Friday 31 December 2010

Another Dialogue with a No2AVer

Below is my reply to a reply to my comments on Nick Cohen's rather pathetic attack on the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign for the Spectator. http://www.spectator.co.uk/nickcohen/6578143/reformers-for-the-anci...

Before going on I'd like to draw your attention to Lee Griffin's excellent demolition of the article. It is ruthless. No punches are pulled. http://bit.ly/eNiajE 

So I posted a couple of comments myself and got a reply, all of which I have quoted (paragraph at a time) as I responded. I replied again and below is what I have written. At the time of writing these comments are still awaiting moderator approval, but I hope that is a mere formality. In the meantime I thought I'd get the comments down here for future reference. In this dialogue, my correspondent gave his name as "Michael S".

"Firstly, not every constituent is entitled to vote (for example, under 18s are constituents but not eligible voters)."

Being a bit facetious there aren't you? A point that's true of every voting system isn't really worth making.

"Secondly, not every eligible voter chooses to vote. The winning candidate cannot be said to have the support of any of these people."

No, but neither can the losing candidate. You're really just being facetious again here as this is true of all non-compulsory voting systems, and I believe in the right not to vote (even though I would never dream of not voting myself).

"Thirdly, the situation where the winning candidate must have a majority of votes cast only applies if all voters are required to produce a full ordering of candidates. Otherwise, votes that were validly cast for one candidate will be redistributed to the 'Spoilt, Blank or Void' pile rather than to another candidate if no further preference is expressed once the preferred candidate was eliminated."

When it comes to the last round before a winner is declared, all the voters have either expressed a preference for one of the remaining candidates over the other(s) or they have no preference at all. If they have no preference then they will be equally happy/unhappy whatever the outcome. However of those who do have a preference, the majority prefer the winner to the others. 

Consider what FPTP does. It basically eliminates all candidates except for one immediately. All preferences of all voters are ignored making all losing ballots under FPTP the exact equivalent of exhausted AV ballots. Bear in mind that for a ballot to be exhausted under AV the voter must vote exclusively for all of the least popular candidates, putting them in a tiny tiny minority. Add to this that these voters are completely indifferent to who wins out of the leading candidates and the fact that the majority of FPTP ballots are ignored in exactly the same way (except where a winner has a majority) and your point becomes rather negligible.

Also, the more candidates there are the less chance there is that the one with the most support has won. In fact it's perfectly possible (and occurs often enough) for an FPTP winner to be the most disliked by a majority. 

"So the most that can be said for AV is that it ensures that MPs have the support of a majority of voters whose votes were still being counted at the end."
I don't see how this can be a major objection to AV, especially when the alternative is FPTP. Everyone has the right to a say. You can express as many preferences as you wish. Or as few. We're looking at a comparison of AV over FPTP because that's all that's on offer at the moment and your description above puts AV well ahead.

"Even this seems to be going too far. If my fifth favourite candidate wins, can I be said to support him, want him to win? 'Support' in this context does not mean 'I want X to win'. Rather, it means nothing more than 'I don't object to X as much as I hate Y'."

Given that we currently are used to seeing campaigners saying "Don't vote for your party, they can't win here. You have to vote for us otherwise you'll just be letting in that other lot that none of us want", being able to express your preferences in order is a MASSIVE improvement.

OK, let's say your 5th choice wins, and your vote went to him. That means that whoever came 2nd would have been your 6th, or 7th choice. You preferred your 5th choice out of all those who were available at the last round. BUT, a large number of people also put him 1st and 2nd. You don't get to win on 5th choices if you haven't already got loads of 1st and 2nd choice votes. Also, anyone who loses on 5th choices needed them too. They weren't able to get a majority on 1st and 2nd choices and were competing for the same 5th choices but didn't succeed. AV takes everyone's views into account and narrows down the candidates until one gets a majority.

Where AV and FPTP produce different winners, the winner under AV would win a head to head between the two because the winner under AV has a majority who prefer him to the winner under FPTP. 

"Ben, do you not understand how bizarre it is that on the one hand you want people to be able to vote how they want to and not be 'forced' to vote tactically, yet on the other hand you urge people to vote for AV even if they prefer FPTP as it shows desire for 'change'?"

If you prefer FPTP, you prefer FPTP and voting No to AV will allow you to keep it and that is what I would expect you to do. However, FPTP is a massively inferior system to AV and the only people who would prefer it are the ones who stand to lose from fairer votes. They just happen to support a party that benefits from it. I'd warn them though that nothing is permanent. All parties wax and wane in terms of success. Polices change, leaders come and go, and situations and needs arise to which different parties are suited at different times.
It would be foolish to choose a system that is inflexible just because it suits one at the present. AV gives powers to the voters allowing them to vote for what's needed at any time. It's not the best system, but it is the best system currently on offer. If you don't like AV compared to FPTP you wouldn't like any of the PR systems either.

Thursday 30 December 2010

Debunking the Multiple Votes Falsehood with a Pub Analogy

This came about in my previous blog post, a commentary on a no2av article by @Dyslexic_Trojan from Twitter. However that's a long read, and I feel this analogy stands out well enough to deserve its own entry, on a par with my Hare and Tortoise analogy from a few months back.

So many times I've seen Pro First Past the Post people perpetuate the falsehood (call it a lie, call it a popular misconception, it could be either depending on the person who utters it) that AV means some people get more votes than others. I've come across an analogy that should clearly debunk it once and for all, in the terms that everyone should be able to understand. Buying a drink in a pub.


Everyone gets one vote. One voter, one ballot paper. Multiple preferences are declared, but the vote only ends up with one candidate. If you voted for a popular candidate your vote ends up with that candidate. If you voted for an unpopular candidate, by the final round, your vote will end up with a different one, (quite possibly the same popular candidate), but it's one vote.

Each vote is counted each round and everyone's vote gets counted the same number of times as everyone else's. It's simply not true to say that some people get more votes than others.

When you go to buy a drink and your favourite beer is off, so you end up buying a different one, you still only come away with the one pint. The difference between AV and FPTP is under AV you get a pint and you get to choose between the ones that are available. Under FPTP You instead get told "sorry that beer's off, now I have to serve the next gentleman and you have to join the back of the queue" (i.e. that's your vote used up, try again next election).

In democracy, everyone should get one vote that is worth as much as everyone else's. Everyone who queues up at the bar should walk away with a pint.

Please note, the pint in this analogy does not represent the winning candidate, it represents a vote that goes to one of the candidates in the final round before a winner is declared.

You walk away with a pint, and only one. It's not your favourite but it's one you quite like. Your vote has counted at each stage, and while you may not win, at least you've had a say in the final outcome right up to the last round. 

Only if you really have no preference at all and would prefer to walk away do you end up without a say in the final round. And even then, that is no less than what that the majority of voters must make do with under First Past the Post.

AV is simply more democratic in every sense!

Following another twitter debate with @dyslexic_trojan he led me to his blog post on FPTP and AV, and having read it I could only declare it as "stuck up nonsense". Now it would hardly be fair of me to leave it there without justifying my comment.



So here's my full analysis and response. It is a bit long. Perhaps best taken in a few paragraphs at a time.


And here are my comments:

"in FPTP one is forced to make a choice for a single candidate or idea."

Forcing a voter to do anything is never good. You often talk about devaluing votes, well when a voter is forced to vote a certain way and ignore aspects of his/her views, that certainly does devalue the vote.


"AV on the other hand no one actually votes for a candidate they merely register vague sympathy for them." 

Declaring your 1st preference on an AV ballot is very much voting and not registering vague sympathy at all. Given that FPTP doesn't allow you to do this, I'd say that AV 1st preferences are of far greater value than FPTP X votes (which could be any preference from 1st down to 2nd last, whatever is necessary to keep out the disliked candidate).

The remaining preferences are used so that a voter can express their full views, showing who they really like and who they really dislike. A voter can express who they really want to win, and also express their preferences between the most popular candidates, without having to guess before hand who the most popular candidates are likely to be. It allows voters to be completely honest, and removes the horrible choice forced upon many voters between a tactical vote and a wasted vote.

"I will not labour how many lives have been lost and how many bones broke to achieve the democratic ideal that within the democratic sphere and in particular in the voting booth all men have the right for a vote and each man has the same number of votes and that is one."

I'm glad you mentioned this as I would have mentioned it myself otherwise. Democracy is important for many reasons and Britian should use the most Democratic system available to us. In may we will have a choice between two, and one of those two, the current system is the least democratic system used anywhere in the world.

"Under AV those who vote for smaller parties (as the votes are redistributed upward) are allowed to votes at least twice and in some cases several times."

Everyone gets one vote. One voter, one ballot paper. Multiple preferences are declared, but the vote only ends up with one candidate. If you voted for a popular candidate your vote ends up with that candidate. If you voted for an unpopular candidate, your vote will end up with a different one, (quite possibly the same popular candidate), but it's one vote. Each vote is counted each round and everyone's vote gets counted the same number of times as everyone else's. It's simply not true to say that some people get more votes than others. When you go to buy a drink and your favourite beer is off, so you end up buying a different one, you still only come away with the one pint.

The difference between AV and FPTP is under AV you get a pint and you get to choose between the ones that are available. Under FPTP You don't get told "sorry that beer's off, now I have to serve the next gentleman and you have to join the back of the queue" (i.e. that's your vote used up, try again next election).

In democracy, everyone should get one vote that is worth as much as everyone else's. Everyone who queues up at the bar should walk away with a pint. (Please note, the pint in this analogy does not represent the winning candidate, it represents a vote going to a candidate, who may lose but would lose only to someone else who got a majority - i.e. 50% +1)

So as you recognise how important democracy is and the price paid for it I hope you will see now that choosing to keep First Past the Post is a terrible show of disrespect to all those who suffered so that all men (and WOMEN I should add) have a vote.
"Another crime for which it is guilty is it drives votes toward the least disliked."

First Past the Post already does this. It forces voters to make a choice between what they want (a wasted vote) and their least disliked option (a tactical vote). They could go with their true preference but already know it would mean they don't make any contribution towards deciding between the disliked candidate and the next most disliked candidate - the only one who has a chance of beating the disliked candidate. They could vote for the least disliked and try to keep out the disliked, or vote for their first choice and know it's a waste as they'll have no say in the outcome.



" Think of the labour leadership election, it was not the most popular or the most controversial; it was the least offensive to both sides. They where not selected by first or even second preference votes but by fourth and fifth, they were elected by the “there okay I suppose” preference."

The Labour leadership outcome was skewed by a perculiar vote weighting between the different people eligible to vote in the election. The fact that Ed beat David had nothing to do with whether it was FPTP or AV. Ed would have won under FPTP as I understand.

HOWEVER: Let's suppose for a minute that it really WAS that simple. Let's suppose that David would have won under FPTP, but lost to Ed instead under AV. Think about what that would have meant. It would have meant that the majority of voters preferred Ed to David. Ones who put Ed 2nd would have put David 3rd or lower. Ones ho put Ed 4th would have put David 5th or lower and so one.

If it had been a head to head between Ed and David, Ed would have won. Even if it were true that FPTP would have meant David won instead, he could only have done so thanks to vote splitting between the other candidates. In situations where AV and FPTP would produce different winners, the winner under AV would always beat the winner under FPTP in a head-to-head, because the majority PREFER the AV winner to the FPTP winner.

That's the significance of AV requiring a majority. Even though it draws some of that majority from preferences that aren't 1st, anyone who is beaten by those preferences received even LOWER preferences from the same voter. That's democracy at work and First Past the Post just can't cope with such situations and produces winners that displease the majority of voters.

"As we know candidates follow and are pushed by electoral trends and if moving toward blandness and indecisiveness if the key to win on the great surge of “there okay I suppose” votes then this is exactly what they will do."

Candidates FOLLOWING what the voters want is exactly as things SHOULD be. If the majority of voters wanted a candidate who would make it law to wear pink hats every 3rd sunday of the month, then it is RIGHT that a candidate who would introduce that law should win. You may not like Pink hats, and I may not like Pink hats, but if that's what the majority want then that's how it should be, and you and I are free to go and live somewhere else.

Now take that Pink hat rule example and give it another name, such as the Iraq War, or Tuition Fee increase. In both cases, the majority didn't want it. But we got stuck with both because a government was elected with a minority of votes. It may have been the largest minority, but it was still a minority and resulted in the majority of voters being particularly unhappy. We need to replace First Past the Post with a system that rewards candidates who listen to the majority of voters if we want anything resembling democracy in Britain. AV goes some way towards doing that. At the very least it's a big improvement on the current system.
"Another crime for which it is guilty is it drives votes toward the least disliked."

First Past the Post already does this. It forces voters to make a choice between what they want (a wasted vote) and their least disliked option (a tactical vote). They could go with their true preference but already know it would mean they don't make any contribution towards deciding between the disliked candidate and the next most disliked candidate - the only one who has a chance of beating the disliked candidate. They could vote for the least disliked and try to keep out the disliked, or vote for their first choice and know it's a waste as they'll have no say in the outcome.



" Think of the labour leadership election, it was not the most popular or the most controversial; it was the least offensive to both sides. They where not selected by first or even second preference votes but by fourth and fifth, they were elected by the “there okay I suppose” preference."

The Labour leadership outcome was skewed by a perculiar vote weighting between the different people eligible to vote in the election. The fact that Ed beat David had nothing to do with whether it was FPTP or AV. Ed would have won under FPTP as I understand.

HOWEVER: Let's suppose for a minute that it really WAS that simple. Let's suppose that David would have won under FPTP, but lost to Ed instead under AV. Think about what that would have meant. It would have meant that the majority of voters preferred Ed to David. Ones who put Ed 2nd would have put David 3rd or lower. Ones ho put Ed 4th would have put David 5th or lower and so one.

If it had been a head to head between Ed and David, Ed would have won. Even if it were true that FPTP would have meant David won instead, he could only have done so thanks to vote splitting between the other candidates. In situations where AV and FPTP would produce different winners, the winner under AV would always beat the winner under FPTP in a head-to-head, because the majority PREFER the AV winner to the FPTP winner.

That's the significance of AV requiring a majority. Even though it draws some of that majority from preferences that aren't 1st, anyone who is beaten by those preferences received even LOWER preferences from the same voter. That's democracy at work and First Past the Post just can't cope with such situations and produces winners that displease the majority of voters.
"As we know candidates follow and are pushed by electoral trends and if moving toward blandness and indecisiveness if the key to win on the great surge of “there okay I suppose” votes then this is exactly what they will do."

Candidates FOLLOWING what the voters want is exactly as things SHOULD be. If the majority of voters wanted a candidate who would make it law to wear pink hats every 3rd sunday of the month, then it is RIGHT that a candidate who would introduce that law should win. You may not like Pink hats, and I may not like Pink hats, but if that's what the majority want then that's how it should be, and you and I are free to go and live somewhere else.

Now take that Pink hat rule example and give it another name, such as the Iraq War, or Tuition Fee increase. In both cases, the majority didn't want it. But we got stuck with both because a government was elected with a minority of votes. It may have been the largest minority, but it was still a minority and resulted in the majority of voters being particularly unhappy. We need to replace First Past the Post with a system that rewards candidates who listen to the majority of voters if we want anything resembling democracy in Britain. AV goes some way towards doing that. At the very least it's a big improvement on the current system.
"Added to this the fact that I very much doubt that AV will alter the electoral landscape, indeed I believe it will reinforce the dominance of the two party system."

If Labour and the Tories continue to dominate British Politics under AV it can only mean that they deserve to. If they're still winning the lion's share of seats once everyone's stopped voting tactically and each seat is won with majority support then it proves that all those Labour and Conservative MPs deserve to be there.

Furthermore there'll be no comfortable jobs for life for MPs of any party. They'll only continue to win and keep their seats if they work hard for it. Any sign of sleaze, promise-breaking, expenses fiddling, warmongering and the like can easily be punished because the majority of preferences will end up going elsewhere. Everyone's accountable. And I include the Lib Dems here. Rightly or wrongly, they are rather unpopular at the moment, but it'll be just as easy to punish them under AV as anyone else. They even, may find themselves making way for Greens or UKIP as the third party, IF it's what the people want.

What the people want by the way is the key issue here. Under AV voters get more say. They express their views fully with a full spectrum of positive and negative opinions of candidates. No-one can hide, or sit comfortably with their core vote alone.



"Let us use the Ed Balls seat as an example. Labour where only defeated by UKIP votes from the Tories, had AV been used those preferences would have transferred to the Tories."

Ok, what happens here is that people who prefer UKIP to Tories will vote UKIP first. All of them. And it'll be clear how many of them there really are. They'll see it, and the UKIP candidate will see it, and all of the other voters will see it as well. And they'll think, "Hang on, it may only take so much more to overtake some of the other parties in this constituency over time." As a result you'll see UKIP working really hard to build a momentum. Their chances will instead of being impossible, will just be rather difficult. They'll push hard to turn that "rather difficult" into "not particularly easy" and so on. Meanwhile all the other candidates will be working hard too. Everyone will be under pressure, to stay ahead of the game, or to make ground on others who don't do so well.

Under FPTP you have people who can't win, people who can't lose, and very occasionally people with even chances between them.

You'll get the least effort from people who can't lose. They know whatever they do, they're in a job for life and they'll be coming back. All they have to do is dress smartly and not say anything overtly racist. They certainly won't have to do much between elections. Just a bit of campaigning before an election and then once they're in office they can relax.

The next least amount of effort comes from people who can't win. They don't have any chance of winning but they're there and it's the taking part that counts and they at least can try and beat their personal best in share of the votes.

The only time you see people firing on all cylinders is when they've got a fair chance of winning but also a fair chance of losing. They can win if they really go for it, but if they don't they won't. AV makes that situation the most common one for candidates across the country. And that's how AV makes our MPs work harder to win and keep their seats.
"Added to this the fact that I very much doubt that AV will alter the electoral landscape, indeed I believe it will reinforce the dominance of the two party system."

If Labour and the Tories continue to dominate British Politics under AV it can only mean that they deserve to. If they're still winning the lion's share of seats once everyone's stopped voting tactically and each seat is won with majority support then it proves that all those Labour and Conservative MPs deserve to be there.

Furthermore there'll be no comfortable jobs for life for MPs of any party. They'll only continue to win and keep their seats if they work hard for it. Any sign of sleaze, promise-breaking, expenses fiddling, warmongering and the like can easily be punished because the majority of preferences will end up going elsewhere. Everyone's accountable. And I include the Lib Dems here. Rightly or wrongly, they are rather unpopular at the moment, but it'll be just as easy to punish them under AV as anyone else. They even, may find themselves making way for Greens or UKIP as the third party, IF it's what the people want.

What the people want by the way is the key issue here. Under AV voters get more say. They express their views fully with a full spectrum of positive and negative opinions of candidates. No-one can hide, or sit comfortably with their core vote alone.
"Let us use the Ed Balls seat as an example. Labour where only defeated by UKIP votes from the Tories, had AV been used those preferences would have transferred to the Tories."

Ok, what happens here is that people who prefer UKIP to Tories will vote UKIP first. All of them. And it'll be clear how many of them there really are. They'll see it, and the UKIP candidate will see it, and all of the other voters will see it as well. And they'll think, "Hang on, it may only take so much more to overtake some of the other parties in this constituency over time." As a result you'll see UKIP working really hard to build a momentum. Their chances will instead of being impossible, will just be rather difficult. They'll push hard to turn that "rather difficult" into "not particularly easy" and so on. Meanwhile all the other candidates will be working hard too. Everyone will be under pressure, to stay ahead of the game, or to make ground on others who don't do so well.

Under FPTP you have people who can't win, people who can't lose, and very occasionally people with even chances between them.

You'll get the least effort from people who can't lose. They know whatever they do, they're in a job for life and they'll be coming back. All they have to do is dress smartly and not say anything overtly racist. They certainly won't have to do much between elections. Just a bit of campaigning before an election and then once they're in office they can relax.

The next least amount of effort comes from people who can't win. They don't have any chance of winning but they're there and it's the taking part that counts and they at least can try and beat their personal best in share of the votes.
The only time you see people firing on all cylinders is when they've got a fair chance of winning but also a fair chance of losing. They can win if they really go for it, but if they don't they won't. AV makes that situation the most common one for candidates across the country. And that's how AV makes our MPs work harder to win and keep their seats.

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Which is the TRUE Winner then?

A common argument posed by those in favour of First Past the Post over a preferential voting systems is that First Past the Post gives you 'true" winners who've got all their support out of people making only one choice. They also say that First Past the Post is fairest as the one with "the most votes" wins. 

First of all watch out for the phrase "the most votes". It might look similar to "most of the votes" but it means something very different. Having more votes than any other individual does not mean a majority. A majority is defined as more than everyone else put together, i.e. more than half. Merely having the largest minority does not mean you have the most support. It does not mean that on the whole you are in the best position to represent everyone. To form a single party government in the House of Commons, a party needs a majority of seats, more than half. It SHOULD be the same to win a seat, a candidate SHOULD need a majority of votes to win, but under First Past the Post, they don't. How is that fair?

So, putting aside this wordplay slight of hand, let's have a look at a slightly more developed version of the pro-FPTP argument. First Past the Post supporters might say "Ah, but under AV the 50% comes from a mixture of preferences, so it's not a true majority." My reply to that is that First Past the Post votes are a mixture of preferences as well. You only get to make one choice under FPTP so you often have to make a decision about whether to give it to your 1st preference, or to give it to someone else for tactical reasons.

The difference is that under FPTP you don't know where the votes come in the voters' preferences. And FPTP X vote could be anything from 1st right down to 2nd last - whichever is required to keep out the least liked candidate. What AV does is make it clear what the preferences are. So while a majority in AV can come from a mixture of 1st, 2nd and 3rd preference votes, a FPTP victory often comes from a MINORITY that is ALSO a mixture of various preference votes, and may of them probably lower down the scale than they would be under AV.

To any FPTP supporter who says "only 1st preferences should count", I say, you have to know what the 1st preferences are to make them count. You can't know that without inviting voters to include as many preferences as they like. If you restrict voters to a maximum number of choices, especially only one choice then you'll just never know.

What it really comes down to, is that there are situations where a candidate would win under AV when he/she got fewer 1st preference votes than one of the others, but got a majority over all once the preferences of voters for elminated candidates are considered. FPTP-backers think this is unfair. They think this for two reasons, both of which I intend to show are incorrect:

Incorrect reason number 1) They assume that all the 1st preference votes are equivalent to the X votes in FPTP, and therefore whoever got the most 1st preference votes in AV would have won under FPTP.

This is wrong for the reasons I have already explained. FPTP votes aren't all first preferences. They are distorted by tactical voting and in fact are made up of a whole range of preferences, from people who really like the candidates, and from people who see candidates as the only realistic alternative to the ones they really don't like. Under FPTP many people vote for their 2nd-least preferred candidate as they see it as the only way to keep out their most disliked. FPTP votes are NOT all 1st preference votes, so you can't look at the 1st preferences in an AV vote and say that that's how the votes would have gone under FPTP.

Incorrect reason number 2) They believe that because the majority that leads to a victory in AV is made up of some voters 2nd and 3rd preferences (possibly even lower down in some case) it invalidates the victory.

Putting aside the fact that FPTP also includes a mix of preferences, I'm going to show mathematically how a winner under AV would always beat the FPTP winner (unless they're the same person as is very often the case) in a head-to-head.

We're describing a situation where a candidate a) wins under FPTP b) gets the most 1st preferences under AV and c) doesn't win under AV.

Under FPTP one of the candidate wins with the largest minority. Let's say it's Bob with a number of votes X. It's a minority, so X < 50%

Under AV the maximum number of 1st preferences Bob could get is X. He could get fewer (if, say, some of his FPTP votes were tactical and not real 1st preferences) but he wouldn't get more as there'd be no reason to vote tactically against a likely winner under FPTP.

So Bob has the most 1st preferences X, and he has <50% therefore so must everyone else. 

So no-one has a majority of 1st preferences and the process of elimination and redistribution of votes begins. The end result is one of the other candidates, let's say it's Anne, wins, getting a majority of votes after the other candidates have been eliminated. 

Anne's total is Y. As Bob comes second, he isn't eliminated at any stage so his total is either X or >X. But because he comes second he must have fewer votes than Y. Anne on the other hand has Y votes, >50% > X.

So Anne would have beaten Bob in a head-to-head. With just the two of them standing and the voters choosing one or the other, more would have chosen Anne and Anne would have won fair and square in a FPTP sense. And with only two candidates FPTP has meaning as there's a real Post: the 50% mark.

At this point it is clear that more voters preferred Anne to Bob than Bob to Anne. Some put Anne 1st, some put Anne 2nd, or 3rd, or even 4th. But wherever they put Anne, they put her higher than they put Bob. If a voter put Anne 3rd and his/her vote went to Anne, then Bob would have been placed lower than 3rd by that voter.

However little of an endorsement for Anne it may appear to be, it's LESS of an endorsement for Bob. If the voter really didn't care whether it should be Anne or Bob, he or she would have given neither of them any rankings at all. By including Anne and Bob, the voter indicated a preference of one over the other, even though they also declared that they really prefer someone else to either Anne or Bob.

Since Anne would win the straight head-to-head with Bob, Anne is the more democratic choice and the more valid choice. The fact that Bob would have won under FPTP, and that Bob gets more 1st preference votes is dependent entirely on the number of other candidates. Bob only APPEARS to be popular, because of the X votes in FPTP and the 1st preferences in AV being split across a number of candidates. But once preferences are considered with the least popular candidates eliminated one at a time, it boils down to a straight head-to-head between the two strongest, Bob and Anne, which Anne wins.

AV accounts of the number of other candidates. It removes the vote-splitting issue and makes sure that the majority view is considered. Because Anne would win the head-to-head between Anne and Bob, Anne is the true winner, and so it is AV, that produces the true winners, not FPTP.

Thursday 23 December 2010

Whatever Your Opinion of the Lib Dems May Be...

Over the last few weeks the understandable anger that a large number of people are feeling towards Nick Clegg, and/or the Liberal Democrats has rather clouded the issue of electoral reform and caused many to question whether voting Yes to the Alternative Vote might be a good idea after all.

So it's about time I set out my own thoughts on this and argue why not only is anger at a particular party a bad reason to say No, but in fact saying No to AV won't punish them.

Let's go over what we already know first of all. We had a general election. At the time of voting the Labour government had disappointed many people from going to war against our will, introducing expensive unnecessary infringements on our liberties such as ID cards, and failing to keep our economy as healthy as it ought to be. Oh and an expenses scandal as well with which very few of us were best pleased.

You'd expect this to mean a comfortable walkover for the Conservatives. It had been 13 years, Thatcher a distant memory to many voters and Cameron promising all sorts of change, and change sounded like something that could be good. Only the Conservatives didn't really work hard enough to capitalise. Labour handed the election to them on a plate, but they weren't able to take it. I wouldn't have been at all surprised had we seen a mirror image of 1997 where the opposition capitalised on a Conservative government that had completely lost the plot in the eyes of the public. But no, it didn't happen.

This was the first election to occur following the ubiquity of social media, and we had televised party leader debates as well. There was Gordon Brown looking tired, and there was David Cameron failing to wipe the floor with him, and there was Nick Clegg picking up on both of these things and grabbing the opportunity with both hands. He certainly won my vote.

But then came polling day and the reality of First Past the Post hit home. Thanks to the current voting system many voters' choices were limited. There were many who weren't that keen on Labour but couldn't let the Tories in so they voted Labour anyway. There were many who were absolutely fed up with Labour and saw that despite looking rather weak themselves the Conservatives were the only realistic possibility if you wanted change. And so far more of the votes went to those two parties than they merited. Even then, between them the two parties only managed about 65% of the vote but still got nearly all of the seats.

I must at this point make a special mention to those wonderful people in Brighton who said "you know what, stuff tactical voting, I'm going to vote for what I really want!", and they got what they wanted as well, but it shouldn't have been so difficult and wouldn't be under a fairer voting system.

The Lib Dems ended up in a bizarre position with almost a quarter of the votes, but a far smaller proportion of the seats. The weakness of both the Labour and Conservative parties left the Lib Dems in a position where they could form a coalition with either party. So they did this, and following massive demonstrations from Take Back Parliament they did it on the condition of electoral reform, namely a referendum on the Alternative Vote. At first we were all disappointed with this offer because we wanted a proportional system and the Alternative Vote isn't proportional.

However looking at the positives AV is still a massive improvement on the current system, requiring a majority to win and allowing voters to express more complete opinions of the available candidates, and not forcing anyone to choose between a tactical vote and a wasted vote. Small change, big difference, giving power to the voters and momentum to those pushing for further reform. So that's why all those who want reform enough to campaign for it in the first place are backing this change so that we're in a better position to ask for more. But that's another story.

So fast forward a few months and the Lib Dems are in a coalition government with the Conservatives. The Conservatives make up most of the government so they come up with most of the policies. The Lib Dems made promises before the election not consistent with Conservative policies and now find themselves having to break their promises in order to keep the government together. It's upset people, understandably.

But voting No to AV just to punish them is not the answer.

First of all: We'd be condemning the country, voters of every party to at least another generation of First Past the Post elections sending any hope of electoral reform right to back square one. We'd be ensuring that we keep the voting system that got us into this situation in the first place so it could very easily happen again. They've had 11 hung parliaments in Canada under FPTP after all. Only one in Australia under AV.

Secondly: It would be the Lib Dems again that have to make these deals in each hung parliament. They're the third party and would never be overtaken as such by the likes of Greens or UKIP under FPTP. The Lib Dems would still receive tactical votes in many constituencies despite their damaged reputation and gain more votes than they would under AV.

Thirdly: If your main interest really is in hurting the Lib Dems, voting Yes To AV would be your best option. Under AV voters would be free to punish any politicians who don't do a good job. Even if there are parties more disliked than the Lib Dems you wouldn't have to vote the Lib Dems first just to keep them out. That's one of the wonderful things about preferential voting.

Finally: The people you're really angry at are the ones who are the present day Lib Dems. Not the Lib Dems of the 90s, or their SDP predecessors, and not necessarily the Lib Dems of 10 years or 20 years from now. You might want to punish Nick Clegg, but I would speculate that he's doomed anyway. AV would allow you to punish him, and/or the Lib Dems as long as he's in charge, and still leave yourself the option to forgive the Lib Dems under a better leader if you so wish, or you could bury the Lib Dems entirely and let them be overtaken by another party if they show no signs of improvement. AV gives you that power as a voter to reward hardworking MPs and punish bad ones.

The point is that you've got to look beyond present day situations, and beyond party politics and see the big picture. The longterm goal is to ensure that voters get as much say as possible, as much say as each other, and more say than the politicians. That is why you must say Yes to AV, especially if you are upset with any politicians from any party.

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Clash of the Polls

Ok first of all, please relax, my UKIP-Voting fellow Yes to AV supporters. This is not a misspelt reference to Eastern European Immigration, but a reference to two polls from ICM and YouGov offerening guidance to would-be predictors of the outcome of the referendum on the Alternative Vote.

I have been aware of ICM’s poll for a fortnight or thereabouts, and the YouGov poll for somewhat longer, and of their contrasting results, the ICM poll indicating that more people are inclined to vote Yes than to vote No, and the YouGov poll suggesting vice versa. However I have not yet commented on either poll just yet, despite having had a few discussions about it on twitter with various people on both sides. I had been planning for my next blog post to be about the Liberal Democrats, but I’ve decided to put that off for now having just seen Peter Kellner’s commentary and comparison on the two contrasting polls. Here’s the link to what he has to say,


and here’s what stood out for me as the most important part of his commentary:

My belief is that the answer is to be found in what Mark Pack dismissed as the unimportant ‘other differences’. Here are the standard ICM and YouGov questions in full:

YouGov:
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government are committed to holding a referendum on changing the electoral system from first-past-the-post (FPTP) to the Alternative Vote (AV). At the moment, under first-past-the-post (FPTP), voters select ONE candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins. It has been suggested that this system should be replaced by the Alternative Vote (AV). Voters would RANK a number of candidates from a list. If a candidates wins more than half of the ‘1st’ votes, a winner is declared. If not, the least popular candidates are eliminated from the contest, and their supporters’ subsequent preferences counted and shared accordingly between the remaining candidates. This process continues until an outright winner is declared.
If a referendum were held tomorrow on whether to stick with first-past-the-post or switch to the Alternative Vote for electing MPs, how would you vote?

ICM:
A referendum is due to be held in May 2011 on adopting a new voting system for British parliamentary elections. The proposed new system is called the ‘Alternative Vote’ (AV). If the referendum on AV were held tomorrow, how would you vote?

The big and obvious difference is that the YouGov question explains the difference between AV and FPTP, while the ICM question does not.
I believe that this holds the clue to the main difference between the two sets of results. It should be noted that ICM and YouGov agree on the proportion of people who support AV. The two sets of results differ in support for FPTP (YouGov in late November 41%, ICM 22%) and the number of don’t knows (YouGov 17%, ICM 35%).
It looks as if many people say ‘don’t know’ when the rival systems are not explained, but prove averse to change when they ARE explained.


Kellner then goes on to suggest three reasons why the difference in questions could have contributed to the difference in response to the polls. I agree with him completely that the wording of the questions is the key to the difference. But my agreement with Peter Kellner ends there. Unfortunately he misses one aspect of the question wording that is highly obvious to me. In light of his allegiance to YouGov one can easily forgive him for the oversight but I’m going to have to point it out anyway.


Kellner suggests that the YouGov poll gives explanations of the two systems and this makes the difference with a lot of people who would otherwise be in the “don’t know” category instead choosing to support First Past the Post. What he misses here is the “explanations” that are given in the YouGov poll question are misleading and push previously uninformed sample members towards First Past the Post in a number of ways.

First of all, the explanation of First Past the Post is short and simplistic, while the explanation of the Alternative Vote is longer and makes the system seem complicated and confusing from a voter’s point of view, where it really isn’t.

Secondly the description of First Past the Post is misleading, using a wordplay trick to describe its main weakness as a democratic strength. “It says of First Past the Post, ‘the candidate with the most votes wins’, and while this is not a lie, it is not the whole truth. Also, it conveniently omits the whole reason for proposing the alternative vote. The phrase ‘the most votes’ really only means ‘more votes than any other individual, whether it means a majority or not.’ But it appears to be reasonably close to ‘most of the votes’ which would be a true majority and a democratic outcome. If YouGov had used my alternative description: ‘The candidate with more votes than any other individual, whether it means a majority or not, wins,’ it would come much closer to the needlessly complicated explanation of the Alternative Vote in terms of the amount of detail included, and it would be a much more informative explanation of First Past the Post.

Contrast this with what’s written about the Alternative vote: (AV). Voters would RANK a number of candidates from a list. If a candidates wins more than half of the ‘1st’ votes, a winner is declared. If not, the least popular candidates are eliminated from the contest, and their supporters’ subsequent preferences counted and shared accordingly between the remaining candidates. This process continues until an outright winner is declared.
As I said, that is needlessly complicated and in conjunction with the simplistic and incomplete explanation of First Past the Post it is no wonder that it encourages people to move from “don’t know” to “no”. Allow me to provide a clearer and fairer explanation of what I believe to be a fairer voting system than First Past the Post:

Voters rank candidates in order of preference, as many or few as they wish. A candidate must have the majority of votes (over 50%) to win. If no candidate does, then the least popular candidates are eliminated one at a time, with their votes redistributed according to the preferences of the voters.

I must stress that I cannot find fault with Kellner’s suggestion that in playing it safe and not explaining either system, ICM could well be distorting the figures too. However, if I had to place money on which distortion was bigger I’d put it on YouGov’s.


If the polls instead included something along the lines of my descriptions of the two voting systems I would expect to see something in between their two sets of results, probably just favouring the Yes Campaign. Perhaps either YouGov or ICM would be interested in taking this into consideration.