Why I have finally decided to vote no to AV
By Emma.
I have been struggling with my feelings on AV for a really long time*. Not least because I don’t really care that much. It’s quite a small change and there are good arguments on both sides. Sadly both campaigns have been utterly, utterly dreadful. Badly managed, insane tactics, negative shouty-fests over the lowest forms of argument. I hope if nothing else comes out of this debate, we at least have a look at how we campaign on the issues in this country. We have nothing to be proud of in the way this national discussion has been conducted. Most of the arguments put forward by both official campaigns have been specious at best. AV will patently not cost £250 billion, nor will it solve the problems of an unresponsive and out of date body politic.
I have tried extremely hard not to base my decision on my tribal allegiances. This has been made easier by the fact that there is no compelling argument one way of the other about whether AV will hurt or help Labour or the BNP which seem to be the two most often discussed parties. Frankly, I would rather beat the BNP on the issues than a technicality. As for Labour I want to see us in power. I don’t think there is clear-cut evidence that AV would have an effect on that (for example, experts say our majority would have been even greater in 1997 under AV, but so would the Tories in 1987).
There are good reasons to vote for AV. Having been six and two threes throughout the campaign, I know what they are. I get that people who live in a safe seat will get to express their preference, even while preferencing the leading candidates. Every 5 years, in the voting booths, people will feel they get a better chance to have a say in how they are represented, and that would be a good thing.
My reason for voting no is what happens in-between those 5 years. AV is currently being sold as a solution to all that ails the body politic. That is will make MPs “work harder” and that it will stop things like the expenses scandal. This is frankly insulting, but also a little worrying. OK quite a lot worrying. Leaving aside the insane notion that people working 14 hour days aren’t working hard enough, I worry that we don’t really know what we actually want from MPs. Do we want legislators or social workers? Constituency champions or Westminster players? If AV is adopted, I am deeply concerned that the actual changes that need to occur to the way Westminster is run to make it more representative both of the people and of the century in which we live will be kicked into the long grass. In fact it was in part this concern that kicked me over the edge when I saw the yes to AV broadcast.
However my main concern, is the effect AV and the race for second preferences will have on representative politics. I am strongly of the opinion that the need for parties to “reach out beyond their core vote” will mean them fielding more and more often candidates intended to appeal generally. This is fine in a individual seat. It works very well for example when choosing a Party leader, because being at roughly the centre of where your party are is not the same as being a centrist. But when replicated across the country, we will end up with a legislature made up from a far narrower group of people, with a narrower range of centrist stances. We will end up with greater freedom for voters to express their diverse opinions, only for them to be represented by a far less diverse group of elected representatives.
No electoral system is perfect. You just have to balance the negatives and the positives and make a choice. Mine won’t be a popular choice among my friends, but in the end, in a democracy, I have to vote the way I believe to be right.
*If AV+ had been on the ballot I would have voted yes in a heartbeat. I believe that this system would have balanced the flaw of local candidates appealing to the middle with the top up of diverse candidates. I still believe AV+ to be the best system of electing our representatives. But it’s not on the ballot.
Saturday, April 16th 2011 at 14:46
The ‘work harder’ thing is nonsense and a cheap shot from the Yes campaign, but not in my opinion worth voting no about (especially given that the no campaign is an even worse source of misinformation).
Your main concern is a symptom of the Yes lot overstating their case. The fact is there will still be plenty of safe seats where the candidates won’t have to “reach out beyond their core vote” and so plenty of opportunities for non-centrist candidates to get into parliament. Its only in the marginals where candidates will have to reach out, and that’s all to the good, because by definition a marginal constituency ought to have a centrist representative.
Saturday, April 16th 2011 at 15:14
I recognise your concerns as being common ones among many of my other friends on the left, but I disagree. There can be no doubt whatever that AV is an improvement, however slight, over our dreadfully undemocratic current voting system. Voting against AV on the grounds that it is no panacea would be cutting off our noses to spite our faces. It would also be sending out a dangerous message that we think the current system is fine, and there’s no need for electoral reform. A ‘no’ vote would definitely kill any prospect of reform for a generation. A ‘yes’ by contrast would create momentum for further change.
No electoral system can deliver wiser, more honest politicians, but AV would make them slightly more accountable, and that’s a start. I believe your concern that AV would lead to more blandness is completely misplaced, and that the opposite is true.
How could our politics possibly be more bland than it is now? FPTP has created the blandest possible climate of political discourse, because elections hinge on persuading a few floating voters in marginal constituencies. These are the only people whose votes really matter, in our current system: the kind of people whose opinions are formed by tabloid newspapers. This has created a false dichotomy between two parties which both basically accept the media-manufactured neo-liberal economic consensus.
The Labour party long ceased to be a party of the left. New Labour was little more than Thatcherism with a smiley face. All this is a consequence of having to appeal to a tiny constituency of voters with the power to decide elections. No wonder a huge number of people feel disenfranchised and don’t vote – it’s not just apathy. Politics has already been reduced to a choice between two brands of baked beans, with no difference between them but the sugar content.
AV would make things slightly better, by giving more voters more power. For example, my local MP is a Tory who was elected on 39% of the vote. With AV, there is a good chance we could have defeated him, because there is a progressive left majority in Britain. Most people are more left-wing and more liberal than any of the mainstream parties.
The concept of broadening appeal does not mean reaching out to the centre, because all the parties are already to the right of that centre. Electoral reform would force all parties, and especially the Labour party, to reach out to the left, because that’s where the voters are. The Labour leadership election illustrates this very well. Without AV, we would now have a Blairite leader of the Labour party. Instead, AV gave us Milliband the Younger, who at least shows a willingness to take the party back to its roots.
Monday, April 18th 2011 at 11:32
This is an interesting argument, but there’s little evidence from Australia for your third to last paragraph. That country tends to have substantially similar intra-party political variation (and a similar number of safe seats) to our own.
Would (for example) John McDonnell have problems getting 50%+ under AV? Clearly not, he’s done it four times under FPTP.
Monday, April 18th 2011 at 12:16
If you don’t want to publish my comment, that’s fine, but you may at least want to read Neal Lawson’s piece. He makes essentially the same points, at greater length:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/neal-lawson/democracy-by-machines-or-morals-why-av-referendum-matters-to-left
Monday, April 18th 2011 at 20:21
@Simon: I agree that Australian politics is no better than ours, but there are many determinants to the quality of a democracy. The voting system is only a small part of that, and AV is only marginally better than FPTP.
I’m in favour of full PR, simply because it is more democratic, but that in itself would not deliver better politicians, as we can see in Ireland. I just want to make sure that a party cannot win absolute power when 65% of the electorate would rather chew on glass than vote for them.
Monday, April 18th 2011 at 20:50
Another more technical point that occurs to me: AV has a flaw – in the eyes of voting system theorists – in that it does not necessarily pick the Condorcet winner, that is, the candidate who would beat all other candidates in straight head-to-head races (if one exists).
Condorcet winners really can be bland because they can win despite not being the 1st preference of anyone. Under AV, however, this isn’t the case: imagine a 3-party race with a bland centrist candidate who fails to inspire many people to vote for them as 1st preference. They may well beat either of the other candidates in a head-to-head race. But under AV they will be eliminated due to lack of 1st preference votes, leaving the runoff to the two more extreme candidates. So AV is actually *better* than the gold standard for single winner voting systems if you are concerned about bland candidates winning.
Thursday, April 21st 2011 at 12:47
Your main reason is ‘If AV happens, more important parliamentary reforms will not happen’ – or conversely ‘If AV is rejected, important reforms will happen’. This is an interesting argument, but it may be completely invalid. Who is advocating for these other reforms, and when and how will they be introduced? What effect will a defeat for AV have on these questions? It may be interpreted as a victory for the status quo and for reactionaries, leading to total stagnation on the reform front.
Either way, the argument is a short-term tactical one and that can’t be a good reason for choice on a fundamental constitutional question. The tactics of parliamentary reform can change within a few months but we’re stuck with whichever voting system for many years.
On the merits of AV – Where is the evidence that it would lead to a politically ‘less diverse’ group of MPs? And if it did, why would this be a bad thing, if many MPs are currently more extreme than their constituents, and most votes go along the party-line anyway?
Does voter stuck with a hard-right Tory in a three-way seat draw comfort from the existence of a hard-left Labour MP in a seat 400 miles away? That’s your ‘political diversity’… I think on the whole it’s sufficient for MPs to be about as extreme as their constituents.
The basic principle of British democracy is that the MP should represent the constituency. AV looks a significantly better way of achieving this than FPTP if there are more than two viable parties. At present if you are supported by 35% but abhorred by the other 65% you can still win in a three-way. That’s very far from representative if another candidate would be acceptable to a true majority.
Saturday, April 23rd 2011 at 12:39
Yes, both campaigns have been childish and nasty in the extreme, which meant that after joining Take Back Parliament, I have done very little else. Simply put, most of the Lib Dems involved just took on the same campaigning tactics they used in local elections – look like Bambi then go for the jugular.
But I think you are still wrong on this one – as we will lose 50 seats from parliament come what may, AV at least precvents the new Gerrymandered House from becoming a stronger shade of blue.