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Why shouldn't the person with the most votes win ?

In a two horse race, you might have a point. But anymore, and you end up with the situation where more people voted AGAINST the winner than for them.

Suppose you have 10 candidates. Each receives just under 10% of the vote, except for one who get's 10.1% - and wins.

That candidate is now ruling over a population where 90% DID NOT VOTE FOR THEM.

Now you can bang on about "rule of law", and how society should work, but you have to admit that when a candidate opposed by 90% of his constituency tries to dictate what people should and should not do (bearing in mind the problems users of this site *already* experience) then you have to question whether they have a mandate to do so.

All the various PR systems (of which AV is one) try to address this by getting voters to list candidates in preference, and then to allocate that weighting to get the "least opposed" candidate.

IMHO the problem the UK has, is entrenched monolithic parties, where MPs are driven by the whip system. Hence legislation like the extreme porn bill gets through, because all the Labour MPs voted with the party, rather than their conscience.

No PR system is perfect. But if you can define a perfect voting system, I'm all ears.

To my mind, a perfect voting system is one which prevents the ludicrous swings we get in this country, leading to ridiculous majorities and steamroller laws. The 18 years under the tories and following 13 years under labour are proof that "strong government" is a coded term for "do what the fuck we like".

To use Jeff's example re. the current first past the post system,

"Suppose you have 10 candidates. Each receives just under 10% of the vote, except for one who get's 10.1% - and wins. That candidate is now ruling over a population where 90% DID NOT VOTE FOR THEM".

The main purpose of the AV system is to ensure that the winner has more than 50% of the votes of the voters taking part.

Contrary to the arguments of some opponents of AV, this system
does not involve some people getting more votes than others.

Every voter gets just one vote, which is counted several times. Your second
preference is not a second vote, it is an instruction about how you want your (only) vote to be used if it would be wasted because your first choice
candidate can?t win.

Each vote is counted in each round of voting: the only
difference is that if your candidate still has a chance of winning it will be
counted for the same candidate each time, whereas if your candidate has
dropped out it will be counted for a different candidate.

To distribute the second preferences of those voters that voted for the party that came, for example, second in the initial count, would in fact double-count their votes i.e they would still be voting for the party that came second, because that party could still win AND their second preferences would be distributed.

Cheers
D

I am not keen in any system that gives the Libs any more votes than there are cast for them, which to me is more than they deserve anyway.

David is actually wrong about the second vote but is right about people not getting more votes than others.

Those that do appear to have more votes are those who use all their preference options, opposed to those who only choose to make the one choice made now but they to still have the same options.

The preference is another choice, does equate to a second vote and as such means people can vote for the BNP, for example and then have a say on which main party they also want in.

The yes campaign believe the BNP vote is a good thing and a price worth paying IF that second vote comes their way, I don't, I am very much in the NO campaign and have been branded a Tory by ignorant idiots of the Yes campaign for being against them.

The Yes campaign believe that because the BNP will not get through to the final stages its acceptable whereas I believe the BNP should be defeated before they even make a vote.

That doesn't mean they can't have a vote - they are a political party - it means political party's should deter anyone from making the BNP choice by giving them reasons not to vote or them.

The Yes campaign is very lazy politics but uses smoke screens to hide the simple fact that the campaign is all about party funding and Labour and the Limp Dems not being able to campaign as strongly as the Tories in what they class as safe seats.

They believe that party funds should only be used in seats that their party can win in, so if you live in one of these seats and support them, they won't put a strong campaign in your area, to get more to think like you, that you're not worth their finances and are fucked. At best they will offer what is called a paper candidate, which means someone whose not that arsed if they win or not.

They believe that people who want to vote for a certain party that can't win decide not to vote or vote tactically, Limp Dems to stop a Tory, for example, that AV will make people vote, safe seats will disappear and tactical voting will do to.

Tactical voting won't disappear it will just be reworded as a preference and the thick twats can't understand that people vote if they have a reason to vote. Students for example voting for the Limp Dems because of Cleggs words/ offers/ bribes.

They use the word fair based on the percentage of vote but are happy not to be fair to those who went out and voted for the FPTP winner.

They believe spending 150m on the referendum etc at a time of cuts is a good way of spending money and their voting system reasons are that weak they are now using it as a vote against the Tories.

I'd normally recommend that everyone votes against the Tories but AV is a game of the political elite, it is not the solution to why people don't vote and if the referendum does go ahead I hope most will say NO.

If you think that AV is incredibly complex, you wanna see some of the other schemes.

AV seems to be a bit of a dog's breakfast. You are correct that it is not a proportional representational voting system. Clegg, himself described it as a miserable, little compromise. Now he is describing it as "a once in a lifetime opportunity to change politics".

The only reason there is going to be a referendum on this is because it was a sop to the Lib Dems for giving up the vast majority of their pledges in order to get into power, propping up the Tories.

Cheers
D

"Those that do appear to have more votes are those who use all their preference options, opposed to those who only choose to make the one choice made now but they to still have the same options.

The preference is another choice, does equate to a second vote and as such means people can vote for the BNP, for example and then have a say on which main party they also want in."

I suspect this is just semantics, but I repeat each voter only has one vote. If the party you put at the top of the list is bottom of the poll, your second preference, if you have made one, comes into play, but only in the situation when your first choice was bottom i.e. you can switch where your vote goes to.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that first-past-the-post is used by 2.4 billion people in 50 countries around the world. Only Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Australia use AV to elect their MPs. And six out of ten Australians want to go back to FPTP, while Papua New Guinea has only held one AV election and Fiji has made plans to scrap AV.

Here, the Tories do not generally want AV and the Lib Dem leader described it as a miserable little compromise pre-election. Seems a botch job to me.

Cheers
D

What would happen if, the ballot paper has 10 candidates and you have to choose 4, but choose only the 1 that you want to win anyway and leave the others blank as you do in the FPTP system that we use?

It seems it is only the fucking Libs who see it as a chance to get more of their useless twatts in, or so I thought. On the news today the second preference labour idiot Milleband supports it. He couldn't wait to sing its praises immediately after "Call me Dave" totally rubbished Cleggs praise of this stupid and complex system. Millibore only supports it because the Cons are against it. That's yer fucking labour leadership for you. Political dogma or what?

Yep your right David it is just semantics lol.

You mean you only get one voting paper and the choices you make on the paper count as one vote.

Hell will freeze over before I vote Tory or Limp Dem, it depends on how many stand but it could mean my refusal to make a preference for them meaning someone who has having 'more votes' than me.