The Great Voting Referendum

15/04/11

On 5th May, Britain will vote about voting.

A few days ago, a letter arrived in my actual, real world postbox. It was plush and covered in smiling celebs telling me that they were going to vote for the Alternative Vote system and so should I. Since then, I’ve been waiting for the inevitable riposte from the No campaign, and today it arrived – a rather disappointing, mean little card which just told me that No was the best way.

The argument, as far as I can follow it, goes like this:

the Yes campaign believes – despite having originally wanted Proportional Representation rather than AV – that the AV system is fairer than what we presently have, getting closer to the actual intention of the electorate than First Past The Post, which is a blunt tool and can lead to an unpopular candidate winning because opposition to them is split. AV will therefore be fairer, resulting in better representation for divergent viewpoints, and a more conciliatory, negotiated political sphere. It’s an antidote to the increasingly aggressive, testosterone-y, Presidential style politics we’ve been seeing since Tony Blair channelled Margaret Thatcher.

the No campaign, on the other hand, believes that AV is a loser’s charter, pushing for the ‘least-worst’ candidate rather than the best beloved one. AV is a ‘miserable compromise‘ which will result in the election of more fringe candidates to positions of actual authority, legitimising the BNP and other groups which have been kept on the outside of the Westminster game until now.

(Both sides claim that the other side’s position will cause rains of dead puppies, bad sex, and a fall in house prices.)

I’m not sure that the precise mechanics of the voting systems matter very much.

There are plenty of guides out there which will explain how AV works and why it is a good or a bad thing (likewise PR and FPtP). The issues isn’t what happens at the booth, it’s whom you trust. The No campaign is focusing as I write on the objection of two cricketers. The Yes campaign gave me Stephen Fry and Benjamin Zephaniah. (Although apparently they didn’t use Zephaniah in places where the fact that he was black might put people off. Nice.) Since you’re not, realistically, going to become an expert in voting reform over night, it comes down to which person you identify with and what you believe will be the consequences of voting Yes or No.

David Owen says No.

Not very many people actually know any more who he is, but to some of us, that’s a notable thing. Owen argues that AV is a roadblock in the path of PR, and therefore he will vote against. I find that compelling – I have tentatively wanted PR in the UK for a while – so I thought for a while that I was going to vote No.

But.

I don’t think we’re going to get offered PR. Not by Labour, not by the Conservatives. The fact that it’s probably fairer doesn’t enter into the equation. It would mess with their grip on power in parliament, so they’re not keen. AV may be the only way to shift the power around a bit and create a situation where – in a generation or so – PR might be on the table.

Politics is short, but democracy is long.

So what will I do?

I have no idea. Read more. Talk more. Think more. Vote.

I invite you to do the same.

6 Comments to “The Great Voting Referendum”

The Great Voting Referendum | Dzker said on April 15th, 2011:

[...] the original post here: The Great Voting Referendum Uncategorizedactual, alternative, been-waiting, britain, few-days, inevitable, [...]
Denis Cooper said on April 15th, 2011:

Haven’t you answered your own question in the sentence which starts “AV may be the only way to shift the power around a bit …”?

That’s very much how I see it.
Stuart said on April 17th, 2011:

Firstly, a reasonably neutral summary (which doesn’t just spout the arguments from both sides) is available at http://britainvotes.blogspot.com/p/av-guide.html

I do appear to be one of very few people who specifically want AV, rather than just some form of electoral reform. I don’t like PR because it can give a disproportionate amount of power to small parties (consider what the SNP etc. would demand in order to join a coalition); it removes the constituency link and therefore clear accountability of an individual MP to their constituents; and it can cause government to lack a clear purpose as seen in the collapse of the French fourth republic. STV solves some of these problems but has several of it’s own, including the result being dependant on the way the votes are counted.

Once you opt for a single member constituency system, which is all that is on the table, there are a number of areas which have to be considered.

When choosing between two candidates the two systems are identical and FPTP achieves it’s aims well in that case. The problems start kicking in when you have multiple candidates. Not only do you have the problem with split votes where a left wing constituency can return a Tory and vice versa, but it can also mess up the distribution of seats depending on the concentration of votes for a given party. This is particularly damaging for the LibDems and UKIP and highly beneficial for Labour. The Tory vote is too concentrated to truly benefit from this (and arguably win an election with any likely level of support). The distribution problem won’t be directly resolved by AV, but it might have a beneficial effect. To benefit those with a too concentrated vote, the need to appeal to the majority of ones constituents may force parties to concentrate more of their attention on core voters and constituencies where they are just getting by, rather than chasing the swing voters. I.e. Labour may have to stand on actual socialist policies. On the other side of things, the broadly but shallowly supported parties may not benefit directly, but there will be a lot of MPs who will know that they are dependent on transfers from smaller parties and therefore may be more sympathetic towards them. There’s a big example of this in Australia where a number of Labor candidates got in due to transfers from the Greens.

If votes for parties beyond the top two reach a certain level, as they did last May, then we loose one of the biggest arguments for FPTP, the strong single party government. Looking back at the historical election results in the UK this has been coming for some time, and it’s only the strength of Labour (and the bias towards them) and weakness of the Tories that have kept it from happening earlier. In 1992 the Tories received over 14M votes, the highest ever for a single party in a UK election, even greater than Labour in 1997, and only managed a majority of 21. The number of people voting for other parties has been increasing since the 70s and there is no sign of it decreasing (except for the LibDems). A scary thought for the Tories is that UKIP received 2.5M votes in the 2009 European elections but only 0.9M last year; if some of those extra voters go UKIP in a general election there’s no chance of a Tory win. It does seem somewhat perverse that a more anti-EU electorate could lead to a more pro-EU government.

A personal favourite argument of mine is one of honesty. Tactical voting is a reflection of the pressure that FPTP can put on people to vote dishonestly for a candidate that they don’t necessarily think would be the best. Since they don’t have to worry about wasting their vote, under AV they can vote honestly. This could lead to huge changes in support for parties as people discover that everyone else was voting for the party that they quite liked rather than really wanted. It could also have an effect on the honesty of politicians. If they find themselves struggling to hold on to core seats they could, as mentioned before, realign their policies back to their core vote rather than the swing voters. I read the manifestos at the last election and there was very little difference between the Labour and Tory ones.

One of the biggest problems I have with the yes campaign is the emphasis on a negative view of MPs. Because it will be possible for people to vote for a candidate of similar policies, it will be easier for the electorate to vote out a bad MP even if they’re supported by their party. The flip side of this however, is that a good MP who represents their constituency well will find it easier to survive if they find themselves out of favour with their party. Popular MPs may also find it easier to survive a swing against their party with transferred votes from other parties. All in all AV could move the emphasis more towards electing your MP rather than the party and hence put the power in the hands of the MPs rather than some shadowy figure moving behind the scenes in the party. Or the party donors.

One of the big pro-FPTP arguments is that it allows the electorate to kick out an unpopular government. The historical evidence doesn’t back this up, with very few cases where a strong government of one party is replaced with a strong government of another. It is easy to understand why this would be in a multi-party state as that effectively removes a lot of the swing voters who would be willing to vote for either of the main parties. All you are left with is the few remaining swing voters and core voters for the two parties changing whether they vote or not. Since under AV the voters for smaller parties will be freed up as swing voters when transferred this will allow large swings from one party to another between elections.

As far as the various arguments being used against AV are concerned many of them appear hard to defend. The idea that AV will lead to more coalitions/hung parliaments seems strange to me and I haven’t seen a proper argument defending it. It’s possible that the LibDems will get enough seats to disrupt a majority government but I’d argue that that is less likely under AV, and it’ll be harder for other small parties to win seats under AV. Australia has had a number of coalition governments under AV but they have been between parties who went in to the election on the understanding that they would form a coalition, so much more like the SDP/Liberal alliance of the ’80s than the current coalition. The current minority government is their first since 1940. Canada on the other hand is coming up to its 4th general election in 7 years of minority government under FPTP.

The fairness argument can be dealt with in two parts. It is easy to dismiss the idea of people whose votes get transferred getting more votes by considering it as a multi-round system. Each round can be considered as a new election with one fewer candidates. It is not just those votes which have been transferred which are being counted anew but those of everyone. And this is also where my argument that the votes should count the same comes from. Each round is the same as if the election was run again without the excluded candidates, so why should it be different from an elections where those candidates didn’t stand in the first place. Yes, it’s possible that the candidate who originally came third can win but if all the subsequent candidates hadn’t stood they would have come second or first and if it had been between just them and the candidate who originally came first they would have (probably*) won. There are also arguments the other way that FPTP is even more unfair. Simon Wright was elected as MP for Norwich south at the last election with the support of less than 30% of those who voted. Austin Mitchell won in Great Grimsby with the support of less than 18% of his electorate. Is that fair?

It’s expensive, apparently. £247M has been quoted. Of this £91M is associated with the running of the referendum and so has already gone. Up to £130M has been given as the cost of voting machine. I haven’t seen anything from government saying that they will buy voting machines for AV, they don’t use them for AV elections in Australia and the argument is a little circular as to why we’ll need them. Apparently it’s very important that we see our MPs losing their seat on the night of the election and hand counting will be too slow so we need counting machines. They then argue that counting machines are too slow. Details available at http://votemay5th.notoav.org/documents/the-cost-of-AV.pdf

The other big argument that is made is that it is complicated. Now I’ll accept, particularly with the length of this, that the consequences of AV are potentially complicated (and uncertain) but the act of ranking candidates isn’t. In many ways the process of voting will actually be easier because you won’t have to work out whether a candidate can win or not.

There are some other arguments against AV that I haven’t seen put about by the no campaign. For the first it is obvious why: we just don’t know what will happen. Will support for the main parties drop? Will they split? Will we get a huge swing one way or another? Once the electorate and parties are freed of the constraints of FPTP there’s no telling how things could change. The other is that we may find people supporting parties without necessarily knowing as much about them as they should. If they’re only voting for one party they’ll probably make sure they agree with them but second and third preferences may be decided on a few headlines (though maybe I’m being a little over-optimistic about how people vote now).

Anyway, sorry for the length of this, I hope it helps you make up your mind.

*subsequent votes could take second and third past first and therefore it may be that the original first transferred the votes to third which took it past second and second would have transferred to first if it had ended up third, if you get what I mean.
Matt Keefe said on April 19th, 2011:

Excellent post, Stuart.

Nick, I have no idea how many people are pro-AV being traditionally pro-PR, and how many are specifically in favour of AV itself, but don’t overlook the fact that we do exist. I would vote against PR in a referendum but will be voting for AV – despite living in Nick Clegg’s constituency and really, really, really wanting to give him a bloody nose.

PR breaks the constituency link, and hands the political parties a much greater say in the appointment of candidates and, thus, effectively, the appointment of MPs. Everyone focuses on the greater representation of the smaller parties at the bottom, but at the top, safe ‘seats’ become unshakeably safe, if we’re to presume they’re the top of a party list, some form or other of which seems bound to exist under PR. Milicleggs and Camebands will fill such lists with other little Milicleggs and Camabands. As Stuart points out, AV potentially actually lessens the party’s grip on candidates, and I think AV will also possibly boost the chances of independents – all crucial in making the vote meaningful in the face of a careerist centre of largely uniform policies.

There are other arguments I might make if it weren’t gone midnight, and I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think AV should be characterised as option existing solely because of political caution around PR. If all three were on the ballot, I would vote for AV. I personally think that further improvements in the representativeness of our representatives have to come from changes to what we’re offered, not just how we choose between them – term limits for MPs, residency requirements to prevent parachuting of candidates into certain constituencies, stricter limits on campaign financing, an effective system of recall, and a ‘None of the above’ box for those preferring the militant Belgian option.

PR seems to me to be fascinating over the perfect vote; it doesn’t exist – much of what we need is a better field.
Gerald Clark said on April 20th, 2011:

Nick

I’m with you. As I tweeted just today, I think my real issue is that I really don’t care very much or think it matters that much. But I can’t not vote.

I think I’m basically in the No to AV camp – it seems the arguments are that AV is ‘fairer’ and ‘more democratic’, but although it might be some links further towards the fairer end of the chain, it is such a minor step (and I don’t fancy the end of the chain – I like consituency mps and I think its good for parliament to be made up of them – it adds accountability). And as for Democratic, well I hate to say I’m not for Democracy, but look where its got us now!

On the other hand, voting for AV might just get rid of a few tory seats at the next election. As I can’t think of many good reasons to vote against it, that one might just swing it. But it does seem a bit fickle to change our whole voting system on the basis of one potential election (and who might it let in if not Tories, BNP? UKIP?)

So I’m still undecided.
Camilla said on May 2nd, 2011:

You may find this interesting. It is from the blog of Timothy Gowers, who won the Fields medal in 1998 (I believe). Here is a “short” version.