AV – it’s about democracy

By Darrell Goodliffe

Recently, on LabourList there have been two articles that caught my eye extolling the virtues of the Alternative Vote system. Firstly, we have Neal Lawson who explains why in his view AV is the voting system for the modern age. Neal makes plenty of grand claims for AV being a beacon of the modern world but fails to relate this to the actual mechanics of the system. You might think this says a lot about the applicability of his argument, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

David Hodges does rather better, mainly because he actually addresses the Alternative Vote as a system, not as some kind of bizarre Alchemists Gold which will open the gates of political heaven and usher in a new golden age. David is actually completely correct in his first argument that the AV debate is about improving our democracy and democratic principles, and that’s why I don’t like AV – its patently undemocratic.

Let’s look at some of the flaws David identifies with First Past the Post. He starts with tactical voting. Now, it completely escapes me how any member of the Labour Party or even somebody who is intimately involved with it can turn around and say AV ends tactical voting. Were they involved in the same leadership campaign that we were? I know, having worked for one campaign, that tactical voting was actively encouraged in supporters of the lower placed candidates to favour the frontrunners. This is how tactical voting works under AV, the tactical battle goes to the preferences. It doesn’t vanish – where it takes place just changes slightly.

It is also a myth to say that AV will ‘free’ voters in the way both David and Neil seem to think it will. In actual fact, smaller parties would gain influence undemocratically and unaccountably by not winning direct election but by horse-trading their preferences while major parties would continue to exercise decisive hegemony. Don’t believe me? Well maybe we should trust research from a country that actually uses AV:

“Australian research would indicate that even with extensive education, British voters will not spontaneously start giving preferences on the ballot paper. Party recommendations will be critical in determining how voters use the new system.”

Next we have the old 50+1% canard. David’s claim here simply isn’t true. Candidates do not have to earn 50% of the vote. In fact, they are unlikely to earn 50% of the vote because not everybody will use all of their preferences. The votes which are not fully preferenced are knocked out of contention so achieving 50% becomes a statistical impossibility. Breathtakingly, David actually turns around and uses this argument as another positive one for AV:

“Furthermore, for our comrades in the No camp who (wrongly) argue the complexity of AV will cause innumerable problems for the electorate, there is this saving grace. If you only have one preference, you still only vote for one candidate.”

Yes, comrade that’s true but if not everybody uses their preferences they will never make the magic 50%.

David’s final claim that the facts support AV is therefore totally bogus. There is hardly any factual grounding for anything the Yes campaign says in reality. It’s a mish-mash of arguments, some of which apply (but to proportional systems not AV), and others that are simply plucked out of thin air. I don’t think FPTP is perfect, far from it. What I do think is that for all its imperfections it’s actually a more democratic system than AV. That, for me is the decisive argument against AV.