Blog:Vote Yes to AV
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Ray Osunshein, Elections Correspondent, 15 April 2011
I do love to be lied to by politicians, patronised, and taken for a fool. Don’t you?
Your MP in the House of Commons is elected via an archaic and discredited, and undemocratic method called first past the post. The vast majority of us live in a constituency dominated by one party or another where it doesn’t matter what you vote the same party will win. Based on this a substantial number of our elected representatives abused their position and claimed excessive expenses. A handful, not enough of a handful, have since been jailed. However scandalous their behaviour, getting voted out of a safe seat would be highly unlikely. Put aside the abuse of position, if you represent a safe seat you don’t actually have to do much in the way of work for your constituents and you can focus on appeasing the business interests that might give you a directorship or consultancy position when you retire, or even before you retire. What does it matter, your seat is safe. Which is why a large number of MPs don’t want to change the system any more than they wanted us to see their expense claims or change that system. Duck islands and moat cleaning – none of our business.
On 5th May we have an opportunity to change the way MPs are elected. They will need to get the support of 50% (or close to 50%) of their constituents to get elected. This means keeping those constituents happy, with far fewer seats really safe. But the “No” campaign is desperate and on the offensive with leaflets containing a pack of lies to convince you not to support greater democracy.
AV means you rank candidates in order of preference on your ballot paper. Dead easy, 1, 2, 3. The one that wins is the one who is most preferred by (usually) the majority of voters. This stops the nonsense of the MP who has a mandate from less than 30% of their voters. And it would have prevented the now imprisoned Eric Illsley from being elected in Labour safe seat Barnsley Central.
“No” campaigners highlight cost as an issue. Well firstly cost is not ever a consideration when it comes to running a democracy. If cost was a factor then the logical conclusion is to do away with the expense of holding elections at all. I am sure Libyans can give us some first hand advice on how that works. You don’t choose a voting method based on how much it costs. We are told we would need voting machines. No we wouldn’t; we would count votes exactly as we do now but they would take a bit longer. Australians, using the same method, count votes exactly as we do now. We are told it will cost £26 million to explain the new system to voters. Sorry, are we that stupid we can’t understand 1, 2, 3? Give us credit. Oh, and the cost of the referendum has been added in as well but it is the same cost whether you vote yes or no. So there is no price on democracy but even if you do want to consider cost then frankly it costs no more to have AV than to have the existing system.
The “No” camp says we will end up with second or third best. Is that true? Was Mr Illsley was the best Barnsley was entitled to? No, we end up with the MP that most of us actually want rather than an MP elected by 30% or less of the voters because 70% of the vote was split between other candidates. It also means we end up with a Government that always has a mandate from 50% of the people rather than one with less than 40% and a landslide majority as has so often been the case prior to 2010. The choice of less than 4 in 10 voters imposing their will, unopposed, on the remaining 6 in 10.
The “No” supporters tell us that AV is unpopular and only Australia uses it. When it comes to the exact method proposed it is true that only Australians vote this way in General Elections. Most other democracies use a more radical form of proportional representation but we are not being given that choice, we have a choice of AV or nothing and AV is better than nothing. But if you take into account variants and include other forms of elections then it is a much more popular form of voting than the Nos would have you believe. In 2012 the Mayor of London will be elected for the fourth time based on a variant of AV. The Labour and Lib Dem Party leaders are elected via AV. Most hypocritically, the Conservative Party leader is elected using an AV system. The French President is elected in two rounds where the least popular candidates are eliminated and the voters have a choice of the top two in a second round. The Irish President too along with countless mayors in many countries. This is not an unpopular method of election by any stretch of the imagination, and if it is good enough for the leaders of all of our major political parties then why is it not good enough for us to elect our national leader. The Conservatives have adopted AV for their own internal elections only to claim it is not a fair system for us to use. I am dumbfounded by their logic there. They even claim 6 out of 10 Australians want to get rid of AV but the only results that Google returns if you try and check that are quotes from our own dear No campaign, no evidence at all from Australia.
The No campaign is trying to exploit the current unpopularity of Nick Clegg, saying his party are the only ones united behind AV. This is not about the popularity of one man but about democracy and members and supporters of all parties are behind this change.
Other nonsense. AV will benefit fascists, presumably the BNP. Of course it won’t; if anything it would prevent a BNP MP being elected. In France back in 2002, with 28 million votes cast, Jean-Marie Le Pen, National Front, was less than 1 million votes behind Jacques Chirac on first preferences. It is conceivable, with marginal shifts that Le Pen could have led in the first round and under First Past The Post been elected as President of France. In the second round, decent people rallied against Le Pen, and Chirac won by 82% to 18%. The same would happen here – a BNP candidate might just get the 29% needed to win a seat under FPTP but would never get 50%.
What about creating unstable governments with coalitions always inevitable. I heard we were going to end up with instability on an Italian scale. But hang on a second, Australia, the only country to use this exact same system for their parliament has ultra stability with governments that last decades. But in 2007 the voting system there enabled electors to vote out their Prime Minister from his incredibly safe seat, something that could never happen here. Whose democracy do you want? The one where even a Prime Minister is not safe, or the one where a bomb cannot shift a bad MP let alone a Prime Minister. You can guess what Tories in their very safe seats want.
The No campaign is, however, getting their publicity in early and the Yes supporters are struggling to be heard. It is entirely possible that the lies, statements with no evidence to back them up, scaremongering, and other dirty tricks from the No camp will convince enough people to win the day and preserve the discredited status quo. So the Yes campaign has to beef up the message and counter the nonsense being spouted more effectively.
Safe seats, when they become available, are great for dishing out patronage to party hacks, those who will be totally loyal. The reason is that holding the seat isn’t in the hands of the voters but the gift of the party. That isn’t democracy by anyone’s stretch of the imagination, it is an utter disgrace. AV means an MP has to be on their toes continuously and ensure they put their electorate ahead of party at all times. The lesson of John Howard, former Aussie PM, etched forever in their minds.
If you are a voter interested in getting an MP that is accountable to you and not their party apparatus and retirement sponsors then your only option has to be to vote Yes on May 5th.
© Evrose, 2012
