Let's Keep Throwing the Rascals Out

September 2010

If, as is likely, AV led to PR, then extremist parties would gain. This may be why "Unlock Democracy", one of the main pro-voting reform lobby groups, benefits from the leftover funding and property of the defunct Communist Party of Great Britain.

At a technical level, AV has multiple problems leading to frequent spoiled ballots.

If (as in Australia) electors are obliged to list all the candidates in order of preference, they thereby are forced to give a measure of support to representatives of parties they may abhor. For if there is a far-Left and a far-Right candidate on the ballot, the voter must choose one over the other. Moreover, a ranking of fourth and fifth choice candidates may have a considerable effect on the outcome of a close constituency contest.

AV has mathematical quirks. When the second, third and fourth preferences of the lowest-scoring candidates are redistributed until one candidates wins at least 50 per cent of the votes cast, the winning candidate cannot thereby be guaranteed to enjoy the votes — even the lower preference votes — of a majority of the electors. Voting-reform schemes involving complex formulae for calculating election results deserve to be treated with the same caution as financial products that can barely be understood. There is usually a hidden catch.

In the case of the referendum on AV, the Lib Dem leader falsely represented it to the House of Commons as a response to the scandal about MPs' expenses. It has nothing to do with that scandal and would intensify the very problems that led to it.

Nick Clegg spoke about the need for "transferring power away from the Executive to empower Parliament, and away from Parliament to empower people." Yet, a move away from the first-past-the-post system of elections for the Commons would rob ordinary voters of their core power — that of removing an unpopular government from office by their votes at a general election. In its stead, Clegg advocates a voting method that would permit his party to hold the balance of power and to assure himself a place in government virtually in perpetuity. This is attractive for Clegg but is hardly a model of elective democracy.

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J Lam

April 23rd, 2011
3:04 PM

New Zealand IS including the alternative vote as an option in its referendum later this year, the only difference is that they call it preferential voting. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_voting_method_referendum,_2011#...

Tom Round

March 24th, 2011
4:03 AM

As an Australian I can only laugh when a foreigner informs me that Alternative Vote prevents voters from "throwing out" governments. Mr Pinto-Duschinsky should google the names of "John Howard", "Paul Keating", "Malcolm Fraser" and "Gough Whitlam". By contrast, FPTP failed pretty miserably at removing Margaret Thatcher from office in 1983 and 1987 when a solid majority of British voters didn't want her.

Derek Young

September 9th, 2010
2:09 AM

If the test of FPTP is whether it allows electors to "throw the rascals out", then it must be judged an abject, miserable failure. Only once in 130 years has a majority government of a single party been replaced by a majority government of a different single party, in 1970. On three occasions (1929, 1951 and 1974) the party which won fewer votes of the top two won more seats, making a mockery of the idea that FPTP gives the public direct control of the type of government we have. The most damning condemnation of FPTP, which this article ignores, is that the outcome of a FPTP election is determined by only a handful of voters - the swing voters in marginal constituencies, estimated at between 600,000 and 1m people out of an electorate of 42m. Everyone else might literally as well stay at home on polling day (which, of course, they are increasingly doing). Similarly, the assertion that AV will result in a permanent state of government for the Lib Dems is one made out of philosophical opposition, not neutral analysis. As best as we can tell, most AV elections would still result in a majority government (as in Australia, where the last hung parliament before the current one occurred 70 years ago). FPTP may have worked reasonably well (though far from perfectly) when two major parties won, between them, 98% of the votes cast. Now they win fewer than two-thirds of the votes cast. In such circumstances, maintaining FPTP is increasingly not only a defiance of common sense but more damagingly an almost institutionally corrupt way of excluding the vast majority of citizens from influencing their government.

Dave Thawley

September 8th, 2010
10:09 PM

I just wanted to concur with Ian, the article is not at all informed and is not factual. Please go to the Electoral Reform Society website for an unbiased view of AV (or what the article here for some reason calls PV (perhaps to give the very false illusion the author knows what he is talking about). To be honest, if you have started to read the comments before reading the article I would advise with utmost sincerity you don't waste your time

Ian MacDougall

September 8th, 2010
12:09 AM

The title of Pinto-Duschinsky's piece here 'Let's Keep Throwing the Rascals Out' suggests that only by retaining first-past-the-post (the existing UK system) will this still be possible. That is merely the reddest of the article's many red herrings. Another is the suggestion that preferential voting (PV) will install the loathed and detested Lib-Dems permanently into power, albeit in coalition with whichever of the other two parties is unprincipled enough to get into bed with them. So the author dismisses all other states hich have adopted PV, while acknowledging (ie he does not actually dispute) that it operates satisfactorily in Australia. The satisfaction by the way comes from not having a party installed into office that most people voted against. Not having a government that most people don't want is related somehow to democracy, but I am not sure how. PV can involve some primary school mathematics, it is true: like being able to count from 1 to n, where n is the number of candidates in the constituency. PV is also routinely opposed by those who see their favoured party's privileges evaporating as a result of it. Such people are usually on the conservative side of politics, and so it is worth asking why mainly conservatively-governed Australia introduced it in the 1920s. The answer lies in the fact that at the time of its introduction, the conservative vote was split between two parties, one urban and the other rural, and their mutual opponent, the Labour Party had already shown that it was able of winning more votes than either of them and forming governments. So the CONSERVATIVES introduced PV in order to continue their rule, and to share office between their rival parties, and to ensure that no team of rascals could gain office without the support of 50% + one of the electors. Not a red herring in sight. Simple as that. Nothing fishy about it at all.

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