Comments for Letters from the Crossing Place

Comment on The phone hacking scandal, and the BSkyB takeover by Michele Hudson

Michele Hudson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:14:51 +0000

I have created Bradford Bloggers Club http://www.facebook.com/groups/bradfordbloggersclub/ and wondered if you would like to join. I am featuring Bloggers on Bradford 365 too.

Comment on #No2AV Lie of the Week: Part 2 by James Clayton

James Clayton — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:55:08 +0000

Oh yes, in local council elections the system is even more skewed. Because everyone get’s multiple votes, a single party can dominate several seats with as little of a third of the vote. If three parties get roughly a third of the vote each, and there are three seats available, the constituency would be best represented by giving each party one seat. Under the current system, whichever party got the most votes would take all three, even if they only got one vote more than the next. STV should be adopted at local council level at the earliest opportunity. In Scotland and Northern Ireland it already has been.

Comment on #No2AV Lie of the Week: Part 2 by Peter Huse

Peter Huse — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:57:41 +0000

Under FPTP we get 3 (three) votes as they have altered the Borough ward boundaries so we have all up elections in 2011. Under STV we would have “one person one vote”.

Comment on #No2AV Lie of the Week: Part 2 by Ben

Ben — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 19:12:44 +0000

Hello, I’ve just been reading this nice blog I’ve stumbled upon in my search for the answer to this question. I think it fits in here more than any of your other post. I am a big supporter of AV but there is something I am still not sure about. Do you have to win 50% of votes in that round or 50% of the votes from all the voters.

The difference is small but imagine the situation.

100 voters

Round 1:

Con 40
Lab 30
Lib 20
Ukip 10

No clear winner, now 8 of the Ukip voters specified Con as 2nd choice, the other 2 didn’t specify a second choice, so Round 2:

Con 48
Lab 30
Lib 20

No clear winner, Lib eliminated, 17 voters picked Lab as second choice, and 3 didn’t have a second choice.

Final round:

Con 48
Lab 47

Does this mean the conservatives won? Even though only 48% of the voters selected them, ergo 52% expressly voted against them? Should a constituency be forced to have an MP that the majority don’t want? By not marking someone as a preference you are expressly showing that you don’t want them and that needs to be taken into account. One way would be to force you to rank all of the candidates, but this would make things much more complicated and time consuming and add fuel to the NotoAV fire.

To make it more complicated, just for the hell of it, imagine that of the Lab voters 25 chose the Lib as second choice, and of the Con voters 36 chose Lib as second choice, so looking at all the first and second choice votes the rest didn’t express a second choice.

81 would be happy with Lib 20 1st choice 61 second choice
48 with Con 40 1st choice 8 second choice
47 with Lab 30 1st choice 17 second choice
10 with Ukip 10 1st choice

I would be very interested in your views on this and whether you can clarify what will happen in the first scenario.

Thank you very much,
Ben

Comment on The myth of the ‘miserable little compromise’ by James Clayton

James Clayton — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:59:31 +0000

Political parties are concentrations of power. Anything that concentrates power into the hands of particular groups takes power away from the people at large. People will move in groups. There’s nothing we can do about that. But we don’t have to institutionalise it.

I don’t really understand your second point. We’re discussing parliamentary systems. My point was that there is nothing miserable about AV. It’s a significant upgrade to what we have, fixing many of the problems with FPTP, without getting us stuck in the rut of a more proportional, but ultimately unsatisfactory, system.

Comment on The myth of the ‘miserable little compromise’ by nicola

nicola — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:02:55 +0000

Why are party lists fundamentally undemocratic? closed ones possibly but open ones are definitely not.

Also when you say “Before you can have democracy you need to decide on two things: firstly the make up of the parliament (i.e. who will sit in it and who they will represent) and, secondly, how the vote will be conducted.”
That’s not true. Its true for a parliamentary representative democracy but you can decide to have a presidential democracy or a semi-presidential one. You then have to decide how the vote will be conducted.

Comment on The myth of the ‘miserable little compromise’ by James Clayton

James Clayton — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 13:45:57 +0000

It sounds like you figured it out, but yes, AV+ is a proportional system, similar to that used for the Scottish parliament, only with the constituency MPs elected under AV instead of FPTP. Fundamentally though, it uses party lists for the top up seats, which is inherently anti-democratic.

Comment on The myth of the ‘miserable little compromise’ by Colin Reynolds

Colin Reynolds — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 07:42:22 +0000

Four hours (!) and much head-scratching later…

My understanding is now that Mr Clegg said that the choice of AV *over AV+* was a MLC. My take on it is here: http://pendantry.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/why-ill-be-voting-yes-to-the-alternative-vote-av/

Comment on The myth of the ‘miserable little compromise’ by Colin Reynolds

Colin Reynolds — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:54:31 +0000

Hi James, thanks for this informative article.

I’m trying to get the truth about the ‘MLC’ straight in my head.

Paul Perrin says that the MLC phrase referred to something other than AV. In your response, you said:

And yes, AV is a step in the right direction. Far more so than AV+, which is what he was promoting in that interview.

If I’m reading this correctly you’re saying that Nick Clegg was referring to ‘AV+’, and that ‘AV+’ is a different system from AV, which is what is on offer in the forthcoming referendum.

If that’s the case, then it would be entirely true to say that Nick Clegg did not call AV a MLC, and there’s no need for him to clear anything up.

Note that I have no idea what ‘AV+’ is.

I just want to be able to refute a no2av campaign lie without having to bluster.

Comment on #No2AV Lie of the Week: Part 3 by Alex

Alex — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:46:19 +0000

How is electing an MP that much different than electing an individual.

Our current voting system means each constituency votes for one person to represent them in parliament. Our vote holds no power outside of that decision, nor does it affect the appointment of any other MP or other government person. The idea that we vote a party in to power is a myth that’s grown up because of the fact that we used to have large majorities of people voting for one of two parties.

It is the role of our elected MP to present our voice in parliament, and to decide along with the the MP’s elected to represent every other constituency how they will form a government. We do not vote at all on the formation of our government, it’s leadership or even on the demographic make up of parliament.

We, ourselves, are voting for one person to hold a single position. Now I would argue that is a flaw which PR would correct, but that isn’t the nature of this particular debate.