This morning, over on ConservativeHome, I read about this sadly misguided effort by a group of prominent British historians who’ve come out against the Alternative Vote. The actual letter written by the group was published in the Times, which is behind a paywall, but ConservativeHome kindly reprinted it in full:

Dear Sir,

Our nation’s history is deeply rooted in our parliamentary democracy, a democracy in which, over centuries, men and women have fought for the right to vote.

That long fight for suffrage established the principle of one man or woman, one vote. The principle that each person’s vote is equal, regardless of wealth, gender, race, or creed, is a principle to which generations of reformers have dedicated their lives. It is a principle upon which reform of our parliamentary democracy still stands.

The referendum on 5th May which threatens to introduce a system of ‘Alternative Voting’ – a voting system which will allow MPs to be elected to Parliament even if they do not win the majority of constituents’ first preference votes – also threatens to break this principle.

For the first time since 1928 and the granting of universal suffrage, we face the possibility that one person’s casting ballot will be given greater weight than another. For the first time in centuries, we face the unfair idea that one citizen’s vote might be worth six times that of another. It will be a tragic consequence if those votes belong to supporters of extremist and non-serious parties.

Twice in our past, the nation has rejected any threat to the principle of one citizen, one vote. The last time, in 1931, Winston Churchill stood against the introduction of an Alternative Vote system. As he argued, AV would mean that elections would be determined by “the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates”. He understood that it was simply too great a risk to take.

The cause of reform, so long fought for, cannot afford to have the fundamentally fair and historic principle of majority voting cast aside; nor should we sacrifice the principle which generations of men and women have sought: that each being equal, every member of our society should cast an equal vote.

For these reasons, we urge the British people to vote “No” on May 5th.

Signed by quite a few confused historians.

Truly, I am left rather speechless by this. I am having such a difficult time understanding how anyone can argue in good faith that AV grants some people more votes. That this group of (one assumes) quite intelligent and educated individuals really believe that AV represents a “threat to the principle of one citizen, one vote” is – I have no words.

Luckily for all of us, ABC’s Antony Green is already all over this one. Allow me to share a few passages from his post, but please read it in its entirety.

In response to this passage from the letter:

For the first time since 1928 and the granting of universal suffrage, we face the possibility that one person’s casting ballot will be given greater weight than another. For the first time in centuries, we face the unfair idea that one citizen’s vote might be worth six times that of another. It will be a tragic consequence if those votes belong to supporters of extremist and non-serious parties.

Green replies:

Where has this six number come from again? Why not four, as in horses of the apocalypse, or seven as days in the week, or ten as in plagues of Egypt?

The magic number six is being tossed into the debate to suggest that some people have more votes than others. They don’t. The Alternative Vote is a way of counting numbered ballot papers in such a manner that if the count comes down to two candidates, one will have more ballot papers in their favour than the other candidate. There are no multiple votes, the number of ballot papers does not change.

From the letter:

Twice in our past the nation has rejected any threat to the principle of one citizen, one vote. The last time, in 1931, Winston Churchill stood against the introduction of an alternative vote (AV) system. As he argued, AV would mean that elections would be determined by “the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates”. He understood that it was simply too great a risk to take.

The cause of reform, so long fought for, cannot afford to have the fundamentally fair and historic principle of majority voting cast aside; nor should we sacrifice the principle that generations of men and women have sought: that each being equal, every member of our society should cast an equal vote.

For these reasons, we urge the British people to vote “No” on May 5.

Green’s rebuttal:

Quote Churchill, that’s obviously a clinching argument. With the greatest of respect to Mr Churchill, a quick look at Australian electoral history reveals that he may be wrong on dismissing preferences as somehow worthless.

When you trawl through Australian elections where preferences changed results, they almost always involve matters of principle, important votes not worthless votes.

Liberal and National candidates running against each other and swapping preferences aren’t involved in some worthless exchange. They were acting on matters of principle to defeat Labor candidates.

Democratic Labor Party voters and candidates, who for two decades acted to help elect Liberal and National MPs, were doing so because of those parties’ unambiguous opposition to Communism , not on some worthless whimsy.

And nor have Green voters in recent years been engaged in a worthless exercise. They have directed preferences in the hope of best achieving their party’s goals.

The major parties have acted together to defeat Pauline Hanson and One Nation candidates. The Liberal Party has begun to act to defeat Greens candidates by preferences. Whatever you think of the justice of these cases, they are not matters of worthless votes.

Green could also have quoted what Churchill had to say about FPTP: “The present system has clearly broken down. The results produced are not fair to any party, nor to any section of the community. In many cases they do not secure majority representation, nor do they secure an intelligent representation of minorities. All they secure is fluke representation, freak representation, capricious representation.”

Green concludes his post thusly:

A case built on misrepresenting how votes are counted, reciting one quote from Churchill and ignoring eight decades of Australian experience, is not a compelling argument, despite the eminence of the  accompanying historian’s names.

Related Posts:

• The length of two swords
• AV and fringe parties
• More AV-related links for readers
• Antony Green takes on Lord Ashcroft
• Fairer votes? Yes indeed!

ABC election blogger Antony Green is at it again, with two more posts attacking the false information being spread about AV in general and AV in Australia by the NO2AV side in the UK referendum on the issue.

In a post from March 6, Green reveals the secrets of how AV is counted in Australia. Surprise! Their “vote counting machines” look amazingly human.

It’s his second post, also from March 6, which is more interesting (to me anyway since I know Australia doesn’t use vote counting machines and so don’t need more articles proving that reality). In “How AV builds a majority for a candidate“, Green addresses one of the major failings of FPTP – that someone can be elected with less than a majority of the vote in his or her riding – sometimes much, much less than 50% of the total vote cast.  Most proponents of FPTP don’t seem to have a problem, at all, with the fact that some MPs win their seats with less than 20% of the vote. The fact that the “winning” candidate was rejected by an overwhelming majority of his or her constituents doesn’t matter. The reality of FPTP is that the “winner” needs only one vote. Not just one vote more than the 2nd place candidate – in theory, if only one vote was cast in the entire riding, the candidate who gets that vote would be declared the winner. AV addresses that problem. As Green writes:

The higher the vote of the leading candidate, the less chance that AV will change the result. But the lower the vote of the leading candidate, the better that AV is in producing a preferred candidate rather than won who just happened to finish ahead of the others.

It’s a very detailed post explaining the vote count in the riding of Wagga Wagga in the 1999 New South Wales state election (New South Wales uses the same optional preferential voting being proposed in the UK). Some might find it quite dry reading. It is, but it is definitely worth reading.

Related Posts:

• The length of two swords
• AV and fringe parties
• More AV-related links for readers
• Antony Green takes on Lord Ashcroft
• Fairer votes? Yes indeed!

It is not my intention to write about every idiotic anti-AV column that appears during the next ten weeks leading up to the referendum vote in May. For the most part, I’ve addressed the main arguments put forward against AV in previous posts.

That said, when something particularly mind-boggling appears, I do feel a duty to comment on it. Case in point was this “debate” in the Guardian between pro-AV Conservative John Stafford and anti-AV Labour MP Margaret Beckett. Beckett’s arguments, such as they are, against AV aren’t any better than anyone else’s that have appeared in print of late, but one exchange in particular absolutely astounded me:

John Stafford: There is a balance, I accept that, between the systems. But it doesn’t seem right to say that we’ve got a representative parliament when an MP can win with 35% of the vote, while 65% voted against them. In 2005, the Labour Party got 35% of the votes, and had a 66-seat majority. In 2010 the Tories got 36% of the votes and didn’t get any majority. And twice since the war, the party that’s got the most votes in the election didn’t go on to form the government …

Margaret Beckett: I’m not quarrelling with that, but I’m just not very interested. And I don’t think the British people are. The outcome is what matters. The British people know how our system works, and they know how to use it. When they want change, they make change.

There are two points here that bother me immensely. First is that while Beckett acknowledges that FPTP can lead to extremely bizarre outcomes, such as those Stafford outlined, she dismisses those issues because she’s “just not very interested.” Sort of makes you wonder how she handled certain issues that cropped up while she was a minister in the previous Labour governments – if she wasn’t that interested in something, did she just sweep it under the rug or ignore it?

The second thing is her comment that “the outcome is what matters,” In other words, it doesn’t matter to her at all that a process might be incredibly flawed, unfair, or broken, as long as some sort of outcome still results from it? I have to disagree with that, as did many people in the read comments. If a process to get to an outcome has serious shortcomings, then it follows that the outcome that results from that process will also be flawed. I don’t think Beckett would disagree that if someone cheated during the London Marathon, perhaps by using a banned substance, should they win the race, they should be disqualified. In such an instance, it wouldn’t be the outcome that matters – even if people aren’t particularly interested in the nitty-gritty of how performance-enhancing drugs actually work. What matters would be that the race was fair to all.  Why should elections be any different?

To counterbalance the hurt that Margaret Beckett has probably caused your brain, even if you agree with her that AV is bad, I would like to share with you two columns from Antony Green’s blog. Green is the elections specialist who writes for Australia’s ABC news. Australia uses a form of AV in its federal elections. It differs from what is being proposed for the UK in one very important way – in Australia, voters have to rank every single candidate on the ballot paper (except for one – which will be assumed to be the voter’s least favourite). Failure to do so results in a rejected ballot. In the UK, voters can rank as many candidates as they want, and if they want to vote for only one person, they can do that. That said, however, many anti-AV campaigners have signalled out that Australia is one of the few countries that uses AV, and that most Australians want to get rid of it and move to FPTP.

This isn’t so, writes Green. That claim is based on the findings of one single survey conducted just after last year’s contentious general election which resulted in Australia’s first hung parliament in decades. I urge you to read the entire column, but Green concludes:

I believe the IPA survey picked-up on two moods of Australians, one an objection by some Australians to the re-election of the Gillard government, but also a more common objection to compulsory preferential voting. Voters were given two options in the survey, the existing system or first past the post, but not the Alternative Vote.

Given the survey’s options, a conclusion that Australians want to abandon the Alternative Vote for First past the Post seems a little difficult reach, because the Alternative Vote wasn’t even an option.

In this other column, “Does the Alternative Vote bring Tyranny to Australia?“, Green addresses some of the strange claims surfacing in the UK press about how AV has completely ruined democracy in Australia:

Many Australians would be amazed to read the UK press and discover the terrible iniquities heaped upon them by the Alternative Vote. Putting Ashes defeat down the the Alternative Vote has yet to be claimed, but the campaign has only just begun.

For instance, how many Australian knew it always takes six weeks to work out who’s won an election in Australia? Perhaps there was some unpunctuality in 2010, but that’s what you get with a hung parliament. The UK struck the same problem under first past the post voting in May 2010, so it’s not the voting system at fault. There was no anarchy in the UK from a few days of indeterminacy.

Again, I urge you to read the entirety of Green’s column. It is worth it. You may still end up disagreeing that AV is worth voting for, but at least you’ll be doing so based on fact and not media-created fictions.

Related Posts:

• The length of two swords
• AV and fringe parties
• More AV-related links for readers
• Antony Green takes on Lord Ashcroft
• Fairer votes? Yes indeed!