someone explain it to me and tell me why you just don't have a vote for proportional representation instead:P

i cant its too confusing :P

lol. Canada had minority governments for 8 years and was none the worse for it.
Now we have an evil reptilian kitten eater as PM!
:P

its not going to pass, there is no need to explain it.

We had a hung Parliament:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...red/election2010/results/

Labour and Lib Dems, would have been the logical coalition, but they didnt have the seats without the support of the kitchen sink and the unpopularity of Gordon Brown and the Labour cabinet meant that the only option was a Conservative minoirty government which relied on others agreeing, a minority agreement that the Lib Dems would support major bills (such as the budget) in exchange for something (new election would have been called soon) or a full coalition between Con/Lib Dem.

They went for the full coalition, but the two parties are ideological polarised on social and political reform. The Lib Dems want full PR and the Conservatives would never ever agree to PR, because it would destroy the party. In the end Cons gave a referendum on the AV system, which was a massive concession for them. The Lib Dems see this a little compramise and hope that it would give them more power allowing them to move to full PR in the future.

In the AV system you rank canidates in order of preference (you can rank as few as you like). If the winner hasn't achieved 50% then the last place canidate is eliminated and his second choice is counted. This continues until someone passes 50%. This would have a significant impact on the results, but in a subtle way. Instead of having Conservative or Labour majorities as the norm and coalitions as the exception, it is likely that coalitions with the Lib Dems will be the rule and majorities being the exception.

Conservatives are against, Lib dems are for and Labour is split. The actual bill that led to this referendum also included boundry changes (which are not up for referendum) and favour the conservative party.

Pro's and Con's from the two sides: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13229787
Youtbe video showing the diff between FPTP and AV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPFIpeiq5Uc

A Funny Yes Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiHuiDD_oTk
A Funny No Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-obZ9OG_XKA

I'm voting no. First, because of party interest; im a Conservative that believes that every other party has a disasterous economic policy, etc... It's also the most stable (majorities), AV gives the extreme party voters a 2nd/3rd preference (giving nutters more influence). FPTP is so simple that even retards can understand it and there are no shortage of them in any country.

i will be voting no too

PR would be a much better choice than this AV crap, but its up to the people of the UK as a whole to decide for/against AV

people have no clear concept of what its about - it will die a death

Its just an attempt by a party that is never going to be elected to have a better chance of being elected in the future because for the first time in a long time there is a hung parliament and they are part of a useless coalition government and they are trying to make the most of their new found power.

The stupid thing is, lib dems are pretty much student vote and thats it (and that is two part, A: symathy because they suck, and b: to voice discontent with the two major parties), and they completely alienated themselves from students by allowing a tution fee increase for university places despite promising not to do so in their election manifesto. Which pretty much means no matter what they do, they have a generation of people that did vote for them, never vote for them again. And a new generation that wont want to vote for them, because it isnt in any way in their interests.

FPTP is so simple that even retards can understand it and there are no shortage of them in any country.

FPTP also produces retarded results, especially when you have more than 2 viable political parties. In Canada, for example the most recent election produced a majority government not because the conservative party won more votes (although they did) but because their main opponent (the liberal party) received fewer votes compared to the NDP. Similarly the conservative/reform party split allowed the liberals to win a majority with 38% of the popular vote. It also effectively renders your voice meaningless in areas where one party has very high (70%+ support) in your area if you don't like that party. Canadian specific issues with the ridings aside, you can influence the results by changing the riding boundaries which is why PR is so much better. I don't like the idea of a party forming the government with less than 50% of the popular vote.

The stability argument is somewhat reminiscent of the rational people use to overthrow democratic governments in a way..

All of those attacks on FPTP in favour of PR are absolutely true. However, I feel it is extremely bias to discuss those points without also pointing out that moving to PR will create an equal share of problems that currently don't exist with FPTP.

PR is not the savour of politics, it is not without faults. Any real debate on democratic reform needs to properly examine both systems, both the pros and the cons, and their implications on what we are looking for in a "democratic process".

I'm not going to go too much into the "problems" with PR, but I want to highlight that one of the biggest components to the parliamentary democratic system (UK, Canada etc.) is the idea of accountability. That accountability is manufested through numerous institutions and conventions in the parliamentary system.

One of these accountabilities is that of the individual MP to the constituents that elected him. This particular line of accountability does not exist in a PR system. Instead MP's are solely accountable to their party/party leader, in order to maintain their position on the current list ordering for the party (in PR system, each party ranks each of their members in desending order, and when they get assigned seats based on their proportion of the vote, they hand out seats starting at the top of that list and work their way down until they are out of seats).

That is a very high level overview of one of the MANY issues with PR.

the AV here is better than FPTP; not as good as PR or STV or something, but *definitely* better than FPTP...

food for thought: If we had an AV system in Canada the NDP may very well have a majority right now.

the liberals would have more seats i think tho

"FPTP also produces retarded results, especially when you have more than 2 viable political parties."

It is my opinion we only have two viable parties. One being crap and the other being crapper. The rest are raving nutters who are not fit to be called parties.

"It also effectively renders your voice meaningless in areas where one party has very high (70%+ support) in your area if you don't like that party."

Agreed, but I believe that the will of the community within the community is more important that the averaged out will of the nation in your community if that makes sense. Then again I believe in smaller central government.

"The stability argument is somewhat reminiscent of the rational people use to overthrow democratic governments in a way.."

What is democracy? Would you consider its origins, 'dēmokratía' as democratic? Why stop at PR. Why not let the nation have a referendum on every single law or parliamentary decission through a computer poll? I think FPTP combines universal sufrage with an experienced non-radical two party system. It narrows the parties ofc, but anyone can join a political party itself and influence its cabinet and policies.

Btw, if I remember correctly, the Nazi Party came to power through PR.

most people seem to like having a bicameral system with one house one seat per electorate and one house bigger electorates with more seats

the 1:1 bit if you dont have preferences then say 5 parties stand and get about 20% each, 4 could be one way ultra right/left and the 1 thats opposite/different could have slightly more votes than all of the others leading to an elected representative most of the voters didnt like

however with preference flows that are arranged in backroom deals and candidates standing for basically fake parties on small issues you can have people voting for people they didnt intend to vote for, if you dont have to vote below the line (in australian parlance meaning number each candidate)

then for the multi seat electorates the more seats you have the lower a quota is

voters/(seats+1)=quota

(also an issue with mandatory or optional voting and invalid rates, and whether you need a quota based on who did vote or who could vote)

anyway if you have a 100 seat electorate youd get a lot of fringe special interest candidates with about .5% of the vote standing for things like

pirate party
more beer party
shooters party (would be NRA equivelant)
watermelon socialists
religious parties
nationalist parties in the uk, protestant irish, catholic irish, scottish nationalists, welsh nationalists (i know they exist but dont know how popular they are)

basically theres probably a party you really really disagree with, and the lower quotas get the more likely they may win seats, the balance of power, or wind up in a coalition government

but if you dont have small quotas then large chunks of the population dont really get anyone in parliament pushing their viewpoint

the EU seems to have a system where you need to pass a percentage to either get bonus mp's or any mp's to begin with

other interesting things are if someone ceases to be an MP who is the replacement

byelections, government apointed, party apointed, next highest on that ticket (for multiple seat electorates), next highest votes

heres an article by one of the election analysts in australia:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...-misrepresented-av-debate

this seems like a better real explanation though:

http://gowers.wordpress.com/...0/is-av-better-than-fptp/

Flamey: If you're in the US then yes, you only have two parties; and FPTP is part of the reason methinks;


In canada we've got at least 3 major parties; plus one or two small parties geting significant chunks of the vote, which should be represented nonetheless..


How is it universal sufferage; it's really tyranny of the largest-minority ( I was going to say majority, but the conservatives don't win majorities anywhere other than alberta and sask heh)

there's also a big difference between a geographically small country vs a large country with different pockets of population and more diverse cultural/regional interests.

the main argument in favor of FPTP made years ago is that it ensures more equitable regional representation rather than being able to win with all your support concentrated in one small area. However recent Canadian elections have demonstrated the opposite. FPTP also produces results where a party can win fewer votes but more representation which is clearly NOT democratic. And this isn't as rare as some people would argue. (take the NDP vs the bloc in the 2003 and 2008 elections, or the green party vs the bloc in this election). In the most recent Canadian election the conservatives won 10 seats with fewer votes than when they lost those seats in prior elections. None of these things make any sense to me.
What the argument for FPTP boils down to is that one shouldn't need as many votes in order to have majority control of parliament and this promotes stability. More stability without the need for as much consensus. It still seems weird to me.

"Agreed, but I believe that the will of the community within the community is more important that the averaged out will of the nation in your community if that makes sense. Then again I believe in smaller central government."

Smaller central government has little to do with how that government is elected.

"The stability argument is somewhat reminiscent of the rational people use to overthrow democratic governments in a way.."

"I think FPTP combines universal sufrage with an experienced non-radical two party system. It narrows the parties ofc, but anyone can join a political party itself and influence its cabinet and policies."
It actually discourages people from voting because if one of the two major parties doesn't represent your views than your vote effectively doesn't count. Countries with FPTP have consistently lower turn out than countries with PR. Winning (or attempting to do so) by discouraging your opponents supporters from voting is not a democratic tactic (see the nazi movement).
Also who says that FPTP encourages a two party system in the first place. Canada hasn't been a two party system since the early 20th century.


"Btw, if I remember correctly, the Nazi Party came to power through PR.". I believe the Nazi Party came to power upon declaration of a state of emergency. I don't believe they ever gained control of the parliament democratically.

And as a final note, in Canada FPTP has given undue influence to regional and separatist parties more so than PR would. And I don't just mean the bloc or the reform party.

Every aussie i know that is elligible to vote is gonna vote yes for the AV system on purely patriotic grounds!!

The irony of all this is that in Australia, we don't have a strong 3rd party like the Lib Dems:p

i find it funny that AV and FPTP are both such bad names

preferential voting makes more sense than alternative voting, but instant runoff voting seems even more descriptive

alternative voting sounds like the sort of name youd give a referendum question when you want people to vote no, which would make sense if the tories got to draft the question

first past the post? as that article i linked says, wtf is the post?

the post moves based on the split of votes, IRV/AV seems more like getting someone to the post than FPTP does

yeah i don't get why they call it AV either.

we call it preferential down here.

FPTP is common name for that form of voting:p

should make a movie, call it AVFPTP

AV = dead and buried

AV lost bigtime.

=(

the UK is officially dumb for voting that down =/

Lets wait to see how the BC HST referendum goes because we start pointing fingers about population stupidity :P

lol. people in general will vote against any kind of tax. Having all taxation issues put to a referendum ends up being self defeating (and yes I know it's somewhat of an anti-democratic statement) but just look at colifornia:P

i think you'll find, nobody in the uk cared about the referendum except perhaps those that were against av. Turn out figures reflect the lack of interest on the subject...

AV = audio visual?:P

I'm from the UK, I'm a member of the Labour Party, I voted yes, I was gutted it got voted down- but not surprised considering the amount of money that was behind the No campaign. Alas.

(PS. This is was for my bonus, so I am aware it is superfluous.)