The Coalition Government has announced that a referendum will be held next May asking the country whether they would like to switch from the First Past the Post system of electing MPs to an Alternative Vote format.
First past the post is exactly as it sounds: the first person to gain a plurality – not necessarily 50%, mind you – of the votes, wins. This can lead to MPs being elected with as little as 35-40% of the vote. That means more than half of the electorate did not vote for that person. One would think, however, that an elected representative would need at least 50% of the electorate in order to give their election merit or weight. Knowing that at least half of the residents in your constituency voted for you would empower you with a mandate.
Alternative Vote, it would seem to me, makes this mandate more achievable. Instead of voting for one person, you rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes (i.e. more people put him/her first than all the rest combined) then the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. The second choices from those ballot papers are then redistributed to the remaining candidates. If still no one receives a majority it goes to a third round and the third choice votes are redistributed. This continues until a candidate reaches more than 50%. This system can also be called an Instant Run-Off.
Alternative Vote is similar to that used to elect the Mayor of London. That is the Single Transferrable Vote and you only mark a first and second choice candidate. A somewhat similar method is also in use in America for Democratic and Republican primaries for Senate candidates and for local offices such as Sheriff. The difference there is that the top two candidates go into a run-off just between each other at a later date, usually a few weeks after the first election. Voters choose only between these two candidates meaning that one person is guaranteed to get more than 50% of that vote.
An obvious pro for AV is that it can help ‘third’ parties, such as the Liberal Democrats, and smaller parties. In the past, many voters may have agreed with the Liberal Democrats and wanted to vote for them but felt that this was ‘throwing their vote away’ because it would likely be a Labour or Conservative win. There are a few constituencies where the Liberal Democrats had a stronghold but, for the most part, they were consistently in third place across the country. AV would mean that you could vote for the Liberal Democrats if you wanted, knowing that they have a better chance at being elected as many other voters may have them as their second choice.
Effectively, you get more than one vote. If you are torn between two or even three candidates you can vote for them all and your vote can help one reach that 50% threshold. If you are a firm party member, though, and shudder at the thought of voting for anyone other than Conservative/Labour/Liberal Democrat/etc. you can simply mark them as your first choice and mark no others. Some countries that use the AV system require you to rank all candidates but if the UK does not, you can still vote for just the one party if you so choose.
AV arguably means that politicians are more accountable. While they may not have received a majority of first choice votes from their constituents, they are likely to have received second choices. Being someone’s second choice is better than them not having voted for you at all. It lends just a bit more weight to your election to know that more than 50% of the population voted for you in some way. I think most elections will be settled in the first two rounds. I would imagine it would be rare to have to go to a third round but it will probably happen on occasion.
An obvious downside to AV is likely to be confusion with the system. Going from simply having to put an X in a box next to your preferred candidate to having to rank candidates, some of whom you may have no clue who they are (i.e. Monster Raving Loony Party or Independents), may confuse the population to the point of apathy. Some may just say “I don’t understand the system; I can’t be bothered to vote.” Nothing says that doesn’t already happen but, nonetheless, it may be a valid issue with AV.
Additionally, AV will likely lead to much longer counts. What once could be done in around six to eight hours overnight will now take days to complete. What this may lead to, then, is the advent of more electronic counting. This is a controversial issue and many people do not trust results from electronic counts. Some people fear there may be tampering with code or software or hardware that is used in counting the votes leading to fraud. They also may not trust the computers to properly count the votes. Manual counting, though, can be far more error-ridden. Humans make errors in counting much easier than computers. You or I can easily count two papers at once or lose count and make a mistake much easier than can a computer, especially when that person has been counting for two hours straight and it’s three in the morning.
Overall, from a democracy point of view, I think AV is a good idea. Most voters are undecided; party animals are rarer. Most voters will make up their mind who to vote for in the days or weeks prior to the election. Many other voters, even having made up their mind, may still want to vote for a party that is not in the mainstream. This method allows them to vote for their preferred party first but for one of the mainstream parties second or third. They get to give their preferred party a vote but also can have a part in electing a mainstream party candidate if that is their second choice. Their preferred party gains a vote but, at the same time, they do not have to feel as though their vote has been thrown away because their second choice of a mainstream candidate may help that candidate over the 50% threshold.
On the other hand, having worked on elections and from a purely logistical, systematic point of view, AV will be a nightmare. Confusion with ballot papers and longer, more complicated counts are just two of the many issues electoral services staff will have to face across the country. While it is obviously their job to run elections, it doesn’t make changing voting methods any easier.
So many things will have to change if AV comes in and I don’t think that, on balance, the pros outweigh the cons. The public aren’t so much fed up with the method in which we vote; they are fed up with corrupt or inert politicians and the state of the country. Unfortunately, no voting system will fix that.