The AV referendum explained

Chris Torney, Confused.com personal finance writer and expert, cuts through the nonsense being talked about May’s voting system referendum to explain what it all means.

On 5 May we are being asked to decide whether Britain should change its voting system. The choice in the upcoming referendum is between sticking with first-past-the-post (FPTP), or moving to a new system called alternative vote (AV). So how do the two options compare?

First-past-the-post
In each constituency, voters select their favourite candidate and the candidate who receives the highest number of votes is elected to parliament.

Let's say we have a constituency with three candidates from the Red Party, the Blue Party and the Yellow Party.

The Red Party candidate receives 33 per cent of the votes, the Blue Party candidate 38 per cent of the votes, and the Yellow Party 29 per cent - the Blue Party candidate is duly elected.

Alternative vote
With AV, voters are asked to rank the candidates in order of preference. (But if you only want to vote for one candidate, you can do that by giving him or her your first preference and ignoring the others.)

Once the votes are cast, returning officers see whether any of the candidates has received more than 50 per cent of the first-preference votes cast. If so, that candidate is elected.

If not, the candidate with the lowest number of first-preference votes is eliminated and his second-preference votes are shared among the remaining candidates.

Using the example above, and assuming the votes cast in FPTP translated directly to first-preferences under AV, it would be the Yellow Party candidate who was eliminated in the first round.

Returning officers would then tally up the second-preferences of the Yellow Party voters. If they were split 50-50 between the Red and Blue candidates, the Blue candidate would be elected with more than 50 per cent of the votes.

But the Red candidate could win if two-thirds of Yellow voters had put her down as their second preference.

Pros and cons of the two systems
As you can see from these descriptions, FPTP is certainly simple but it has been criticised because it often leads to the election of candidates on a minority of the vote (in our example, 62 per cent of the electorate voted against the eventual winner).

This type of outcome is frequently reflected in the government: in the 1997 election, for example, the winning Labour Party got just over 43 per cent of the popular vote, but won almost 64 per cent of seats at Westminster in a landslide.

Together, the Conservatives and LibDems got 47.5 per cent of votes cast that year, but won only 32 per cent of seats.

What AV does is enable those people who didn’t vote for the most popular candidate to still have a say.

Another argument for FPTP is that it often delivers “strong” government (that is, a party which can control parliament on its own), while AV is more likely to produce coalitions (even though the current coalition is a result of FPTP).

There are a few other issues: 

• Cost: a change to the voting system would require expenditure on new counting machines and voter education. The “No to AV” campaign estimates this cost to be around £250 million, but it’s not clear how accurate this figure is.
• Smaller parties: it is argued that voters would be more likely to express support for the likes of the Green Party or UKIP if they didn’t see this as a waste of a vote. Under AV, you could give your first preference to the Greens, say, and second preference to the major party you’d normally vote for. It may not change the outcome of the election, but your support for environmental issues would be on record (which could influence government policy).
• Safe seats: FPTP is thought to increase the likelihood of a constituency becoming “safe” – where a candidate for a party which regularly enjoys, say, 40 per cent of the vote or more is very unlikely to lose. AV wouldn’t eradicate safe seats, but it would probably result in some of them being more keenly contested.

Comments

[Matt S]

Please stop spreading the lies from the no2av campaign about the costs of voting machines. The only thing you need to vote in an av election is a pencil and some paper. Australia does NOT use electronic counting machines in their elections

[Chris Torney]

Thanks for your comment Matt. I did not intend the £250m figure to be presented as established fact in the piece (which is why I questioned its accuracy). But I should have added that, according to the Electoral Commission, there are at the moment no official plans to use counting machines if AV is introduced.
I think it is reasonable to assume, however, that a change in the voting system would inevitably incur some costs.
Chris

[Denis Cooper]

NO2AV are exaggerating the costs by a factor of about a hundred.

But they couldn't hope to run an effective campaign on a more truthful claim that switching to AV might cost a couple of million in start up costs, and then a couple of million extra on each general election.

[Denis Cooper]

Here is the text of a letter I've just sent to my local paper:

Dear Sir

The claims made by opponents of electoral reform become ever more absurd, the latest being that it would cost three times as much to run a general election under AV compared to the present FPTP system.

The only significant extra costs for a election using AV would be those associated with the actual counting of the votes.

And the actual count for the 2010 general election held under FPTP cost only £6 million, less than 5 percent of the total costs.

Therefore even if the cost of the count were to double with the change to AV that would only increase the cost of each general election by that £6 million, far short of the £200 million being suggested.

In fact practical experience from Ireland, where AV is used for parliamentary by-elections, indicates that manual AV counts are not difficult or expensive, and that therefore the change would add only a few million to the cost of a UK general election.

The two criticisms made about the increased costs of AV have both been vastly exaggerated, by a factor of around a hundred.

It would not cost £250 million to make the change, but only a few million; and it would not cost £200 million more for every subsequent general election, but once again only a few million each time.

Which in my view would be a small price to pay for this rather modest, but nonetheless very worthwhile, enhancement of our democratic process.

Yours etc

Notes:

There is a breakdown of the estimated costs for the AV referendum in this letter:

http://www.parliament.uk/deposits/depositedpapers/2011/DEP2011-0248.pdf

and it can be seen that at £5.9 million the cost of the actual count is dwarfed by other costs, such as those connected with the polling stations (£49 million), postal votes (£18 million) and poll cards (£18 million).

This is an example of an Irish parliamentary by-election held under AV, and it can be seen that a methodical manual count is not difficult and does not involve the massive increases in work and time and cost suggested by opponents of electoral reform:

http://electionsireland.org/counts.cfm?election=2007B&cons=85&ref

[The Debt Collector]

All the AV or as was previously conceived "Proportional Representation", will create is hung parliaments, where no-one can nor will make a decision.

In any case, whichever system you use, if less than 60% of the voting population both to vote, then it all becomes meaningless any way. We just about scraped a 55% turnout at the last election, and that resulted in a hung (or should it be hanged) Parliament.

I rather feel that this AV will just end up with at best an oligarchy, at worst total indecision.

I too would say that everyone should vote in the way they feel is going to be of benefit to them. And please vote because if you don't then this Coalition will take the Vote away from you altogether. Then you will be moving towards dictatorship.

[Dave Elton]

Thanks for a balanced review of the options we have on May 5th.
As noted above the cost of 250m is shrouded in controversy. However, it is worth noting that the cost of this referendum will definately be wasted if we listen to the gutter politics and ignore the facts in articles like this.

[Shaukat Sadullah]

My only concern regarding AV is that it could possibly assist extreme parties such as the BNP in securing more votes. This is why PR has been objected to, although AV is no more than a very soft and indirect version of PR. I would therefore urge all concerned to be wary of this.

[Dan]

I wonder why we haven't introduced second and third place winning, in other spheres of life? - Oh yes, because it doesn't make any sense!

[Alyson Thomson]

I had been going to vote for the change until I found out that a Labour/Lib Dem Coalition Govt would have been elected instead of Margaret Thatcher if we'd had AV then.
I would vote for TRUE Proportional Representation but I'm not voting for AV.

[Alyson Thomson]

Shaukat: If the BNP is what the indigenous British people want to vote for, what's wrong with that?

[PeteChilcott]

Thank you for giving the two sides. This is the only piece I've come across so far to do that. I can share it around the family now

Actually, not many of us 'indigenous British people' do want to vote for the BNP. Nor do many BNP members considering its slide into obscurity as they leave to join other tasteful groups like the EDL

[dave]

no2av are lying about the cost of counting machines - well they are lying about a lot of other things but this is one of them. Don't be fooled by the spin a well oiled advertising machine paid for by millionaire backers of the tory party are pending.. They want you to deprive yourself of the only chance of getting a better deal you are ever likely to get. Dont be fooled by it. Go out and vote yes today. It is our one and only chance of changing things for the good so lets do it.

[dave]

to Shaukat Sadullah

The fact that the BNP will benefit from AV is just another lie told by No2AV. I have really looked into this. The only chance the bnp have to get someone into power is to stick with our current system. AV will stop them in their grubby racist little tracks. This is why they are campaigned strongly for a no vote today. It shows what scumballs the no camp are to peddle lies like this and risk a bnp mp just to keep us from getting a better system.