, the question will be whether I want AV to be introduced. I don't know that I do.



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