Alternative Vote Loses in the UK

[Michael Hardner]

eGovMonitor

After a long and twadry[sic] campaign on both sides where partisan politics and persoanlities took centre stage, the UK electorate has rejected the Alternative Vote (AV) system by a thumping majority of 67.9% to 32.1%.

It seems even less popular over there than here.

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not voting systems that need to be reformed, but methods of communicating, consulting and conveying true open government.

[Pliny]

eGovMonitor

It seems even less popular over there than here.

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not voting systems that need to be reformed, but methods of communicating, consulting and conveying true open government.

Well, Michael it really is about fostering common interests. Both rich and poor have different interests so government should only concern itself with common interests. What are they? The protection of the sanctity of person and property, perhaps?

[Oleg Bach]

eGovMonitor

It seems even less popular over there than here.

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not voting systems that need to be reformed, but methods of communicating, consulting and conveying true open government.

In other words a system where the citizen is as potent if not more than the elected servant - makes sense to me...that would be called democratic. It should be this way - If you send your representative to the house of governement - You should be able to go and instruct that agent at any time - If that agents goes against the will of the voter - or betrays them - the agent should be fired immediately after a fair investigation of the supposed betrayal of the public trust - why wait for their tenure to be up when the elected person has proven to be ineffectiveÉÉÉé - damn some one messed with my question mark setting.

[Michael Hardner]

Well, Michael it really is about fostering common interests. Both rich and poor have different interests so government should only concern itself with common interests. What are they? The protection of the sanctity of person and property, perhaps?

I'm not sure why you weigh in on these things when you don't agree at all with the type of government we have in the first place.

[Michael Hardner]

In other words a system where the citizen is as potent if not more than the elected servant - makes sense to me...that would be called democratic. It should be this way - If you send your representative to the house of governement - You should be able to go and instruct that agent at any time - If that agents goes against the will of the voter - or betrays them - the agent should be fired immediately after a fair investigation of the supposed betrayal of the public trust - why wait for their tenure to be up when the elected person has proven to be ineffectiveÉÉÉé - damn some one messed with my question mark setting.

Great idea - if you had 1 MP for every voter that would be a good way to manage it.

[Michael Hardner]

In other words a system where the citizen is as potent if not more than the elected servant - makes sense to me...that would be called democratic. It should be this way - If you send your representative to the house of governement - You should be able to go and instruct that agent at any time - If that agents goes against the will of the voter - or betrays them - the agent should be fired immediately after a fair investigation of the supposed betrayal of the public trust - why wait for their tenure to be up when the elected person has proven to be ineffectiveÉÉÉé - damn some one messed with my question mark setting.

Great idea - if you had 1 MP for every voter that would be a good way to manage it.

[KeyStone]

eGovMonitor

It seems even less popular over there than here.

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not voting systems that need to be reformed, but methods of communicating, consulting and conveying true open government.

I have to disagree. FPTP assumes that whoever has more people that support them over any other candidate is who the electorate wants. It does not take into account, which party is the most odious to voters, nor who is the second best candidate.

Voters are not able to vote for the candidate they want, instead they vote for the candidate who is first or second in the polls, because they don't want to waste their vote. As a result, speculation and polling plays a huge role in politics.

Take the US as an example. The candidacies of Ross Perot and Ralph Nader tipped (arguably) the election in favour of the opposite aligned party. Consequenty, Democrats and Republicans argued vehemently that the entrance of a third party unfairly tainted the election.

Something is broken.

[jbg]

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing. It's not voting systems that need to be reformed, but methods of communicating, consulting and conveying true open government.

I agree with you that the latter is far more important. But voting systems do have an impact and FPTP, in my opinion, is a better method of ensuring that the party leader or, in our case President represents a broad and varied spectrum than any form of proportional representation. Proportional representation systems work best in relatively homogenous countries. In varied countries like the U.S. and Canada it would create either shifting but similar coalitions, or "two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner" scenarios.

[Michael Hardner]

I have to disagree. FPTP assumes that whoever has more people that support them over any other candidate is who the electorate wants. It does not take into account, which party is the most odious to voters, nor who is the second best candidate.

Voters are not able to vote for the candidate they want, instead they vote for the candidate who is first or second in the polls, because they don't want to waste their vote. As a result, speculation and polling plays a huge role in politics.

There's no evidence of this. Candidates are first or second in the polls because that's who Canadians want, by definition. The polls are a question - why would people answer with anything other than their choices ?

Take the US as an example. The candidacies of Ross Perot and Ralph Nader tipped (arguably) the election in favour of the opposite aligned party. Consequenty, Democrats and Republicans argued vehemently that the entrance of a third party unfairly tainted the election.

Something is broken.

Who said that they unfairly tainted the election ? They had a right to run - what is unfair about that ?

[KeyStone]

]

There's no evidence of this. Candidates are first or second in the polls because that's who Canadians want, by definition. The polls are a question - why would people answer with anything other than their choices ?

I think you're missing the point. Imagine the following exaggerated scenario.

Fascist Party 12% of the vote

Left Wing Party B 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party C 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party D 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party E 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party F 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party G 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party H 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party I 10% of the vote

Left Wing Party J 8% of the vote

In this scenario, the Fascist party is the absolute last choice for 88% of the population.

But, because of the magic of FPTP, they win with the most first place votes.

If all of the other left wing parties dropped out except for Left Wing Party B, they would win in a landslide (88% to 12%)

Some voting systems, would eliminate all but the top two parties, and then ask the voters which they prefer of those two.

Which system to you think most accurately reflects the will of the public?

There is something wrong where I have to strategically calculate what party to vote for.

There is something wrong with a party where the entrance of a 3rd party with no chance of winning, can tilt the results of the election to a different party altogether.

Now, PR is not the only solution, there are many others - such as Alternative Vote, of Preferential Voting, which allows for direct representation from the person you voted for, but allows second place votes to count.

Who said that they unfairly tainted the election ? They had a right to run - what is unfair about that ?

Yes, they did have a right to run. But by running, Ralph Nader divided the vote enough to ensure a Republican victory. In future elections, he was not sure whether or not to run for fear or helping the Republicans again. There is something wrong with a system, where the inclusion of a 3rd party screws up the election to the point where a third party will not participate.

[TimG]

Which system to you think most accurately reflects the will of the public?

Your example is contrived.

In any real scenario you have a left wing, centrist and a right wing party + plus miscellaneous fringe parties <5%.

In the worst case a winner has 35% of the vote but a large chunk of the other party vote will accept the winner as a second choice even if that information is never captured.

Edited May 10, 2011 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

Yes, they did have a right to run. But by running, Ralph Nader divided the vote enough to ensure a Republican victory. In future elections, he was not sure whether or not to run for fear or helping the Republicans again. There is something wrong with a system, where the inclusion of a 3rd party screws up the election to the point where a third party will not participate.

One problem with this attitude as it implies that there's no point in running unless someone has a good chance of winning. Reform and the NDP were formed as a collection of like-minded people who wanted to give people an alternative. They knew that they wouldn't win for a long time, if at all. As I have said, more deliberation and more cooks in the kitchen does not necessarily mean more democracy - if it did then we'd have direct democracy -direct voting- on every issue.

As for your example, I think TimG did a good job of commenting on it.

[jbg]

Take the US as an example. The candidacies of Ross Perot and Ralph Nader tipped (arguably) the election in favour of the opposite aligned party. Consequenty, Democrats and Republicans argued vehemently that the entrance of a third party unfairly tainted the election.

Who said that they unfairly tainted the election ? They had a right to run - what is unfair about that ?

There's no question they had a right to run. Both, however, wound up creating, by running, exactly the opposite effect that at least some of their supporters would have intended. Perot supporters, by and large, were Republicans who felt that the G.O.P. had strayed too far to the center-left by rolling back much of Reagan's tax cuts. There is no way those people wanted Clinton to become President. Very similar to what happened in Canada in 1993. Very few who voted for Reform wanted the Chretien Liberals to win, much less demolish the old Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

Similarly, most Nader supporters in 2000 likely did not want to see George W. Bush win the election. That may have been precisely what happened in Florida, which Bush won by about 700 votes, out of roughly 12-13 million eligible voters. Because of ballot design confusion it is well-known that a fair number of Buchanan voters wound up "voting" for Gore; again unlikely that those voters would have wanted Gore. So it's hard to tell which way this all cuts, except that in FPTP systems (which the U.S. Electoral College system is, on steroids) hopeless candidates do distort the results.

Is this unfair? Not really. But these "joke" candidates should rethink their tactics.

Edited to add:

One problem with this attitude as it implies that there's no point in running unless someone has a good chance of winning. Reform and the NDP were formed as a collection of like-minded people who wanted to give people an alternative. They knew that they wouldn't win for a long time, if at all. As I have said, more deliberation and more cooks in the kitchen does not necessarily mean more democracy - if it did then we'd have direct democracy -direct voting- on every issue.

You make a good point, for Canada. In the U.S. it is almost impossible for an old party to die and a new one to be created. Edited May 10, 2011 by jbg

[Pliny]

I'm not sure why you weigh in on these things when you don't agree at all with the type of government we have in the first place.

I agree with the type of government. I do not agree with the broad, in your face, have to manage your life mandates. A federal government represents the broadest number of citizens and it should only concern itself with the broadest of issues. Not whether your toilet flushes 1.3 gallons/flush or what province is deemed to be the provider of riches for other provinces. It is not, in my opinion the job of government to make the determination of what people should do with their property, defining rich and poor according to their devised standards and determining winners and losers.

I would tolerate a larger government with a broader mandate in a smaller area of representation such as a province or municipality - it can be left up to the people in that area how much government they want.

The option for the citizen to move if he disagrees must exist.

Governments, if allowed to, will spend a country into oblivion and I think that is quite evident if you look at the debt that western nations have accumulated. Spending becomes an addiction. and they do nothing to prepare for the inevitable economic collapses they create. They have created the boom/bust cycle in the economy by insitituting banking practices that created them in the private sector. Instead of resolving the problems; they adopted them. Banks could not control their ability to create money out of thin air and I don't know why men thought goverments could do a better job and would never succumb to the power it provides. The economy should never be artificially manipulated like it is. As I posted in another thread- If we live collectively we will eventually die collectively - unless some individual does something about it.

Edited May 10, 2011 by Pliny

[KeyStone]

Your example is contrived.

Obviously.

In any real scenario you have a left wing, centrist and a right wing party + plus miscellaneous fringe parties <5%.

That's what a real scenario always looks like - left, centre and right? What about when the Liberals, NDP, Bloq, Conservative and Reform all ran. Can you tell me who was the left, center and fringe in that scenario?

In the worst case a winner has 35% of the vote but a large chunk of the other party vote will accept the winner as a second choice even if that information is never captured.

It really depends on what political parties emerge. Americans might suggest that one party will get at least 50% because that has been their experience, but the fact is we have no idea what parties will run in the future, nor what vote splitting will occur.

In this election, I think it's fair to say that a large chunk of Liberals might have picked the Conservatives as their second choice. In the last election, I don't think it's realistic to think that a large chunk of NDP'ers would have supported the Conservatives as their second choice.

Edited May 10, 2011 by KeyStone

[Michael Hardner]

I agree with the type of government.

I don't think so. You want to flat-tax and eliminate all but the most basic services - what is it roads & military ?

[bloodyminded]

Who said that they unfairly tainted the election ? They had a right to run - what is unfair about that ?

Indeed. It's pretty galling when the supporters of two powerful, entrenched parties get angry because a newer party is "stealing" votes..."Their" votes, which properly belong to them, evidently.

I heard the same phraseology used a hundred times over the last month: even some NDP supporters wondered if the NDP would be "stealing Liberal votes."

Unless one is committing some sort of electoral fraud, it is impossible to "steal votes."

Edited May 11, 2011 by bloodyminded