The Alternate Vote system is currently used by Scottish and Northern Ireland by-elections, although you may be more accustomed to its workings in the Labour leadership contest. Londoners use an offspring of the AV (Instant Runoff) system called the Supplementary Vote to elect the Mayor of London. On May 5th, a referendum will be held, asking the following question:
“At present, the UK uses the ‘first past the post’ system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the “alternative vote” system be used instead?”
The campaigns have kicked off, with the polls showing that it’s still pretty neck and neck.
I’m Voting Yes
Looking at the election data from the 2010 General Election, notice the following:
- Conservatives, 36%, 307 seats won.
- Labour, 29%, 258 seats won.
- Liberal Democrats, 23%, 57 seats won.
The first thing I notice is that the difference between 23% and 29% is 201 seats. The Conservatives have the major power advantage in the Coalition Government, outranking Lib Dems by over 5:1. It is for this reason that Labour have recently been calling the government Tory-led. To look at why this is happening, it is important to understand that Labour has traditionally held strong vote shares in urban constituencies; the opposite being true for the Conservatives. Looking at the proportional map on the BBC site I linked to above highlights this for the 2010 data. The Lib Dem support is more spread out, meaning that it translates less of its vote share into seats. This is why I believe that a proportional system is needed.
But wait, AV isn’t PR! You’re right - it’s not. The No2AV campaign, when they’re not releasing misleading statistics and publishing offensive and plain incorrect adverts, make the point that people are only using this referendum as a springboard to change the voting system to some Proportional Representation system (there are many). I think that is quite a reasonable statement actually.
The process of evolution involves making small, incremental changes, which over a longer period time constitute a larger-scale change. The phrase “Rome was not built in a day” comes to mind. The AV voting system is certainly not proportional, but it means that in any constituency the person elected can command an actual majority (i.e over 50%).
Under First Past The Post, the majority wins. Consider the Cardiff North constituency, which in the 2010 election voted as follows:
- Conservative – 37.5%
- Labour – 37.1%
- Liberal Democrat – 18.3%
- Others – 7.1%
The Conservatives won with a majority of 0.4%. In FPTP that’s a seat to the Tories, even though 62.5% of the constituency did not vote for Jonathan Evans. It’s hard to predict what the results would have been under any other voting system (and be dubious of anyone who tries!), but regardless, it is clear that FPTP is not giving us “strong, stable governments”, but the illusion of such.
That is why I will be voting yes – sure, it’s not the voting system I want, but it’s miles better than what we’ve got.
The Real Message: Get Out and Vote!
Regardless of your voting intentions, whether you agree with me, or David Allen Green’s New Statesman post on why he’s voting no; please vote. Don’t abstain. National-level referendums are rare, and they’re a chance for your own voice to be heard in Parliament, regardless of which party ‘represents’ your constituency. Don’t just join the #mehtoAV crowd, please use this opportunity. This referendum will affect the future of our Parliament. If we all abstained then we’d never get a referendum again (that’ll piss of the right-wingers who want a referendum on Europe!).
And hey, if Yes wins, you can still vote FPTP style under AV 
.
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