Instead of just voting for one candidate voters could rank candidates in order of preference, and these preferences could be used to decide the outcome in places where no candidate wins more than 50% of votes cast. Use this guide to find out more.

AV is the only hope of change. Lose this referendum and wave goodbye to all hope of reform, be it in the Commons or the more criminal-tolerant Lords.

AV is worse than FPTP in at least one significant respect: it exaggerates landslides and would have lead to increased government majorities.

I wrote about this at some length last week here: http://aidan.skinner.me.uk/posts/improving-our-democracy-or-why-im-no2av...

writeoff is exactly right. Where we land is far less important than that we jump. It's a lot easier to correct flaws in a system that has only just been adopted than it is one that has been allowed to ossify for decades.

David, the problem with voting against AV is that it is what is effectively, albeit inefficiently, happening in many constituencies in the form of tactical voting.

In the last election I chose to vote for my "second preference" because I knew that my first preference had no chance of being elected and there was a danger of one of my least preferred candidates being elected if I voted for my first choice.

The benefit of AV is that at least it makes tactical voting irrelevant and the true wishes of the electorate transparent. A member elected as a result of 2nd preferences will at last know that.

I'll be doing a US-style "write-in" in May and will be adding "STV" to my ballot.

And no. AV isn't the slightest bit proportional.

Nice to finally see you writing something down on this subject, though I must say I'm disappointed in the reasoning given. I was expecting more.

"The charge that AVC means repeated bites at the cherry for some voters but not others is impossible to rebut."

It's entirely possible to rebut, but it depends on the perspective you're taking. If the election is about electors having a say on who represents them then for every round that someone transfers their preference, those that don't are equally stating their preference.

Or rather, if people are having multiple bites of the cherry, it is only after having the Heimlich maneuver performed on them after each one until the last.

"First, AV is not in fact a good form of proportional representation."

Of course, but just as important as proportionality is local representation.

The real problem here is that there are multiple views flying around over the best way to combine our executive AND our representative bodies in one single vote..for simplicity I guess. But if we are electing an executive (as we are currently doing) then it can't be done on a single member constituency basis.

Thus, if we are choosing to keep the single member constituency we need to be honest and recognise that we're electing representatives, and AV is the best system for doing that on balance.

The question then comes about what should be done beyond this reform, and for me the simple answer is provide a legislative representation proportional to the people by making the House of Lords proportional to the national views with some form of PR system.

This country is built on "strong governments" and a "clear winner", and AV will help to ensure that along with keeping our local politics representative...this reform though can't be the end, and it need to combine with Lord reform to be truly useful.

But even if no further reform happens, I'm strongly putting my flag in the ground to stop the situation whereby votes in this country are fundamentally unequal, whereby if you choose to vote for a 3rd placed candidate or lower the effect of your vote is significantly less than those who vote for a 1st or 2nd placed candidate. Around 25% of the electorate in 2010 might as well have tactically voted, and they would have had more of a voice than they ended up having.

AV is a system that stops this abuse of minority voices within local communities, and liberals should support that whole heartedly in my eyes.

Further to chrisjbd's comment, my biggest worry about PR is that it transfers the electorate's power to choose a manifesto into the hands of a few individuals who draw up a coalition agreement. No one votes for a coalition agreement! Even worse, the current government appears to have used the lack of an outright winner in the election to justify enacting material that wasn't in anyone's manifesto! Where is the democracy in that? Of course, hung parliaments happen (rarely) under FPTP and AV but they would be almost inevitable under pure PR. I worry that PR is therefore a serious danger to self-determination and democracy. Can anyone set my fears to rest?

I have an open mind about AV vs FPTP and feel that I need to be educated in advance of the referendum in order to be able to cast a meaningful vote. Accordingly, I was looking forward to this post. I have to say, though, that on my limited current understanding, there are two points with which I don't think that I agree here.

As I understand it, the point of AV is that the winning candidate should be supported by at least 50% of those voting in the election. To seek to achieve this, it comprises a synthetic series of run-off elections until one candidate gets at least 50% support, compressed into one ballot paper. The preferences enable voters to be asked who they would vote for next, on the assumption that their more preferred candidate turned out to have so little support that he or she was 'knocked out' of the running.

So in relation to your point on 'wasted' votes, where a candidate gets more than 50% in the first round, you just don’t need any run-offs. The votes of those who voted for other candidates are not ‘wasted’, any more than they would have been in the final round of a multiple run-off election. A vote is not ‘wasted’ because it was for a candidate that lost. In fact, I think that the terminology of votes being ‘wasted’ is generally unhelpful in this context. The idea is to give voters who had favoured less popular candidates, who were never going to be elected, the opportunity to indicate a preference for more popular candidates still standing in a round in which one candidate will come out with at least 50% support.

Nor does it seem to be a valid objection that AV gives some voters repeated bites at the cherry but not others. Again; the order of preference is used to ascertain which candidate a voter would prefer if his or her more preferred candidates have been knocked out due to lack of support. But the voters whose candidates are still ‘in’ do get another vote in the next conceptual ‘round’ – it is just that they are assumed to be sticking to the same person as they voted for in the last ‘round’. So everyone gets the same number of votes in total across the various conceptual 'rounds'.

I agree, though, that AV doesn't seem to be a good form of PR, for the reasons you state, so if that is the goal, AV doesn't appear to take us much further forward.

It's quite simply impossible to come up with any electoral system which meets all legitimate requirements. The issue then is what is the least bad system and is AV better than FPTP. That is the current choice on offer.

If we are to retain single member constituencies, then my feeling is it is superior to FPTP. That's simply because I think it better that we elect the candidate which the majority of people will compromise on than the elect candidate favoured by the largest single group.

By all means campaign for your ideal system, but I think you owe it to us to tell us what it is. Full national proportionality? Closed list systems? Open List? Single seat with top-ups? The number of permutations is endless, and every one of them has problems.

Proportional systems can also embed party power structures. We only need to look at the dreadful closed list system used in the UK for Euro elections. Instead of having to appeal to the electorate the candidates have to get themselves as high up the party list as possible. That makes an MEP far more beholden to party than people. Also, proportional systems often allow little space for independent candidates.

Even if members were elected in the "fairest" way possible, then there is still the issue that if the candidate(s) you elected don't get into government, then they won't have a significant effect on legislative programmes. However, you might be lucky enough to vote for a minority party which is able to have influence far in excess of its vote share as a price for joining a coalition. Reflecting national shares of votes in parliamentary numbers does not necessarily translate to more representative legislation.

So, quite simply, make the decision on the basis of which is the better of the two systems on offer, not some mythical "fair" system, and especially not when you don't spell out what it would look like.

I think this article's premise is completely misguided, and frankly think people who buy into it are moronic.

A no vote isn't a vote to say "let's have another go to try and get STV or PR", it's throwing away the only chance we'll get in our generation to show our opposition to FPTP and try to bring about change. If we don't get change now then we won't get another opportunity to make the steps towards proportional representation that the writer argues for.

I want AV. So the last paragraph isn't true.

The first commenter hit the nail on the head.

If we vote no to AV, the political class - particularly the Tories who benefit so disproportionately from FPTP will interpret that as "Yes To FPTP".

It's just a shame that there is only one choice on the table - but that's all that the Tories would let the Lib Dems put there.

Commenters above (notably Brian) have already dealt with the canard about second and third preference votes being given disproportionate value.

The first point DAG makes is a red herring, as no one - at least, no one I have heard of - is claiming AV is a proportional system. So to say it is 'not a good form of proportional representation' is either ignorant or misleading.

But the last point - that AV is not a step towards PR - is perhaps the wrongest of all. AV is what STV reduces to in a single-winner election; therefore, having moved to AV, a further move to STV would only require the banding-together of multiple constituencies.

Finally, the only question DAG needs to consider and answer is whether the 'unequal' nature of AV (already comprehensively debunked BTL) is worse than the genuinely unequal nature of FPTP, which currently gives minority mandates to two thirds of MPs and ignores all but a few thousand votes in marginal constituencies.

Thank you for the comments, most of which (rightly) assume good faith on my part. It is very flattering for a blogger to have so many high quality comments. It also implicitly flattering that a lot of you were "disappointed" this was not up to my "usual" standard!

I do not enjoy being out of step with fellow liberals on any issue. However, I am sincere in my opposition to AV.

I do accept that I need to articulate better the concern which underlies my second argument.

I will blog again on this in a week or so. If anything, it will keep part of the AV debate going on a fairly sensible basis. (Some of the publications put out by the formal No2AV campaign are beyond ghastly.)

@ Adam, 22 February 2011 at 09:10

That must be my favourite comment of all time on one of my posts :-)

Further to my last comment, I suppose this perhaps has less to do with the voting system and more to do with how politicians conduct themselves...

... and with how the media conducts itself...

Tom King - "a further move to STV would only require the banding-together of multiple constituencies" - can't agree with you on that one, I'm afraid. You're technically correct of course that AV is a degenerate form of STV... but then FPTP is what AV reduces to in an election with just two candidates!

To jump from AV to STV you have to win support (and understanding) for really quite difficult concepts, particularly the idea a candidate can have "too many" votes and that you can have "wasted" your vote even though your first-choice candidate won. I think STV is a lovely idea, but will prove much too complicated for the electorate: it's not a good thing for the voting system to be something you have to be an expert to understand.

And of course STV isn't proper PR either. It's possible in principle for a party to get 49% of the votes distributed unformly nationwide, and not a single seat.

If we do end up with PR, I'd be prepared to bet it'll be the additional-member system. In which case, we'll all go back to marking our ballot papers with old-fashioned X's and AV would have been a complete side-step.

None of this changes the fact that it's the option on the table. So the rational choice is between FPTP and AV, not between AV and some other system.

"However, one really should not support a constitutional reform simply to advantage one party or disadvantage another."

Surely the entire reason for considering proportional representation (be that AV or STV) is to aid the chances of the Lib-Dem's gaining political ground in elections?

I don't understand how AV could be mentioned as anything to do with PR. This AV system is meant for electing 1 person to represent 1 constituency. It only guarantees that this person is acceptable to at least half of the voters.

But while giving a more fair local representative, AV will reduce the chance of any minority opinion ever get a voice in parliament. That is the big argument for Proportional systems. AV is a sure way to elect the kind of grey MP's acceptable to most people. People with interesting, original, minority ideas would still have a small chance to be represented in parliament.

If you really want to have district representatives, it is still possible to 'top up' parliament with MP's chosen from party lists so as to make parliament representative of the choice of the entire population. That is what Germany does (and Scotland?). But that would be a completely different reform.

AV means your voters can lose you the election by voting for you! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Fn-v23soQ

AV is worse than FPTP.
If you want to see change happen you can't vote No as it will look like you're supporting it. And you can't vote Yes because then it looks like you're supporting AV. If either of them win the referendum it is very easy for a government to use that to validate not changing either system towards PR, which a government would not want to do because it would lose out.

The best ting you can do is spoil your ballot and demand real change! http://j.mp/SpoilAV

This whole issue has not been well handled. There doesn't seem to have been any meaningful consulation re the need for electoral reform, leaving us with a 'take it or leave it' situation which is unsatisfactory. Clearly, no system is perfect but the mechanics of the way this particular process has been handled leave a sense of cynicism which does nothing for participatory democracy.

Hi there,

#Yes2AV cultist here. An admission which doesn't prevent your arguments being sadly flawed however. Thankyou for the opening paragraph outlining the more appalling arguments on both sides. It is quite awful to argue "this will help X" or other such arguments.

First point: AV is not proportional.

Firstly on the pure fact of the question that's hard to tell. Jenkins in not as authoritative on this as many assume him to be. Firstly because party politics is very fluid and the political landscape next election (with the Lib Dems either destroyed after economic collapse or triumphant after the cuts lead to a boom) is very very different to that in 1997. And even in one election AV elections harder to poll for than FPTP, so it's rather bolder than I'd like to claim to say that AV is less proportional than FPTP.

It is however clearly not PR and not a route to get PR. This is a Good Thing. There are two reasons why PR in the House of Commons is a bad idea. First we are told by that most sacred of documents the *angelic chorus* Coalition Agreement that the House of Lords will be elected on the basis of PR and there needs to be disagreements between the houses. Secondly there is an advantage to be gained from a constituency link, you cant have PR if you're keeping a constituency link.

So I'm afraid I cant agree with you that AV not being PR is a good reason to vote against it. Remember of course that
as annoying and illiberal as it may be the PVSC Bill gives us only 2 choices, neither of which is PR, neither of which will ever lead to PR, neither of which is sufficiently like PR to be of interest.

Second point: AV is unfair or undemocratic.

This is a rather persistent myth, but sadly not reflected by anything so inconvenient as fact. All preferential voting systems are subject to a similar claim so if you do want PR by a preferential system (and PR by a non-preferential system is about the worst of all worlds) this is a challenge that must be overcome there too.

Firstly the bald statement: AV is totally compatible with the real meaning of "one man one vote" ie, that no one person has for reason of birth or money or anything else a higher weight in the election than anyone else. ie if two people swap their votes that cannot change the outcome of the election.

The interesting challenge is the claim that by moving preferences round voters for less popular candidates get more influence. This is an easy thing to think when looked at one way, but foolish another. In one sense the voter with first preference for the winning candidate gets one vote, the one for candidates in reverse order of popularity will get 5 or maybe 6 votes. I want to suggest this is an illusion.

Looked at another way it's easy to see why. Consider not one election but 6 or 7. Each round each person votes for one candidate and the bottom one is eliminated. The first voter I mentioned votes for his favourite candidate, sees the bottom on eliminated and says "well, I still want my favourite" and casts a second vote, for the same candidate. The second voter sees his favourite candidate eliminated and says "well, in this new vote I cant vote for my favourite person in the world, but my favourite person still standing will do". In both cases the two voters get one vote each per round, the one is forced to change his vote, but he still gets exactly as many as the other, and thus exactly as much influence.

This is a misunderstanding of AV based on only counting candidates voted for, not votes cast. That's an important difference and one we should not overlook. Not wishing to use debating tactics, but this is a misrepresentation of the facts.

Final point: "miserable little compromise"

I personally dont agree, for the House of Commons AV is genuinely my first preference from all possible systems, followed very closely by 5-member STV. However, this is not relevant. Let us say for sake of argument that AV is an awful system, that is has endless faults and flaws, that it's universally despised by all and nobody, but nobody, on earth wants it. ... That has not yet told us how to vote. This is not a vote on AV alone. Were the vote "shall w have AV or shall we reconsider and vote on a different system next year" then yes, this is relevant. That's not the question. The question is "shall we have AV or FPTP in perpetuity in principle and in practice certainly for many decades to come?" That is a very different question.

Yes, AV has many of the features of FPTP, it's an almost identical system. Yes, many feel betrayed by the Lib Dems in seeking this, fine, I dont care that doesn't matter. The only question here is FPTP or AV, which is better. Abstract questions about AV are irrelevant. All those areas (lack of proportionality, single member constituency, not curing cancer, safe seats etc etc) that the two systems are identical in should be cast totally out of our minds. Only ask where are the systems different. And in practice these are two:

Tactical voting. Yes Arrow's impossibly and other such theorems prove tactical voting is inevitable in almost all systems. But some systems make it more likely that it will be widespread. Under FPTP almost all voters for who are not total die-hard tribalists are faced with question about how to vote. It's normally easy to see how the vote will go and it's important to vote for the best candidate who can win. For this reason nobody votes for small parties despite many people wanting to. Under AV people can vote for small parties, safe in the knowledge that their votes will be safely transferred to the best candidate still running. Yes, it can in strange situations be best to give first preference to one small party rather than another, but such situations are not as common as those under FPTP.

Vote splitting. As above under FPTP if two candidates run on the same political territory this is a disaster, they halve each other's vote. So if the local party chooses an unpopular candidate no independent from the same party can run against them. This is a problem as it gives people far less choice. Often in a safe seat the local party chooses the MP outright. Under AV this problem has a safety valve. There is no vote splitting cost in AV. If two identical candidates run the second one is eliminated the other gets all his preferences, exactly as if the first had never existed. So in a very safe seat the local party may well chose one candidate, but an independent of the same party can run as well, safe in the knowledge that this extra choice for the voters does not harm his party's chance.

So I'd like to suggest that yes, AV may not be your favourite system. But to not take a system that differs (as I see it) only by slight improvements from the only alternative is foolish.

For more thoughts, see my blog:

http://j.mp/cJ9cIK http://j.mp/cxJeMv http://j.mp/f9Hekc http://j.mp/fMVkz7 http://j.mp/gjzdwv

If AV fails, we still lose 50 seats in parliament (with a rising population) in one of the wost cases of public theft ever. AV may go some way to ameliorate this. Vote Yes in May.
http://clemthegem.wordpress.com