Let's Keep Throwing the Rascals Out

September 2010

Turning from the flawed process of constitutional reform, there are several substantial objections to AV.

Australia is the only established country to use AV for elections to the lower legislative chamber. The obscurity of the other examples — Fiji, Iraq, Nauru and Papua New Guinea — should be a cause for concern not least because of the continuing problems in Fiji. It is significant that Australia's neighbour, New Zealand, has not even included AV among the list of options for a referendum on voting reform it is due to hold in 2011.

In practice, AV would not be the real issue in the proposed British referendum. It would be naive to imagine that the ambitions of the main party in the Commons to favour change in the electoral system — the Lib Dems — would be satisfied by a change to AV. Although its political effects are unpredictable, it would be likely to give them some 20 more seats and the Conservatives about 20 fewer, thereby making another hung parliament more likely. Conservative MPs would be especially vulnerable in constituencies in which the Lib Dems were the main challengers.

In the likely eventuality under AV of a further hung parliament, the Lib Dems would then demand full PR as the condition for their participation in another coalition government. So, it is realistic to treat AV as the stepping-stone to proportional representation.

AV — and still more PR — make it far harder for voters to dismiss a government. With a multiplication of political parties, governments will be formed and dismissed not by the voters but as a result of private deals between politicians. These deals may be about sensible compromises about policy. They also may be squalid bargains about patronage and the disposition of the spoils of power.

For all its admitted statistical imperfections, the Westminster model delivers the essential feature of democracy: the capacity of electors — not of cabals of politicians — to hold a government to account. Once a prime minister feels that it may be possible to escape the verdict of the electors by doing a post-election deal, the quality of democracy is undermined.

Following electoral reform, the Lib Dems would virtually always be in office. General elections would decide whether the Lib Dems would join either the Conservatives or Labour in a coalition. The Lib Dems would be almost immune from the wrath of the electors for, even if they lost votes, they still would belikely to hold the balance of power. We are used to a system that has discriminated against the third party. But a new voting system that made it virtually impossible to remove it from office would be far worse.

In terms of "fairness" or "proportionality", a PR system is frequently unfair and disproportionate. It assures parties a number of seats in the legislature proportional to their votes but it often provides small parties a share of governmental office that is disproportionately great. Governmental office (or the lack of it) are what matters most in a 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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