I don’t know about you, but I find the outcome of the AV referendum less interesting than the fact that we’re being asked about voting systems at all.
Like everyone else, I’ve got my own prejudices here – I particularly dislike the fact that it’s a question that is subject to a referendum in the first place – a strong enough reason to resist the change itself, perhaps?
I don’t know whether to vote Yes, No or just say ‘meh‘ and stay indoors. But I think that there are some bigger important questions lurking in a squabble over a minor change, and I’d like to help pull together a catalogue of the various arguments to see if that will help the undecideds to make their mind up.I’d like your feedback on what these questions are. I’m less interested in the answers to the questions below for now. Please tell me if I’ve got the structure right (and whether my structure is over-weighted towards my own prejudices).
These are the questions that I think we should be asking: have I got them right, have I conflated some or left others out? I’ll moderate the comments on this post fairly tightly and will delete anything that doesn’t simply address the taxonomy of the debate this time because I think that there are subsequent posts that would be worth reading about each of these questions.
Proportionality: Is AV a more proportional system of voting and is proportional government necessarily a good thing in itself?
Legitimacy: Will the AV system make governments more legitimate in the eyes of the voters and capable of taking big decisions on our behalf?
Quality of government: Will a parliament elected by AV make for better government or not? Will the policies be better (not just in terms of popularity, but in promoting long-termism)?
Coalition government: Will AV result in more coalition government than First Past the Post (FPTP) and is this a good thing?
The cost of voting: The ‘no’ camp are placing a lot of emphasis on the cost of the referendum and the cost of counting AV results in future – especially at a time of public spending cuts. Is this an important consideration?
Framing and referendums: Is a referendum the right way to decide this issue, and are we being offered two options that we don’t really like when a better one could be on the table? Should supporters of other options hold their noses and vote for AV as it will then legitimise other systems and make a future change easier? Should our attitude to these questions effect the way we vote or should we simply vote for the option on the ballot that we prefer?
Political context: Different parties have different views on how this will effect the outcome of elections. Supporters of AV may be swayed by the possibility that this system will result in governments more to their personal liking. Presumably, opponents will do the same. Is this a debate about the ethics of voting or is it really crude political gamesmanship? Should we simply vote for the option that will return the most MPs for our preferred political party?
There you go. Are these the right questions? Is anything missing? In debates involving trade-offs, the priority of questions matters – so are they in the right order of importance?
Let me know what you think?
(This has been cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole).
There is another question about how this will affect political campaigning.
Broadly, switching to AV incentivises parties to focus more campaigning efforts on non-supporters who always go and vote, to try to get their second or third preferences. Whereas FPTP incentivises parties to focus on identifying supporters who may or may not go and vote, and ensuring that they do so.
Don,
Thanks for that – it’s a useful addition.
The flipside could be that the debates will be mushy contests for the centre-ground and the elections could lack the spark they need to capture the public imagination. It could militate against ‘conviction politics’ – assuming, of course, that this is a bad thing!?!
I’m not taking a line either way on this yet – just wanting to corral the pros and cons on each argument.
Another question – does the way AV eliminates tactical voting (and stops parties campaigning on the basis of “only we can stop X”) add legitimacy to results and will force parties to be more up front about what they will do – rather than just badmouthing what their principal opponents will do? And is this a good thing? Undeniably yes, IMHO
A couple of other potential debating points which I’m not sure fall under any of yours:
Complexity – Is AV unacceptably complex to cast your vote in, and more generally to understand? I wouldn’t think so – but someone told me they’d heard Jeremy Vine trying to explain it and giving up pretty quickly with something like “and then it all gets very complicated”. Does complexity, if not in voting but in understanding the count, risk it being perceived as a bit ‘magic’.
Voter honesty – Is it relevant that AV seems to give you the ability to vote for your real favoured party, even if they’re a no-hoper, and put your favourites of the main competitors next? Could you get some smaller parties coming through with surprise victories, or at least an increased showing of first preference votes? (And if so, might that legitimate any calls they might make for a subsequent more proportional change?)
Re Jules’s comment above – I don’t think AV completely eliminates tactical voting even in theory, and certainly couldn’t be guaranteed to stop people from trying it. It does, however, probably make successful tactical voting a fair bit harder and less worthwhile.
Point 1 and 2 – Proportionality and legitimacy
I would argue that a democratically elected parliament only has as a legitimacy based on the support of the voting public, this holds true whether it’s a proportional or non-proportional system.
The more people who do not feel they that the members of parliament represent their views, the less legitimacy parliament has to take decisions on those peoples behalf. Now you only need to look at the % of party MP’s compared to the % of votes those MP’s parties received to see that they are getting more and more out of sync.
Now in my mind a proportional system does the best job of squaring the demographic of parliament with the votes cast on a party basis, but only at a party level, not an individual candidate one. At the moment I’d say that nearly all parties campaigning, and most peoples votes in a general election are based on party preference, and less so on individual, which is crazy, because the actual reality is the complete opposite.
Unless we change the nature of parliament significantly, we will always be voting for one MP to represent us, and it is only through our one constituency representative that we have any say on what government does.
We do not, contrary to popular opinion, vote for a PM, or a government, or policy. These are, constitutionally up to the MP’s as a collective to decide… it is not our decision. Hence previous claims that we never voted for Gordon Brown were utterly deceptive. We have never voted for a PM, I’ve certainly never seen any of their names on my ballot papers.
The two key factors then are 1) How well does an MP represent the views of his/her constituency, and 2) How accountable are they to those constituents.
There’s plenty of information on how AV increases accountability so I won’t go in to all the obvious stuff here, but there are some points I’d like to make:
Having 50% of people in a constituency show support for a candidate really does increase the legitimacy of an MP’s claim to speak for their constituents. Importantly this in turn leads to people feeling more involved in the process and more validated in holding the MP, and the community at large, to account for the MP’s actions.
AV also allows a single party to field multiple candidates without risking splitting the vote and losing out to the opposition, which could give constituencies more choice, especially if they are unhappy with their MP, but unhappy with the idea of the ‘opposition’ getting in. This, assuming parties allow it, would mean an MP would need to be more mindful of how he represented his constituents, and through competition increase the need for an MP to do their best for their constituents..
The requirement to get second and third preference votes, coupled with the fact that people can vote for who they like without worrying about letting someone else in (tactical voting, brought about by fear of allowing someone in) means that candidates campaigns will need to focus a lot more on why they are a good candidate, what they want to do for the constituency, and also, to gain second preferences, what the similarities and not just the differences are between them and the other candidates. In other words it will need to be a more informed campaign, less dependant on just the negatives of opponents, although I’m sure this will still be a part of the ‘two main’ candidates campaign, a problem we will never get away from given human nature.
Being able to vote in preference, I believe people will more likely feel they want to be more informed about each candidate. Making a decision based on greater information gives people a greater sense of ownership over that decision, helping further add to the idea that they are not ‘wasting their vote’.
I really meant to go in to the other points, but I think I should stop now… for a while anyway
Paul, it could be argued that the problem of our governments is that they don’t plan beyond the next election, knowing that they need to garner wider support from people outside their main voters could mean that Parties actually start to discuss policy together, to agree some general principles that would carry over between governments.
The same arguments can be made for coalitions too, one of the arguments being that AV could lead to more coalitions… I don’t think this is the case, mainly because the voting records show we are heading that way under FPTP or AV; these records also show of course that a majority government in these times is really no more than a fix of the voting system, no government for decades has had a majority of the public behind it, and in 2005 Labour had a majority with only 35% of the vote, which seriously damages the legitimacy and accountability of their actions.
Dictators manage a strong single party/policy government, but they aren’t democratic.
Oops, sorry just realised that’ll probably be edited out… perhaps you could point each point towards the relevant other blogs and discussions?
Just to add, that I think a referendum is one of the few ways in which to decide on such an issue. It is inevitable that changing the voting system will be against the interests of incumbent MPs, whom the old system elected.
We would be foolish to entrust a group of people with such a conflict of interest to make these kinds of judgements. A referendum is an appropriate solution for this case, although I understand your suspicion of using referendums generally to make decisions.