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A reason to vote no to AV

Labour must realise voting no to AV will hinder the emergence of a new socialism based on democracy, dialogue and pluralism

Neal Lawson

Well thanks for that Neal. Good of you to make it all so clear for us.

So, anyone with even a passing aquaintance of the 20th century should be voting no to AV then?

After all, it was socialism in one or another of its guises, national or international, fascist and flat out deluded alike, which caused most of the bloodshed of that poor abused time.

So, to make sure that socialism doesn\’t rise again, we should all vote no to AV.

Simple enough really, isn\’t it?

15 thoughts on “A reason to vote no to AV”

  1. It’s even simpler than that actually, for me at least. I don’t need to agonise over the technical aspects of the systems and the pros and cons to make my decision.

    It was enough for me to see that one R Murphy wants us to vote yes and, on the assumption that anything that said R Murphy wants is the very opposite of what I should want, I will be voting no.

    http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/05/03/yes-to-av/

  2. Dunno about all this. Have just come back from a couple of weeks with the folks in Oz where there has been preferential voting for as I can remember.

    Place hasn’t sunk into the sea, the place is pretty un-left wing – not just the politics but the mindset. #3 on the Heritage Freedom Index for 2011.

    As BF says, the Ritchie endorsement is a bit of a disincentive.

    But the fact the poms are copying us is counter-incentive. Soon the poms will be doing sensible things like holding elections on Saturdays to make it easier to vote.

  3. “the place is pretty un-left wing – not just the politics but the mindset”

    They are a bunch of authoritarian bastards by mindset. All you have to do is look at the Great Barrier Firewall of Oz to see what a nasty bunch of censorious little prigs the government is (of whichever party). They even added to the firewall blacklist web pages that discussed how crap the firewall is.

  4. Neal Lawson has been a complete bell-end for as long as I can recall, so this comes as no surprise.

  5. I just wonder how true democrats can sneer at a voting system that is closer to enabling democracy than FPTP.

  6. I lived in Australia for many years and actually AV isn’t too bad, but it’s not great either, and I wouldn’t bother changing to it. There was a recent illustration of it’s absurdity recently — Andrew Wilkie, an idiot Independent who is helping prop up the Labour government in return for favours, was elected as the Member for Denison with only 13 788 votes (coming a distant third, and almost fourth, in the primary vote) , despite there being more than 51 000 people who didn’t vote for him.

  7. Link to Denison voting here:
    results.aec.gov.au/15508/Website/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-15508-194.htm

  8. They even added to the firewall blacklist web pages that discussed how crap the firewall is.

    No they didn’t – they blacklisted pages that included a leaked list of sites on the blacklist, on the grounds that they were effectively a Bumper Index Of Bad Things. I’m not going to defend Conroy’s stupid scheme, but it was never intended to, and didn’t, consist of censorship of dissenting ideas rather than censorship of dog-porn.

    Wilkie wasn’t elected with “only 13,788” votes, he was elected with 33,217 votes and 51% of the electorate. He only got 13,788 votes in the first round, but that’s irrelevant – it’s like saying that Sarkozy got elected President with only 31% of the vote (which, in the first round, was the case – obviously, he had an absolute majority in the run-off).

    (it’s also worth noting, given the implications contained in the sentence “propping up the Labor government for favours”, that the FPTP winner in Denison would’ve been Labor).

  9. Tim: simple, if you’re simple – and the village simpleton BraveFart (what a sophisticated name!) takes your simpleness even further. Let’s summarise: if someone you generally disagree with advocates something, the opposite must be worth supporting. Do you agree with the BNP? They’re voting No.

  10. Seems to me AV is simply better than FPTP – allows a voter to express his views much more clearly – “my heart’s with x, but if i can’t have x I’d sooner have y than z” is not a complicated or unusual thought. Just good democracy.

    In all the huff and pother, where can I find a good case against that’s not “we’re against because it would cost us seats”?

  11. …..I just wonder how true democrats can sneer at a voting system that is closer to enabling democracy than FPTP……

    I believe in accountability as the most important issue of governance. The system that makes it easiest to through out governments is FPTP. That is why I prefer it to other systems.

    Democracy? Thats just a mechanism for making governments accountable. More or less democratic is a meaningless discussion. More or less free, more or less accountable, those are discussions worth having.

  12. Where AV scores is not in being proportional , which it isn’t, but in lowering the barriers to entry to new parties. That lowering such barriers is a good thing is axiomatic in economics and the same reasons apply in politics. This applies particulaqrly when party members of all 3 parties have no real influence on what the party stand for – eg Cameron’s decision that a referendum on the Constitreaty was no longer party policy, thereby reversing the policy, instantly, without any consultation with either members, conference or MPs, who would all, quite certainly have wanted to retain that “cast iron promise”. If parties can neither be replaced nor controlled there is no democracy. I personally think Neal is wrong & AV will quickly allow UKIP to replace the LudDims as 3rd party (at the very least).

  13. “He only got 13,788 votes in the first round, but that’s irrelevant”

    Of course he got those votes *in the first round*. And no, it’s not irrelevant. It’s irrelevant to whether he was justifiably elected under the AV system, yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that he only got a small proportion of the first round votes. Whether the electorate is really happy with that situation is the issue.

  14. to pick up Serf’s point:

    “I believe in accountability as the most important issue of governance. The system that makes it easiest to through out governments is FPTP. That is why I prefer it to other systems. ”

    So did the electorate want to throw out Labour last year? Did they want to throw out Heath in 1974? Did they want to throw out Douglas-Home in 1964?

    Examples multiply if you delve back further, showing that FPTP results in a lot of hung parliaments and minortiy governments for such a great voting system.

  15. @ ambrose “In all the huff and pother, where can I find a good case” that’s not party political.

    I can’t be alone in finding it agonizingly difficult to find one of the twats on the ballot paper I’d like to vote for (UKIP excepted, of course…). My X is already a compromise.

    I really couldn’t be arsed to find tiny slivers of non-twattishness in 2nd and 3rd choices.

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