Ok what about looking at things in terms of who benefits? If I spend my time and energy intending to benefit one candidate - why should my original and best intention - my plan A, as it may be - end up sprinkled liberally amongst other candidates?

This AV system seems designed to put notions of collectives eg party politics, group pressures and lobbying etc before one's actual right to access and use our electoral system in the most direct and efficient manner ie in the manner we the individual member of the public might see fit. Individuals do exist actually and we count too.

I think first past the post is best -but I can see we need to triangulate things as it may be - by ensuring the power of individual members the public together with one's M.P's surgery is brought up to scratch- in terms of proper standardised Parliamentary forms and/or other bits of paper, proper accountability and responsibility of what elected members say, write and do (what about a time and motion study for M.P's?)

Personally I'm getting fed up with being expected to constantly go cap in hand as it seems to people who are elected , appointed or otherwise - going cap in hand means one ends up somehow manipulated into giving up one's most important rights as an individual just so somebody else can do their job properly, as we still have beggars in our democracy.

Overall this AV thing is making these kinds of communication difficulties worse, drawing the nations attention away from what's most important which is the modernisation of the set up between an M.P and their constituent in my view. It seems like casting one's bread on the water..surely this isn't the best way to inform and elect a government here in the UK.

Cameron and the rest of the Money party compromised to have a referendum on AV, not wanting to go as far as letting us choose PR -- then says its a bad system.

You would avoid a restaurant that offers cat food or dog food when you want a curry...

AV is the best they'll let us choose from and it comes with a bitter pill of jerrymandering the constituencies. Lest they are impacted by the end of tactical voting and the beginning of a house of commons that reflects the popular vote. And hey, if the popular vote is reflected better we get less Tory slimeballs.

Disingenous, deceitful, Tory.

Quoting Mrs.Josephine Hyde-Hartley:

"If I spend my time and energy intending to benefit one candidate - why should my original and best intention - my plan A, as it may be - end up sprinkled liberally amongst other candidates? "

The point is that while you may have put your time and energy into benefitting one candidate, over 50% of the electorate in your constituency may have put their time and energy into ensuring your preferred candidate was not elected. Should your candidate therefore be elected by virtue of the fact that the majority of the electorate are divided between multiple other candidates? Of course not.

I'll give you an example. If 11% of the voters in a constituency are passionately in favour of the BNP but 89% of the voters hate them. Should the BNP be able to win the seat with 11% of first preference votes because the other 89% of votes were distributed amongst 9 other parties? FPTP just doesn't produce fair results in a multi-party system, which is what we are beginning to develop in this country.

Of course, under AV you don't have to put any other preferences - if you like you can vote for your "plan A" and leave it at that.

I'm not sure I understand your point about the notion of collectives - can you be more explicit?

Finally, it is not the fault of AV that not enough energy is being spent on cleaning up politics. I don't see that they are mutually exclusive.

You cannot quote one and remove parts of it. There is manipulating his view on it. Therefore this is not a weak article, rather a article that is clearly pointing out the facts that they cannot quote someone properly.

No Giovanni, it's not that they cannot quote someone properly it's that they don't want to.

Cameron and Reid together in favour of FPTP, that's me a definate yes now.

Josephine,
If you don't want to use your preferences you don't have to. Just vote for your first choice and leave the others blank.

Of course, if you do that and your candidate doesn't win you would have wasted your vote, just as happens now.

Yes, since you are (rightly) lambasting the selective use of quotations, the least you could do is provide the source for this quote so we can view it in its original context. For all we know, he could have been talking about anything!

Paul, why should it be reasonable that the candidate with the most (first) votes can lose, and the second or third candidate can win. My son put it well: that the candidate who nobody likes can win. He was amazed, and I am. In my mind there has to be an overpowering reason to change a well established system. And there isn't.

Graeme,
I don't like AV and I don't like FPTP but I don't want the referendum to be defeated.
Its important that a change, almost any change, is made after the damage done to our democracy by the scandals of the last 30 years. From the sleaze of Major to the expense scandals of the last government, not to mention the litany of broken promises that we have had from this compromise of a coaltion government that nobody really wanted.

AV won't put much of this right but any change, however minor, is preferable to leaving things as they are.

For anyone who wants a source for the quote, search for Churchill in http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/8prep10.txt

@Graeme

It is reasonable for the reasons outlined by Homo Sapiens and Dark Heart above. Say you have a constituency in which ten candidates stand. Under FPTP a candidate could technically win with 11% of the vote (which is absurd). What AV does is asks (in seats where no candidate gets over 50% of the vote) what would have happened if fewer candidates had stood. You take out the least popular candidate and the votes are re-counted. What's wrong with that?

Churchill like many early 20th century progressives actually wanted STV. During the Speakers Conference of 1917 and 18 labour and the liberals wanted a mixed system of AV and STV, then during the debates in the house began to move to backing av, whereas the lords demanded the commons adopt STV. The provisions on voting reform collapsed out of the Representation of the Peoples Act due to parliamentary gamesman ship between the lords and commons. I think AV is a poor system, personally AV+ like Jenkins proposed or STV would be better, as if we go to AV smaller parties will slowly vanish from the Commons, starting with Lucas and the Greens. Is that really democratic? Exclusion of fringe opinions no matter how radical. AV sounds as though it'll create a blander and centrist politics which will lead to lower turnouts and more disconnect.

He said similar things about 'democracy': not great but its the best we've got. Churchill never gave a straight answer to a simple question but blinded you with words, hoping to beat you into submission