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There has been a lot of mud-slinging over the referendum on the Alternative Vote. The “No” campaign have been particularly bad at avoiding sensible debate and resorting to fear-mongering and smears.

The polling shows they will likely win by a significant margin. They shouldn’t. And with apparently 20%+ of people still undecided, I’d like to share some thoughts that might tip the balance in some people’s heads: please share this with anybody who is still undecided.

Here are 10 very good reasons you should vote “Yes” in the AV referendum tomorrow:

1. First Past The Post (FPTP) doesn’t work in a system with more than two parties

You might only like one of the two leading parties, but you can’t deny that we live in a society where more than two parties matter. If you live in Scotland or Wales, multi-party politics is a reality even more so.

FPTP was designed when there were only two political groups in Parliament: the Tories and the Whigs. Since the birth of Labour, the reformation of the Liberals and the rise of nationalist parties and groups like the Green Party, we live in a nation where there are multiple political voices.

You might not agree with them, but you agree under a democracy that they have a right to be heard, right? So why would you persist with a system that denies them that voice?

Right now, an MP can have support of less than 20% of the people in their constituency, and be sent to Parliament on behalf of all 100%. AV eliminates that from being possible, and forces more engaged politics.

2. AV actually weakens extremist parties

There are three parties wholly against the Alternative Vote: the Conservatives, the BNP and the Communist party.

The Tories don’t like it for a variety of reasons along with some Labour MPs (see below), but the BNP and the Communist parties don’t like it because it reduces their chances of getting a seat. How? It comes down to second preference votes.

People who are inclined to vote for extremist views typically will place them first. People who put other parties first are unlikely to offer a second preference to an extremist party. That means on the whole, parties like the BNP are likely to be eliminated quite early on.

To win, a candidate must convince at least 50% of the people who vote to give them at least a second or third preference vote. The BNP and the Communists are unlikely to achieve that whilst their views and the electorate’s are so out of kilter.

Under FPTP it’s possible to win a seat with just 20% of eligible voters agreeing with you, or around 30% of voters who actually vote - a much more achievable target for extremist parties to get.

3. AV forces consensus and a new mode of political debate

You might have noticed politicians from opposite sides don’t seem to like each other very much. Most people can’t stand watching Prime Minister’s Questions for all its Punch & Judy mechanics. FPTP requires confrontation and feeds off fear-mongering.

AV forces politicians into a very different mode. They have to talk about what they’re for, rather than what they’re against (as tactical voting disappears, see below), and they need to seek out ways to find compromise and agreement rather than just shout the other side down.

You might have strong feelings against the coalition government, but you can’t deny that the disagreements seem to have been dealt with more philosophical debate than previous disputes between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. It’s not that either side has sold out completely, but rather it’s because that’s what coalitions need to work. AV turns that progressive debate into the daily routine of politics.

4. AV doesn’t cost a penny more. The only penalty is a slightly longer election night special on the BBC

There have been some preposterous claims made about the cost of AV. One leaflet suggested it would cost us £250m, and another campaign suggested that maybe the money would be better spent on hospitals.

We could argue that democracy shouldn’t have a price put on it - particularly one so low given the size of our GDP - however that’s not the point.

AV won’t cost us anything more. The referendum will cost virtually nothing as it coincides with many local elections anyway. There are no “counting machines” that need to be bought, and the cost of explaining AV to the electorate has basically already been met by the (privately-funded) “Yes” campaign and various other groups. If you don’t currently understand how AV works, you can learn it yourself in under two minutes by reading the article on Wikipedia about it.

5. FPTP supports incompetent and lazy MPs - it provides a “job for life”, undeservedly

There are a lot of very bad MPs in Parliament. You’ve probably never heard their names, but they’ve been there for a long time, and know that they have a job for life. They are in “safe seats” where it would take a political Tsunami of epic proportions to remove them.

If you analyse which Labour members support the FPTP system over AV, you will realise they are generally unpopular figures who have held safe seats whilst resorting to “we hate the other side” politics, which would likely flounder under AV: John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, et al.

The Tory back-benches are filled with a similar breed of politician. They resent the voter, on the whole.

These MPs do not represent their constituency in Parliament. They represent their party in the constituency. With perhaps no more than 35% of the vote (and often with low turnouts, just a 10-15% approval from their constituency as a whole), they know they can do pretty much what they want. For example, on average MPs in safe seats claim more in expenses than MPs in marginals, and cost the taxpayer more.

One beauty of AV is that it pretty much eliminates the concept of a safe seat. There will be some left where there is overwhelming support for a candidate, but MPs will be more inclined to fight for the continued support of their entire constituency, and therefore act more in accordance with their wishes.

6. Under AV you can - if you wish - select just one candidate (and it’s actually easier)

At the moment under FPTP you type an X in a box. Under AV, if you only want to support one candidate and have no second preference, simply write ‘I’ instead. It’s one less line. It could be argued that under AV you’ll halve your time spent actually physically voting.

OK, I’m clearly making a small joke here, but there is nothing complicated about AV if you don’t want to think about multiple candidates, just vote for the one individual you want to see elected.

But don’t you want the option of being able to specify a second candidate if your first preference doesn’t win, just in case? Isn’t the elimination of tactical voting worth it? That brings us onto…

7. Tactical voting pretty much disappears under AV

This morning I got a “the Tories can’t win here” leaflet from the Lib Dems through my door. We’ve all seen them. Basically, if you don’t want Labour to win in this ward, there is no point in voting Conservative because of how the vote is counted.

Under AV at general elections, this would make no sense. Tory voters, instead of being told their votes are futile, would be reached out to by both parties seeking to build bridges with that community who live locally.

You would no longer need to go to the polls and vote for a party you disagree with, just to keep another party out. Campaigners would instead want to listen to views across the political spectrum in the hope of getting a second preference vote from people within those groups.

It completely changes the way we think about politics and political campaigning. For the better, and permanently.

There is a more complicated explanation of how tactical voting pretty much becomes impossible under AV in a section of the Wikipedia article.

8. We all start to count again

You might have heard the phrase “Mondeo Man”, “Windsor Woman” or the like at previous elections. These are demographic groups targeted by campaigners whose vote determines the election.

You see, at the last election, it’s thought that only 1.6% of votes actually changed the outcome. Because of the way FPTP favours jobs for life, safe seats and promotes tactical voting and negative politics, experts realised that the “swing” that would win the election would come from less than 1 voter in 50.

They identified who these people were based on where they lived. They analysed their lifestyles based on demographic information and labelled them. Experts then ran focus groups composed of this tiny demographic, and party policy and manifesto promises were crafted around what was responded to by that group.

All of those billboards, manifestos, news reports and editorials. They weren’t meant for 98.4% of the electorate - they were crafted to shape the opinion of just 1.6% of the electorate.

Does that seem a reasonable way to run a democracy to you? Under AV, we all start to count again.

9. It’s not a rubbish version of PR, and we don’t want PR anyway!

Some people have argued we should hold out for Proportional Representation because that means the number of MPs representing each party is in exact proportion to the number of votes cast for that party nationally.

We don’t want that.

Note, I said the MPs would be representing each party. They would no longer represent a constituency, and would be positioned on a list based on their loyalty to the party elders and the small Westminster clique that runs politics today.

We want and need a system that means an MP is tied to a constituency. We want and need a system that makes the MP want to represent the constituency within Parliament, rather than the other way around.

PR doesn’t do that. FPTP doesn’t do that. AV does.

10. If we vote “No”, we keep the status quo for at least a generation. 

The reality is, if we collectively vote “No” to the Alternative Vote, that’s it, we don’t get any more reform for a while - probably at least a generation. The concession prize might be a reform of the House of Lords, in order to try and keep the coalition together (it’s a very weak second prize for the Lib Dems), but I suspect if we voted “Yes”, then Lords reform would be here within no more than one more Parliament anyway - it’d be popular with voters.

We all agree that the current system is broken, but if we vote “no” we’re saying “that’s OK”. We are committing our children and possibly several generations more to the broken politics we’re so disenchanted with ourselves.

So, there we have it. 10 reasons. If you need any more, feel free to email me and I’ll try and answer your questions and answer any lingering doubts before polls open tomorrow.

In the time between me publishing my list of 10 reasons for supporting the Alternative Vote and polling closing the next evening, it was read over 1,000 times. I still stand by every word of it, even though - as you no doubt have heard - the “No” campaign won it.

Annoyingly, it seems the majority of people who voted “No”, did so because of one of the following reasons:

Their favourite media outlet told them to

We have a major problem with media influence and the popular vote in most democracies, but in the UK its reached new levels. If the media was unbiased, or people sought a balance of opinion in their media consumption, I’m not sure that the vote would have gone the way it did. People seem to be reluctant to think for themselves any more.

They held strong allegiance to the way things are right now

In gambling parlance there is a phrase to dismiss somebody who has a bet on and is trying to justify their logic: talking through their pocket.

There were very, very many people on the “No” campaign who would stand to lose a lot if the vote had gone to “Yes”, not least the Prime Minister himself. I think the “Yes” campaign didn’t do enough to highlight that this was about long-term change within how politics is done and is perceived. 

What amazed me is just how many people have a vested interest in politics as they are done today. With thousands of people hoping one day to have a chance running for MP in a safe seat, able to leverage hundreds of campaigners each… we just didn’t see it coming!

They were “holding out” for PR

Possibly the most stupid reason: we don’t want PR (which the electoral commission found out without the need for a referendum), which is why it wasn’t offered. But plenty of people do want it, and so voted “No” using the warped logic this would in the long run give them more progressive politics. What they hadn’t spotted was that voting “Yes” would have led to a more progressive politics with a possibility of PR being offered within 3-4 Parliaments, maximum. Now? Even the Lib Dems are talking about a “losing a generation” before it gets brought up again.

So there we are, the vote was lost, I’m talking through my own pocket it seems, and the result is thoroughly depressing for progressives. C’est la vie…

Philosophers ask questions.

Artists interpret questions.

Theologians ignore questions.

Scientists and engineers answer questions.

Geeks do some or all the above.

Everybody else is just a spectator.

Dream about what you would wish for. It might come true.

Un tema que he visto poco tratado en los foros y sitios SEO es el posicionamiento web en sitios multi-lenguajes (o multi-idiomas), es decir, el posicionamiento web de aquellos sitios que tienen versiones en más de un idioma. Sin embargo, considero que es un tema muy interesante, por lo cual he decidido compartir algunas ideas que me he ido formando al respecto, sobre el como realizar la implementación y el posicionamiento Web de un sitio multi-lenguaje. Primeramente es bueno destacar...

Both Zillow.com and Trulia.com could vanish tomorrow, completely – websites crash and stay down forever –  and it would make ZERO difference, at all, in the successful sale of any home in Austin TX, or elsewhere in the U.S. Period. There is no hardship or selling disadvantage created for sellers or their listing agents if their real estate listings do not appear on these real estate entertainment and advertising websites because it is not the purpose of these consumer portal sites to sell homes, but instead to sell advertising to Real Estate Agents. These consumer sites not only fail to cause homes to sell, the websites fail to create smarter, better educated buyers and sellers. Instead, they create consumers exposed to bad data, and too much of it. Including the ridiculous Zestimate, which everyone knows is inaccurate but which nonetheless remains the “favorite” feature of Zillow.com users, according to Zillow. ... Read more

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Should you enroll in a Real Estate investment seminar in Austin or your home town? Be very careful if you do. Understand the risks and what you are paying.

I’ve been protesting property tax values with Travis County for 30 years. Not only for myself, but back in the 1990s, into the 2000s for my property management and real estate clients as well. And also assisting by providing market information to clients and others who ask for help from our Free CMA page, which I think I first put up in 2005. For 2023, TCAD valued a property I owned in Southwest Austin in Legend Oaks neighborhood at $677k. This was excessively high, by more than $100k, but I was unsuccessful at the ARB Hearing (Arbitration Review Board), despite presenting clear objective data. They did lower it to $651k though, still about $100k too high. So for the first time ever, I filed for a Binding Arbitration hearing, paid the $500 deposit, and hired an appraiser to value the property for me as of Jan 1, 2023. TCAD generally ... Read more

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Mirza Hassan began as a freelancer, where his passion for WordPress and Shopify ignited his creativity. His dedication and expertise led him to Themefic, a platform for WordPress themes, and PSDtoWPService.com, a service that turns Photoshop designs into WordPress sites. Besides his technical prowess, Mirza has a unique perspective and dedication to his craft. As […]

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One of the things I most respect about Tami is the way she keeps her promises - both to others, and to herself. If you've been following our blog for awhile you may remember her New Year's Resolution to walk 500 miles. She had me put together a little spreadsheet on her laptop where she could enter her mileage each day. Next to each entry it showed mileage accumulated to-date, along with a comparison to the minimum mileage needed to complete 500 miles by year end. Every now and again she tried to turn the milestones into shoe-buying excuses -- "Hey Sweetie, I just crossed 300 miles - don't you think that deserves a new pair of shoes?"

Well, it was my honor to walk the last 40 or so miles with her during our vacation in Montana's Glacier National Park these last two weeks. I don't know exactly where or when we crossed that 500th mile, but I do know that the mountains there in Glacier are a whole lot taller than the ones back home. I also decided I prefer climbing over descending - Tami practically runs down the mountains, leaving me stumbling along behind in a contrail of dust (see video below). She's a hiking machine. Me, I'm more of a pack mule - I get to carry the water, lunches, cameras, maps, and sunscreen. Which works out fine, since I'm always stopping to take pictures anyway! Enjoy...

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