A referendum if necessary but not necessarily a referendum
To no one’s surprise, the UK referendum on the Alternative Vote was lost 69% to 31%. I’ve not yet waded through the myriad opinion pieces in the British press asking “Why did AV lose?” It doesn’t really matter, in the end. I was livestreaming the BBC’s election coverage yesterday, and at one point, one of [...]
A contrast in vote counting
Canada had a general election on 2 May 2011. The UK held various elections across the country yesterday – local council elections across most (but not all) of England, local government in Northern Ireland, elections for the Northern Ireland and Scottish Parliaments and the Welsh national assembly, and a UK-wide referendum vote on adopting the [...]
How the AV referendum killed the republican movement
In an earlier post, I wrote that referendums aren’t very useful means of deciding key policy issues and that the entire referendum campaign on the Alternative Vote has been rather disgraceful. This view has only been reinforced following news today that the No side admits it used completely made-up figures when it claimed adopting AV [...]
How are votes counted under AV?
Quite a few people seem to be looking for a clear explanation of how AV voting will work in the UK if the referendum comes to pass on May 5. I’ve posted this before, but here is a quick video that provides a very simple explanation, delivered in an amusing way: For those who want [...]
Fisking David Cameron
Fisking: A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. The following is my attempt at fisking this essay by Prime Minister David Cameron on why people should vote No to AV. I don’t know [...]
Most common AV-related questions
(Updated: 4 May 2011) (Do you have a specific question regarding how to vote under AV or how the vote is counted? Click here.) The aim of this post is to offer short, to the point answers to the most common issues readers from the UK seem to be looking into, based on the keyword [...]
A few thoughts on the monarchy
With all the focus on the AV referendum in the UK and the general election here in Canada, I’ve not had a chance to write anything about another event that’s in the news quite a bit. Of course I am referring to the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29. I [...]
Will AV cost £250-mn?
(You may also be interested in this post for a summary of the most common questions being asked about AV.) UPDATE: The No side admits it used made-up figures. One of the main arguments the No2AV side has advanced is that the UK simply cannot afford to switch to AV, citing costs of £240-250 million. [...]
AV and fringe parties
(You may also be interested in this post for an overview of how First-Past-the-Post distorts elections results and makes it more difficult for smaller parties to win seats.) Despite the release of studies (such as this one by the IPPR) that have concluded that AV will not help fringe parties or extremist parties win seats [...]
On referendums
The Spectator’s Alex Massie recently wrote: The only thing that has been proved by this referendum on changing the electoral system used for Westminster elections is that referendums are a hopeless way of deciding these matters. Neither the politicians nor the press have distinguished themselves during an affair that’s been distinguished by the mendacity of [...]
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On procedure and politics by Radical Centrist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
