THE ALTERNATIVE VOTE

A personal view of the whys and wherefores of AV, by Steyning Labour Party member Martin Toomey.

The National Referendum on the voting system we use to elect Members of Parliament to the House of Commons is on Thursday May 5th. With this in mind, Martin looks at how election results could differ, and compares the current system to AV, with special attention given to our local area.

FOR WHAT ?   PARLIAMENTARY  ELECTIONS

TO WHAT ?    it is an add-on to the single vote     

Under an Alternative Voting system, if we wanted to we can give second or more choices on the ballot paper according to our own order of preference between candidates and parties.

If the first choice of voters does not get 50% of the turnout a second count adds second choices and if necessary as many counts as there are candidates adds preference votes until one candidate gets over 50%.

HOW MIGHT OUTCOMES CHANGE ?

Take these examples. With the last election results in mind what might be the outcome ?

Example 1

ARUNDEL AND SOUTH DOWNS         Turnout 70%

Conservative         58%                           

Liberal Democrat  28%                                                             

Labour                   8%                             

UKIP                      6%                             

The alternative only operates for a candidate to gain a 50% vote. (In the above example, only the first choice is counted, since the Conservatives got over 50%).

If there were a desperate need for the major parties to be considering new issues [eg.Green] then perhaps the introduction of a  Green candidate could persuade enough voters of all parties and some of the 30% absent to make first and second choices to overturn the Conservative incumbency.

Example 2                                                               

BRIGHTON PAVILION                            

Turnout 72%                    

Green                   31%                            

Labour                  29%                            

Conservative        24%                             

Liberal Democrat  14%                             

Other                      2%                           

In this example, Labour and the Greens are neck and neck. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have an effective Green candidate with a popular cause, for them to place their second preferences there.Labour voters, if they wanted to give their candidate a chance would have to not  choose the Green candidate in any of their choices and perhaps leave second and all further choices  blank.

Likely to be a safe Green seat.

ARE CHANGED OUTCOMES WANTED ?

The alternative vote is needed to make general elections genuinely general.    

Under First Past the Post the political parties need only pay attention to seats with a majority of less than 10 per cent. The votes of 20.5 million people [69 per cent of the electorate] living in such ‘safe’ seats have had little chance of making a difference to the result. Elections can be the result of an attention focussed on about 9 million people living in areas [the marginal seats] with perhaps special rather than national interests.  Safe seats become far less safe with AV with the result that MPs and their Parties have to work with much more attention to overcoming their opposition in every constituency.   

The Alternative Vote is needed to avoid change from voting in constituencies.

First Past the Post has been the system for two party politics. That system has been breaking since the growth of other parties into significant numbers of electors but without equivalent parliamentary seats or the power they give. Minority Parties whose support is geographically spread over the country can lose in every constituency whilst having significant electoral support. The Alternative Vote can allow their significance to grow into seats as the Brighton Pavilion result might suggest. Geography and uneven constituency boundaries can only be overcome by national proportional representation but the alternative vote may help to redress the situation where Labour can win 200 more seats than the Liberal Democrats with only six per cent more of the national vote. MPs of the two political parties who benefit from First Past the Post may not want change which could be to their disadvantage in many places but they need to recognise that their special electoral privilege may be just as corrupting as their specially privileged expenses were found to be. The signs of breakdown are there in the apathy and cynicism towards political activism expressed by too large a proportion of the electorate.

Written by Martin C.B. Toomey.

MT 7.04.2011