AV/Preferential voting

[blamebrampton]

Life is still chaos. HOWEVER, in the interests of accuracy, I need to make a short post on AV for the Britflist.

'Australians' DO NOT want to get rid of AV, and there is not a massive move to 'go back' to life before AV.

For a start, there are very few 114-year-old Australian voters. AV has been in place here since 1918. The 'going back' idea is a fiction.

There was a poll taken that came out with more Australian voters in favour of FPTP than AV, however, the poll itself is pretty bloody questionable -- for a start its main question asks about hypothetical perfect models rather than saying: 'do you like the way we vote in Australia, or would you rather vote the way people vote in the UK/US?'

This was an intentional decision as the people who commissioned the vote were a think tank who are in favour of FPTP voting. Now, people commission dodgy polls all the time. That's fine, I'd probably do the same if I thought I could get linked-up cycleways in Sydney through. But it's a CRAP reason for someone to vote no in the UK.

Vote no if you believe in the No case, absolutely.

But in Australia, people are by and large very happy with the way we vote, even if it ends up with comedy parliaments like our current one. The people who are actually against AV are politicians who have lost out because of it (most recently the local BNP-like lupin) and people who find it annoying to have to number a ballot one to eight. In the UK, with non-compulsory voting, this second set could stay home and rest their delicate wrists.

For a clear and concise history of how AV has affected results in Australian federal elections, check out the excellent Anthony Green here.

Make up your own minds, but don't for a moment swallow the 'The Aussies hate it!' line. Oh, and you can safely ignore the 'It's really hard!' line, too. FFS, Australians can do it!

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Both BC and Ontario have had referenda on alternative voting methods. In both cases citizen panels proposed a hybrid list system as superior to AV, with which I concur. In both cases indifference, ignorance and scaremongering by the right wing press led to narrow rejection.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

indifference, ignorance and scaremongering by the right wing press
Just like pretty much every other vote we've ever had. Oh, Canada. :|

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I also suspect that AV wouldn't have changed the result much. With the Liberals running third in so many places it's quite possible that Liberal second preferences would have gone to the Tories in sufficient numbers to push their candidates past 50%.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's true. The NDP's new status seems pretty much proof positive to me that a very significant proportion of defecting Liberals went with the NDP, not the Tories.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

But that's not necessarily a good predictor of where the remaining Liberal vote would have gone. I think it's clear that in a significant number of Ontario seats the Liberals would have defeated the Tories under AV by virtue of NDP second preferences but I'm not convinced it would have helped in seats where the Libs came third.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

I think platform policies are generally fairly good predictors of how someone will vote -- the NDP and Liberals are obviously hardly the same party but both platforms emphasise similar issues (many of which are completely absent from the Tory platform). I haven't done any wider research but just in my riding, which does have Liberals in third now, the PC candidate got about the same number of votes as in 2008 (up by just 1K); the Liberal incumbent's votes dropped by 6K, and the NDP dude gained close to 14K. If that doesn't indicate a Liberal -> NDP shift, which I think it clearly does, it certainly does not indicate a Liberal -> PC shift, either.

(Though of course with something like AV, hardline partisan voters would deliberately rank their most hated parties last instead of looking at platforms like they're supposed to, which would see a lot of Green/Marxist/Pirate/etc second/third/fourth choices. :|)