Bullshit about AV/FPTP

There as been a lot of bullshit being scattered about by both sides about the AV referendum. And I am now going to debunk all of them.

From the NO side:

AV is costly

First of all, its not going to cost £250 million pounds to switch to AV. And all elections cost money. If we want to save money, lets just not have any more elections and make David Cameron PM for life.

AV is complex and unfair

Ranking people from 1-5 is not complex. And if it is unfair is entirely a matter of opinion as I will explain:

Imagine there are three parties, A (right wing), B and C (both left wing). (You could argue that right/left wing is very simplistic, but for the sake of the argument I'll use these terms.)

Say 40% vote A, 31% vote B and 29% vote C.

Under FPTP, party A would win, but under AV, if we assume all the 2nd choice votes for C went to B, then party B would win. You could say that FPTP is fairer, as the party with the most 1st pref votes wins, however, most people voted for a left-wing, not right-wing party. Hence you could argue that AV is fairer. 

AV is a politician's fix

Australia had more hung parliaments under FPTP than AV. Also, I don't think hung parliaments are a bad thing. Negotiations between parties for a middle ground seems fair to me, if in the result that no party gets an absolute majority. And anyway, we got a hung parliament now under FPTP.

AV means some people get two votes

Wrong. Everybody fills in one form. Just that if your first preference gets knocked out, your second preference counts. I think this example explains it best.

 "If you go to the chip shop, and order cod and chips but they are out of cod, and you choose pie and chips instead, you have still only had one meal."

AV forces you to give a second preference

Wrong. You can vote for one or all of the candidates. You can always just put a "1" like you did before.

And now from the YES camp.

MPs working harder to earn - and keep - our support

Tackling the ‘jobs for life' culture

I suppose in "swing seats" the difference in voting system will make a difference. But in about 200 of the 650 odd seats the winner got over 50% of the vote anyway. At the end of the day inner cities will probably still vote Labour, and rural affluent areas will still vote Tory

AV is proportional

From the Electroral reform society (who fund the YEStoAV campaign)

AV is thus not a proportional system, and can in fact be more disproportional than FPTP... It does very little to improve the voice of traditionally under-represented groups in parliament, strengthening the dominance of the 'central' viewpoint.

AV will give roughly the same amount of seats to Labour/Tories as FPTP does. The smaller parties will still be screwed as it keeps the "Constituency link", so parties like BNP, UKIP and the Green party will still have fuck-all seats in parliament. I don't even see the Lib Dems getting significantly more seats, as their support is more uniform geographically and in socio-economic status, whilst Tories are for the rich in the country, and Labour are for the poor in the cities. It is the constituency model (Which AV keeps) which means even when Lib Dems gets 23% of the vote they get <10% of the seats, whilst Tories get 36% of the vote and 47% of the seats.

The party that will probably benefit most under AV is Labour, as they generally get more votes than the Lib Dems anyway, and Lib Dems are more likely to vote Labour than Tory. I don't really see how the Lib Dems benefit more under AV. 

At the end of the day I'll probably vote "yes", because I think it AV is fairer than the current system, (see my second point). To be honest, I understand why some people would vote FPTP, but its usually for all of the bullshit reasons which are explained above. The only real difference between them are explained in my second point, and it is for that reason people should vote Yes/No, rather than because they don't like Nick Clegg.