Monday 2 May 2011

Why Most Arguments Against AV Are Bullshit

Why You Should Vote Yes to AV

So I’ve been watching the electoral reform chat for some time. Basically the bad news is the people running the Yes To AV Campaign are all idiots. The arguments are poorly constructed, ill-thought out and fairly negative. They’ve been handed a gun and a barrel full of fish and somehow shot themselves in the foot. So instead here’s why most of the arguments against AV going around are total nonsense. I’m not saying that there aren’t genuine arguments against AV that aren’t dealt with here, but the better ones tend to be found in academic calculations whilst the headline ones are usually based on fabrications, illogical arguments or scaremongering.

So here are some of the arguments I’ve heard against AV.

‘AV is expensive’.

Yes, yes it is, you know, if you compare it to the price of bread. The figure banded about by the no to AV camp is £250million. Which is a lot of money. In fact it breaks that threshold in people’s minds where they stop rationalising it and start just sort of make a small whistling noise and go ‘well that’s a lot’. And it is a lot. But it quickly seems smaller when you compare it and break it down. So comparing it to other costs, according to ‘Where Does My Money Go’(1) we currently spend £54 billion on running the Government. Included in that is £9billion on ‘Top Level Government’ which then breaks down into £937million on the EU, £24million into research on running Government and £887million on public services admin. £7billion pounds goes into ‘executive and legislative organs’. In fact you can find out where all the money goes at www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org. Although that site does take stats from 2009, pre Tory government, so you can probably remove the £224billion on ‘Helping Other People’ now. (cheap left-wing joke of the day). Overall though even at £250million this still equals less than a fiver per person in the UK, which is the price of a couple of drinks (or one drink if you like Oran Mor, or five drinks if you visit dodgy student promo places). It’s a pack of cigarettes, a takeaway, 5 songs off iTunes, less.

However one thing that also helps this figure seem smaller is the fact that the £250million figure claimed by the No To AV campaign(2) is utter bullshit. For those that don’t check out the reference it is the number one argument on their own site. From this £250million is this £82million it costs to run the referendum, which I’m sorry to have to explain to the No To AV group, still gets paid even if the referendum is no. This is not a no win, no fee job. A further £9million is spent before the election on voter education. So we’ve already explained away the first £91million. As for the rest, No To AV claim that £130million pounds would have to be spent on expensive electronic counting machines. However these machines are optional, and there is no indication the Government would use them if they won. Furthermore Australia, who have AV, don’t have the machines, and Northern Ireland whose electoral system’s mathematics make AV look like a walk in the park, don’t have them either.

Personally I’m going to love to see the looks of the Norther Ireland vote counters’ faces when we turn around and go ‘yeah, no you keep counting like you were before, however this much easier electoral system that’s going to run along side yours, yeah, that’s getting new machines to make life easier’.

I’m not going to say that AV won’t be more expensive, but certainly the £130million figure, as Channel 4’s Fact Checker puts it ‘looks decidedly dodgy’.(3)

‘AV is only used in three Countries’

This is true. But as Ian Hislop quipped on Have I Got News For You “most of the world is starving, so it’s a great argument not to ea”’. It’s a rare political system. That’s probably a lot to do with the fact that it’s a half way house between FTPT and real-PR. Therefore most fall either side of the line. However this appeal to the majority doesn’t work out. Back when Britain started having democracy much of the world was living under dictatorship with no elections whatsoever, so should we have never introduced elections in the first place? Women didn’t have the vote in most countries in 1918, was that decision wrong? My general argument here, is that slowly bit-by-bit countries move on, develop new and better ideas, and being the rich smug western nation we are, we’re often a tad ahead of the rest of the world in adopting such changes. (I look forward to how much that last sentence pisses off Anthropologists).

Anyway we already have AV in this country. Just not at a Parliamentary level. Instead we use it to select our own candidates. All three major parties, including our own Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives, use AV to select their leaders. In fact under a FPTP system David Cameron didn’t even win the leadership election by his MPs. After the first round he sat in second place on 56 votes behind David Davis on 62.(4) It was only with the elimination of Kenneth Clarke that David Cameron took first place. (Note. This is a matter of principle, as due to the complex Tory election process where you the top two candidates make it through to a separate members vote to be elected leader, Cameron would’ve won anyway). However presumably all these people who say it would be terrible if someone who come first after the first round failed to go on to win are massive David David fans.

The ‘One Person One Vote’ principle.

Basically the No to AV group claim that AV gives people multiple votes by allowing them to rank candidates. The bad news is that they haven’t actually looked at how AV works in the slightest.

The best way round this lovely bit of spin by No to AV is to look at an AV election as multiple elections. In fact countries such as France do actually hold a similar system as an AV election. There the top two candidates from a first election fight it off in a second election.

So let’s view AV as multiple elections. Each election you lose a candidate and you have another election. So each round you can theoretically vote for another one. You can of course just re-apply your vote to the same person. However each round is a new election. So yes, you do kind of have more than one vote, but so do the people who vote for the person who wins every round, just they vote for the same candidate each time and each time they win or at least don’t get eliminated.

The extension argument behind the ‘one vote’ principle is trying to weigh up a second preference, do you care about your second preference as much as you care about your first? Not only is the implication behind this, that anyone who didn’t vote for one of two leading French presidential candidates at their last election shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the second election, but this argument also lives in a beautiful rose-tinted world where tactical voting doesn’t exist.

Let’s take me 4 years ago. Scottish elections 2007. My local constituency vote. My local constituency was a Labour vs SNP race, any other candidates were unlikely to stand a chance. Now I’m a big fan of the Greens, I like what they say, I also (this is 2007 remember) really like the Lib Dems. So I have to vote. I vote for Labour. The reason being is I don’t want the SNP getting in. However my first and second preference never got any vote. Under FPTP system my first and second preference count for nothing but my third preference gets my vote and counts as my only preference. At least under AV my first and second preferences would have got the initial extra vote, therefore meaning their initial numbers would’ve looked better. With tactical voting our actual first preferences count for nothing.

It Will Help Minor Parties

This is the classic ‘you’re helping the BNP’ tactic. This is in many ways true. AV does have the potential to be better for smaller parties. The argument does that by allowing people to choose their first preference, more people will choose more minority parties instead of voting tactically with the main two or three.

This is a fair criticism, but it’s also kind of the point. You see, under the fundamental rules of democracy if 10% of people want the BNP the BNP should get 10% of the seats/power. Advertising your electoral system with ‘it will exclude the BNP’ is only the same as advertising it with ‘in no way representational of what people feel’. I’m not saying the BNP should get in, but instead that they shouldn’t fail to achieve seats because we design a dubious electoral system to stop them, but because they are wrong and we convince other people they are wrong and no one votes for them. That’s how democracy works. And if God forbid 10% of people want to vote for the BNP, well then the sad truth is maybe that’s what they deserve.

It may very well help minor parties, but all that means is that we can celebrate the diversity of views we have in this country.

It Will Screw Over Minor Parties

Yes, the opposite is also true, confusingly. This argument goes that AV will make it harder for minority parties to get in, as they have to have over 50% of the vote in a constituency. All they currently have to do is achieve roughly a third, or basically be the most popular, which is different to overall having 50% of your constituency being okay with you in power.

This is a fair argument. But once more it kind of comes back to the ‘that is the point’ argument. If at the end of the day 50% of people would rather not have you representing them, and 50% would prefer the other guy, then they probably deserve it more. That’s just life. If minor parties aren’t getting elected under this then they will have to reassess their policies etc.

However the main evidence to back up this argument is that the Greens new MP only got in the thirties percentage wise to take her Brighton seat, and therefore she may not have got more than 50%. This is entirely speculative, and only with a complex poll would you be able to determine the number of second preferences she would’ve picked up from other groups. For all we know under AV she may very well have reached 50%.

It may very well be true. But I wish the No to AV campaigners would make up their mind of which they’re going to run with. It’s a clever tactic though, argue with both so whichever I refute only backs up the other.

‘We Need Strong Governments’

This is my favourite one. Because on a very principled level this is basically people saying they want democracy but only if they get their way. Or at least only if people agree with them.

The idea of this is, with the potential for more parties to get into parliament, because of people having diverse opinions and that, then we’ll spend all our time bickering and not get anything done. This is true to a degree, parties where there is not a majority Government are slower to process bills. However that doesn’t mean stuff stops like the scaremongers like to believe. Look at Scotland over the last four years, Acts still went through, and the SNP have still passed a lot of bills. 84 out of their 94 headline policies according to their own math, and even though I’d dispute how evenly equal their headline policies were as they seem to equate bills about how to stroke a kitten with the independence thing - their main reason for being a party - they did still manage to make 84 things happen. However what happens now, instead, is that you can’t bully through a bill. Instead of your PM going ‘I think this’ and it happening like God making light, they actually have to get people to agree with them, and sometimes this doesn’t happen, which means the bill doesn’t go through.

So yes, less bills do go through, but that’s because that’s how the real world works. People do have diverse opinions and not everyone is in agreement and therefore it’s harder to decide on a way forward. You know you have that irritating friend who kind of overpowers everyone socially and drags you to that shit club week in week out, well that’s your current Parliament set up.

Anyone who thinks strong Government is more important than it being representative of people’s views is presumably all up for the dictatorship I’ve been calling for for years.

‘It Will Lead To Backroom Details’

Usually this is used with a bit of ‘we all hate the Lib Dems now’ collective cheer leading. Basically they go ‘look what the coalition is doing now, they’re doing stuff that they didn’t say they would do before the election. Boo... hiss....’ This is a good line of attack. One that can only be brought down crumbling if we manage to find a single policy brought in by a majority Government that hadn’t been on their manifesto. So let’s take a line from the Labour 2001 manifesto because I haven’t picked on them yet: “We will not introduce top-up fees and have legislated to prevent them”.(5) You could also argue things like the Iraq War were never mentioned in a manifesto despite being put to a Parliamentary vote with a whip system in place as well, and then there’s always the list of things Labour said they would do that they didn’t including electoral reform, which is borderline ironic. In fact the Conservatives before the last election claimed the Labour 2005 manifesto contained 100 broken promises,(6) a figure Labour recently claimed over the SNP’s recent Scottish governance.(7)

So manifestos are just as unreliable when we have a majority government than with a minority or coalition government. In fact, it could be argued that with coalition Governments, as they tend to release a new set of plans once the coalition is announced you actually have more reliability over the four years with a coalition government. We didn’t vote on it, but the plans for this coalition Government are pretty laid out. Furthermore when a party does not have a majority it makes it harder to pass selfish or partisan bills, as they require the support of other parties to pass the bill.

‘It Will Halt Electoral Reform’

This is one of the few arguments being used by pro PR-systems people against voting for AV. The argument goes that AV is crap, and only mildly better than FPTP (some of course have argued that it is even worse than FPTP but that’s a separate debate). They argue that by voting for a system that is only mildly better than FPTP we are unlikely to ever progress onto a real PR system, we’ll forever be trapped by the gravitational pull of a FPTP system with a weak electoral system and more likely to gravitate towards than away.

One of the great examples to support this is the number of countries that moved to AV then back to FPTP or want to (the Australia example is popular). However this argument suggests there are a good collection of countries that have rejected an electoral reform referendum and then moved onto to later adopt another electoral system soon after - the truth is this pool doesn’t exist.

If the referendum wasn’t happening and someone asked whether to have PR or AV, there would be no question, but the truth is the referendum is happening and there can only be two outcomes next week - we accept AV and use it and hope one reform leads to another - reject AV and return to pursuing a better electoral system. Sights such as AV2011 fall on the latter category, but I feel this argument doesn’t take into account political communication, and momentum factors. The electoral reform campaign is at an all time high, largely because it has always been a headline policy of the Lib Dems who are finally in government (it’s probably worth noting with the Lib Dem collapse in the polls it’s unlikely we will see anything but the big two with majority for a long time under FPTP). If the AV bid is rejected, the no to AV will claim victory. The win will be associated as a Conservative victory and portrayed so in the generally right-wing press. Furthermore the momentum will die out, this is the electoral reform debate happening now, and the odds of the press turning round on May 10th when people still want PR and going ‘yeah, we kind of already ran that story’ are pretty high. There will be some aftermath of ‘what if it had been PR’, but this will most likely be post-humus speculation and not an attempt to bring the campaign back to life. Efforts will be exhausted, the public will be tired of the matter, and politics will quickly move on and electoral reform will be forgotten for another 30 years.

‘AV is complex’

It’s not really. Anyone can be explained how the system works pretty simply. Let me explain it for you.
Step 1 - Everyone casts their votes by ranking the candidates and their first preferences are counted.
Step 2 - Has anyone reached 50% of the total votes cast?
Step 3 - If yes, you have an MP. If no, go to step 4.
Step 4 - Eliminate the candidate with the fewest votes and reallocate their votes based upon the voters’ next preferences.
Step 5 - Go to step to 2 and repeat until you have your MP.

Was that really that hard? Furthermore there are drastically more complex procedures in Parliament that few people understand: committees; the structure of the House of Lords; how a bill goes through parliament; how the Parliament Act can be used. There is a whole host of political features that only lonely political geeks like myself should feel any need to comprehend. The truth is that at a basic level, all you need to know is what your local candidates stand for and what the different parties stand for on a basic level. The only extra complication needed to understand AV is an ability to count up to roughly about ten, and know what order those numbers come in. In truth there is no need for people to understand the electoral mathematics, just how to use their vote.

So there we are there are some arguments and why they are rubbish. As I said, there are genuine arguments to vote not to AV when the referendum comes, but these are usually not the ones being used as the widespread principles. Instead what we get from the No to AV campaign is myths about multiple votes and imaginary electronic counting machines. So happy voting.





1 - http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dashboard/#year=2009&focus=TOTAL&view=uk-bubble-chart
2 - http://www.no2av.org/why-vote-no/
3-http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/update-yes-to-av-at-what-cost/5817
4 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_(UK)_leadership_election,_2005 (apologies this is a wiki article but it is a well referenced one and does put everything nicely in one place)
5 - http://www.channel4.com/fc/quote.jsp?id=73
6- http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2010/04/~/media/Files/Downloadable%20Files/hearditallbefore.ashx
7 - http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/100-days---100-broken-promises-