Britain: A Resounding No! to The Alternative Voting System

Well, I don’t think it was really a surprise that the English nation gave their “no-votes” in to the ballot locations in droves yesterday. While it’s quite clear that, before we should have to decide on pedantic points about voting, we should actually sort out this once-powerful country, there were some pretty strong points that Alternative Voting presented. The only problem with it seemed to be that the “No Vote” campaign was heavily funded – albeit without the aid of taxpayers’ money – whereas I don’t remember ever seeing anything other than 30 second clips of Nick Clegg being interviewed that focused on the “Yes vote”. 75% of the voting public have said no to the Alternative Vote.

The entire campaign for voting “no” was based solely on the complexity and presupposed unfairness of a system we have had yet to experience and form a valued opinion on. Again I state, let us regain a healthy economy, healthcare system and a decent general standard of living for all before we start messing with proven democratic institutions.

One of the huge strengths in supporting the proposed AV system is that it will eliminate the concept of “tactical voting”, in which, voters who, as an example, want to get Conservatives out of power, but don’t really want Labour to be their leaders. Despite their hearts lying with, say, the Green Party, they will vote for the Labour Party as the “lesser evil”. This is not who they want to vote for, yet they feel they have to as The Green Party has basically no chance of getting in. This is the big reason the big parties – Labour and Conservative – are hugely against it, but one cannot claim that AV-supporters are not just as biasedly vote-hungry; the smaller parties see this as a much easier way to come to a position of more power. In short, both sides are politically (and not morally) motivated to push their points, the only difference being that the “yes vote” has more money behind it. It’s important to remember that – every household got their purple “No to AV pamphlets” and so can understand what I’m saying, even despite agreeing the message behind the campaign.

Again, I emphatically state I am in no way trying to convince you that you should have voted one way or the other, it’s just an analysis of the facts as presented to us, the public. If you’ve been living in a cave and don’t understand how it works…well you’ll be like most of the rest of us. Best way of explaining that I can fathom is it’s you giving your preference in numerical order of parties. If no one receives more than 50% of the vote, the party with the smallest number of votes has lost and the people who put them as number 1, instead of it being a lost vote, their 2nd choice is counted and so on until a party has more than 50% of the total votes. It’s not voting (potentially) 5 or 6 times, nor is it a particular means by which only small parties can benefit, but it’s quite easy to put that spin on it which the no campaign has managed to do.  In Australia, which is the example “no” campaigners hold onto, a minority party has never had power. In England it has and that’s under the “First-past-the-post” voting system. Something to think about before outright dismissing the idea.