Wednesday 12 January 2011

Roger Steer Unable to Add Anything of Worth to the Pro FPTP Case.

Try as he might, and here is where you can find his effort http://www.rogersteer.com/viewblog.asp?blogID=169 Conservative supporter and author Roger Steer fares no better with his attempt to justify First Past the Post than any who have tried before.


So let's have a look at the points he makes.


"First Past The Post (FPTP), our incumbent voting system: it is familiar to the public, votes are simple to cast and count, and there is no surging popular agitation for change. It usually (although not invariably) leads to a one-party majority government. It thus enables electors, while nominally voting only for a local representative, in fact to choose the party they wish to form a government."


Ok, so it's familiar to the public. While that's a good thing in itself, the same could be said of any number of things we'd happily do away with given the choice, such as bad weather, the common cold or racism. All that's being said here is it's the current system. Any system, good or bad, after a few elections' worth of use would be equally familiar to the public. Given how many people use preferential voting systems all over the world I doubt very much that we'd struggle to get to know AV quickly in the United Kingdom.


So FPTP usually leads to a one-party government? Well it did in the past. When we had two strong parties a long way ahead of everyone else. Circumstances have changed now and the people aren't as emphatically in favour of Labour and Conservative over everyone else as they used to be. 35% of the voters voter for neither in the last election. That's the same amount of voters as voted for the party in government in almost every general election in the last 30 years under First Past the Post. I'll come back to whether or not I think one-party governments are worth hanging onto shortly, but for now I think it's worth mentioning that FPTP is up against AV here not, a Proportional system. AV is single member system a well and on a national level it works in the same way as FPTP. It might also be worth mentioning that over the same time period, Australia has produced just one hung parliament under AV, FPTP has given us 2 in the UK and 11 in Canada.


The last sentence in Steer's paragraph is just plain wrong. The one thing First Past the Post most certainly doesn't do is allow electors to choose anything at all. A ludicrously undemocratically small number of voters get to make a real choice with their vote under FPTP. For most of us the only choice offered by First Past the Post is that between a tactical vote and a wasted vote. You can vote for your own candidate knowing before hand they are unlikely to win, but merely registering merited support. But if you do that you will have to live with the fact that you turned down the opportunity to help keep out the candidate you really didn't want. By voting for that candidate's closest rival instead you might have ended up with a more palatable result. But then if you do take the tactical option you are denying your preferred candidate any real positive feedback and the fewer votes your candidate receives in one election, the less likely everyone is to vote for them in a subsequent one, making the situation even worse next time around.


"It then leaves each MP with a direct relationship with a particular geographical area, on a basis of equality in the sense that they are all elected in the same way." 


AV does this as well.


"It also enables the electorate sharply and cleanly to rid itself of an unwanted government. "


Only by switching sharply to the opposite extreme. The previous Labour government was clearly unwanted in 2010, but the Conservatives were also incredibly poor as evidenced by their inability to capitalise on Labour's failure. Only because of the pressures to vote tactically and the limited choices that come from First Past the Post did Labour and Conservatives both end up receiving as many votes as they did, and even then neither received a convincing share of the vote. 


Even when you have Labour and Conservatives both performing well, the best you can hope for with First Past the Post is an ongoing switch every 10-15 years or so between two extremes. Long term policies get scrapped somewhere between investing a load of money and yielding anything good, just in time for the new government to start their own, so very little gets done with any real efficiency or to much benefit. There's no inherent merit to having a succession of single-party governments. There are advantages to having stable coalition governments that can work together over long periods of time, and rather than ever changing dramatically, are gradually refined in line with the overall consensus of the electorate.




Of course there I'm talking about PR rather than AV. AV  would provide us with very similar governments as First Past the Post as I mentioned above. The difference with AV happens at constituency level where each MP is required to have majority support, unlike FPTP where it is possible to win with little more than an equal share of the vote, regardless of how many of the rest of the voters actively dislike the winning candidate.


Roger Steer doesn't seem to be able to accept this and disappointingly he falls back on the long-since debunked old myth of some voters getting more votes than others.


"in order to cobble together an artificial ‘majority’ of 50 per cent, supporters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted five or six times – and potentially decide the outcome of the election – while people who backed the mainstream candidates only get one vote. AV treats someone’s fifth or sixth choice as having the same importance as someone’s else’s first preference – but there is a big difference between positively wanting one candidate to win and being able to ‘put up with’ another. And why should voters of the BNP be given more votes than voters for the Lib Dems or Conservatives?"


Let's take this nonsense one point at a time.


He calls the majority 'artificial' presumably because he thinks that the fact that voters disagree on their first choice invalidates the fact that they're all agreed on preferring one particular candidate over another. I'm afraid this is just wrong. If the majority of my friends prefer vanilla ice cream to strawberry, then the fact that a number of that majority really prefer chocolate to both and the rest don't does not change anything. It's still a majority who prefer vanilla to strawberry. The minority who prefer strawberry to both vanilla and chocolate may all be agreed on what their first choice is, but they are in the minority. The real test is when you take the vote-splitting chocolate out of the equation, vanilla will beat strawberry in a head to head, as is the definition of a majority. There's nothing artificial about it (except maybe the colours and flavourings in the ice cream).


Except in rare, bizarre, mathematically fascinating but realistically impractical situations, the winner from an AV election would always beat the winner under FPTP in straight a head-to-head (unless of course they were the same person, as would be the case in situtations where FPTP produced a fair winner). Given that First Past the Post was initially designed for head-to-heads between two candidates (hence the name, as when there are only two candidates there is an actual post to pass, and it is at the 50% mark), this is a clear demonstration that AV beats FPTP by its own standards.




Next up, he talks about supporters of fringe parties having their votes counted multiple times. Well yes, I suppose they do, but, and this it the thing that First Past the Post supporters often miss (either deliberately or through lack of thinking it through) SO DO ALL OF THE OTHER VOTERS!


Everyone's vote gets counted in every round. If your candidate is elimianted, and your vote is transferred it gets counted again in the next round. If your candidate is NOT eliminated, and your vote doesn't get transferred, it STILL gets counted again in the next round. The only difference is it gets counted again for the same candidate.


Then Steer goes on to say that AV treat's one voter's fifth or sixth preference with the same importance as another voter's first preference. Well, no actually it doesn't. A voter's fifth preference isn't even CONSIDERED until their top four candidates have been eliminated. During each round until that happens, a voter's first preference is counted. A candidate won't receive a vote as a fifth preference for at least four rounds. That candidate has to sit and wait patiently for that vote and hope that no-one else gets a majority before then. So no, differing degrees of preference are not treated with equal importance at all. It's fair. 


AV gradually reduces the number of candidates one at a time, to bring the competition as near to a head-to-head as is necessary to ensure that the winner has a majority preferring them to the other remaining candidates. By taking the least popular candidates out of the equation you get to see who is most preferred overall. Mere plurality cannot give you that, and the more candidates there are the less reliable it becomes.


"And why should voters of the BNP be given more votes than voters for the Lib Dems or Conservatives?"


They shouldn't and they aren't. It's that simple. 


"voters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted five or six times – and potentially decide the outcome of the election"


Not only do they have their vote counted the same time as everyone else's, but to say the outcome of the election comes purely down to them is also just plain wrong again. The outcome of an AV election is based on a majority.Either a candidate has a majority and wins or they don't. 


What that means is if you discount the votes from any group of voters, regardless of who their first choices may have been, no-one has a majority and no-one has won. Mere plurality without a majority is not enough to determine whether everyone supports a candidate. The opinions of preferences of one candidate over the others when it comes to the final round are needed from every voter to be sure. Voters for fringe party candidates are by definition in a tiny minority so they cannot decide an election outcome on their own. It is a combination of their votes with everyone else's that together arrives at an overall majority in favour of one candidate. 




This is so much fairer than having a minority decide an election because their candidate is so different from the others that they all vote for the same name, even though the majority could easily achieve the same if it weren't for the fact that they had so many good candidates between whom to choose. Remember being a fringe candidate doesn't necessarily make you a bad one. It just means that there are lots of candidates competing for your niche.


It's ironic that Steer should mention the BNP as an example of a fringe party. They're alone as a minority party who are against AV. The reason for this is because they are a fringe party who AREN'T in competition with many others for their niche. They're on their own. They don't have anyone else splitting their vote and they can do well under First Past the Post as a result. Under AV they'd struggle because they'd never get a majority to back them because they're incapable of reaching out beyond their core vote.


This another great thing about AV. It makes candidates reach out to everyone. It's not enough to rely on a core minority of voters. You have to make sure that other voters support you as well. The BNP are no-one's second choice. AV would force them to fall in line with the majority view and drop their racist attitude if they want to get anywhere. And if they couldn't manage that it would keep them out entirely.


Steer goes on to reference the Jenkins Report - an overrated document that tries to make a point about what AV might have produced in recent elections using First Past the Post voting data, an exercise as worthwhile as doing calculus using degrees instead of radians.


He then recaps about single-party governments and tries to argue that coalition governments give more power to the politicians. 


"A hung Parliament is a politician’s parliament. Policy is the result of post-election bargaining. The people do not get a look in. Compromises are reached which may bear no relationship to what electors want, which were never placed before them, and which they may have no opportunity to pass judgement on at the next election."


Well we've all seen what a hung parliament can do under First Past the Post. In Canada they've seen it under First Past the Post eleven times. If it weren't for first past the post, if we didn't have a ratio of seats so different to the ratio of votes cast between the main three parties, we could have ended up with a very different coaltion. One based on what the electorate want. In terms of the votes, the Lib Dems should make up about 2/5 of the coalition. In reality their share is far far smaller. They haven't ended up with very much power at all. The Conservatives are in government and they are leading the Coalition. And it's because they got more votes than anyone else, not because of politician trickery. The problem is that First Past the Post has made it so merely having more votes than anyone else is enough. A fair system should require they have more votes than EVERYONE else, and AV at least provides that at constituency level.


Steer Finishes off his article by listing the names of key supporters of the No campaign emphasising his delight that they're not all just Conservatives. Well no, they're not all Conservatives. Many of them are Labour as well. But this is to be expected. Labour are the other side of the two-party system that First Past the Post has served to maintain long beyond its welcome. Just as the Conservatives benefit enormously from First Past the Post in Most of England, Labour benefit similarly in Northern England and much of Scotland. Those names on the list are people who can see advantages for themselves at the expense of voter power and mentioning them serves only to underline the fact that the current system serves only those who like to pretend that no more than two parties are worth voting for.


I'll leave you with one last thought. To form a single-party government you are required to have a majority of seats. It's a sensible rule and one with which we all agree. So why on earth is it acceptable to win a seat - a single party seat at that - with anything less than a majority of votes?





















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