On Thursday in England we have to vote on whether or not we want the Alternative Vote (“AV”) system.
Like many folk out there I am both apathetic and confused. I mean, I’m all for being an early adopter, but the only part of civilisation that I know that uses AV is Australia, and most of them hate it.
Ooops, so far I sound like I’m being anti-AV and so am automatically being transferred into the ‘no’ camp by the selection process inside your head.
I don’t think I’m in the ‘no’ camp, more the ‘don’t know’ camp. Or even the ‘don’t give a fuck’ camp.
The way I understand it, under the AV system the way we vote is by putting the candidates in an order of preference. So, for example, “Do you want AV?” under AV would be answered by an enthusiast of AV as ‘First Preference Yes” and “Second Preference No”, whilst under the current first-past-the-post method “Do you want AV?” would be answered simply “Yes”.
Okay. Not complex or complicated in any way.
Except, if you are adamantly against something or someone, why would you want to ‘rank’ them at all?
I mean, right, if you and your team at work all mainly get along and three of them are standing for election as the coffee purchaser, you don’t really mind which one gets it do you? You like them all, so ranking them as one, two or three isn’t a problem.
However, transfer this to politics, and most voters are either ‘left’ leaning or ‘right’ leaning. Depending on which direction, they will tend to ‘hate’ the candidate from the party that leans most in the opposite direction to them. This means a leftish voter will ‘hate’ the British National Party. So why would they want to ‘rank’ somebody with completely unacceptable values to them? Likewise a rightish voter will ‘hate’ the Socialist Worker Party. Again, why would they want to ‘rank’ somebody with completely unacceptable values to them?
So, in a way, maybe AV works really well when there’s not a lot to chose between people and you don’t really mind or care, but it’s not too hot when there are people you oppose with a passion. Yes, I guess you can leave them unranked, but isn’t that just a move back to the first-past-the-post system?
England's England 