AV debate divides opinion

First Past the Post (FPTP): The current system.
Voters select their favoured candidate by marking [x] in the box next to his/her name. The candidate with the most votes wins even if this is not 50%.

Alternative Vote (AV): The system proposed in the referendum on 5 May.
Voters rank the candidates in order of preference [1],[2],[3] etc. Voters can use as many or as few preferences as they wish. If a candidate has 50% of first-preference votes, then he/she is elected; if the 50% threshold is not reached, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second-preference votes distributed, and so on until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.


THE ONLY thing that is certain about the current debate over whether to change the voting system is that no one knows what is going to happen in the referendum on 5 May.

Last week, the referendum bill was eventually passed by the House of Lords but there is a distinct lack of agreement on all sides.

This is evidently the case in the coalition government with Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron opposing the alternative vote (AV) while his deputy, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, favours a change.

A small minority of Tories - there were 10 rebels in the House of Commons vote - is backing AV though there is no such cross-over from the Lib Dems.

That should come as little surprise. Although the Lib Dems had a disappointing result at the last General Election under First Past the Post (FPTP), they still gained 1% more of the popular vote than in 2005 - only to end up with five fewer seats.

Meanwhile, the Labour ranks appear no more decisive. While leader Ed Miliband has gone on record to back a change to the alternative vote system, senior Labour figures from the recent past such as John Prescott, David Blunkett, Margaret Beckett and John Reid have all stated opposition to the proposals.

Moreover, the Labour peers in the House of Lords - including Lord Prescott - attempted to delay the referendum bill so that the vote could not be held on 5 May.

Labour figures were unhappy about other areas of the bill including the reduction of MPs to 600 and equalisation in the size of constituencies.

Unsurprisingly, this led to accusations that Mr Miliband could not keep his party under control.

But, while it is fair to say that a reduction in the number of MPs would be widely welcomed, the issue of equalising constituencies is rather trickier.

As part 2.1 of this report from the Electoral Calculus website points out, the deviation in the size of constituencies at the 2010 election was 12%, actually lower than at previous elections.

The referendum bill intends to impose a maximum deviation of 5% and increase the regularity of Boundary Reviews.

However, as the report explains (see 4.1), the 5% rule would cause over 400 seats to change their boundaries with the net effect on the result being small compared with just equalising the number of seats in the four nations of the UK.

Meanwhile, an increase in the frequency of boundary reviews (see 4.2) would undoubtedly cause confusion to voters dealing with a perpetual changing of their seat's boundaries and name.

The report concludes that while "the proposed reform is not 'gerrymandering', equally it is not clearly good administration".

Back to the bill itself, and there was a further hurdle in the House of Lords when peers from both the Labour and Conservative benches attempted to make it so that the referendum would only be binding if there was a 40% turnout.

This prompted former Lib Dem leader Lord Paddy Ashdown to accuse the Tories of a "betrayal" with him stating: "We have delivered, in full, our side of the deal. The Conservatives seem unable to deliver theirs."

It was all a rather unseemly mess but the process known as "ping-pong" finally ended when the Conservative Lords leader Lord Stratchclyde urged the House to back down, and they did.

To the relief of Westminster, the news channels have been devoting most of their time to events in North Africa and the Middle East and so much of the debate went unnoticed.

However, the lack of coverage so far means that many people outside of the Westminster bubble have been unable really to make an informed decision about AV.

This is demonstrated by opinion polls which have generally shown a lack of consensus and "soft" support on both sides of the argument with people liable to switch.

Immediately after the election, with the Lib Dems in government for the first time in 65 years, polls showed the public in favour of a change to AV.

But then further polls between September and February showed a clear preference for retaining the status quo.

Most recently, the majority of the polls have shown a further shift with FPTP and AV neck-and-neck - though the latest from YouGov now shows a seven-point lead for the No campaign.

Both No2AV and Yes to Fairer Votes have now launched their campaigns to firm up their support and help convince the undecided to vote for them.

The No2AV campaign has focused mainly on the cost of implementing the changes, arguing that, with such a shortage of public funds available, the money would be better spent elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Mr Cameron has warned that the arrival of AV would cause more coalitions and less stable government - even though, this is not necessarily the case.

Australia has used the AV system in elections for the House of Representatives since 1918, and only had one hung parliament since then, in 1940.

But Mr Cameron's other point in the same speech was more accurate.

The Prime Minister argued that a change to the system would lead to many MPs being elected on second choice votes - i.e. they are elected on the strength of second preferences.

The Yes campaign opposes this view by pointing out the use of second preference votes means that fewer voters will have cast a "wasted" vote.

And the Yes camp also point out that under AV, a successful candidate will have received more than 50% backing of his or her constituents, meaning they will have to have had a broad appeal.

Of course, the argument against this is that it may mean parties and, indeed, individual candidates go for the common denominator even more so than at present.

But the main argument of the Yes camp is that the referendum offers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make the electoral system better and "fairer".

For that reason, they argue, the money spent on it is worth it as it will make future government more relevant to its electorate.

However, like Mr Cameron's ill-informed claim that AV will result in more coalitions, this argument is a bit of a misnomer.

For a start, AV is not proportional - the number of seats won by a party in the Commons at an election will still be far from representative of the votes cast by the public.

More crucially, AV is not necessarily "fairer". As this report on Electoral Calculus points out, the concept of fairness - much like the concept of beauty - is in the eye of the beholder.

Part five of the report shows the votes-to-seats ratio for the Conservatives, already higher than for Labour under FPTP, would be even higher still under AV.

On that basis, it should really come as no surprise that Mr Cameron is no fan of AV.

However, personally, I would like at least to try a change from the current, tired FPTP system.

The tradition and simplicity of the system count for little when it can produce results which allow Labour to gain a majority of 67 on just over 35% of the vote, as in 2005. Or that the Lib Dems can gain 23% of the vote but only 8.8% of the seats, as in 2010.

The argument that FPTP produces stable government has long been a strong one but this is also not necessarily a good thing.

All it means is that successive governments with huge majorities can pass unpopular laws while a meek opposition can do little but sit idly by.

Having said that, the arguments in favour of AV have not convinced me that it would be much of an improvement, if it is an improvement at all. As such, I remain in the Don't Know (or still to be convinced) camp for now.

Basically, I would like a change from FPTP but it is fair to say that AV would not be my first preference.