These are the words of Tiberius Gracchus

Working for something is not slavery

2012-02-23T18:20:00.004Z

As anyone not living in a box with a cat and some radioactive material will probably have seen, the Government's work programme has come under fire in the last few weeks.

The criticism itself varies from the thought out view that people working for just their JSA & expenses without contribution by the private institutions amounts to a government subsidy for businesses....and then you have the rabid "this is exactly like slavery" folk.
(I've also read blogs that try to argue that there are different types of slavery, some of which are more similar to the programme than the common understanding of slavery.. so its ok to call it that...though on closer inspection the author had either cherry picked or was simply misinformed about ancient slavery).

The whole thing has a very slight whiff of the central No2AV campaign about it. The lumping together of many different work schemes, voluntary as well as mandatory, adding together all the participants and then using all the potentially controversial parts of different schemes to make it seem that a huge number have to suffer terribly is so dishonest, but they have used real data.. *Eric M - "just not necessarily in the right order" ..

So let's look at the facts..these are pretty thin on the group in a huge error by the Government which has allowed room for the social media driven nonsense which fills our ears, inboxes and twitter feeds to flourish.

The source of the most comprehensive list of the schemes comes from an unlikely source. The Guardian (full article on the link)...Did it just get cold in here? I have used their data to compress it into easy read bullet points

Here we go...

Work Experience

The Work Experience programme is voluntary
For 16 - 24 year olds
Out of employment from 3-9 months
Placements are 2-8 weeks
Placements are from 25-30 hrs
JSA & Expenses including childcare costs

If the placement is abandoned without good reason after one week the participant runs the risk of losing two weeks benefits
34,200 people had started a Work Experience placement by Nov 11

Sector-based work academies

Training and a work placement
Open to people unemployed for over three months.
Anyone completing a placement is given a guaranteed job interview
Placements last up to six weeks (part classroom training/part on-the-job)
Participation is voluntary but those that quit face sanctions
3,400 people had participated as of Nov 11

Mandatory Work Activity

Compulsory Scheme for people "who have little or no understanding of what behaviours are required to obtain and keep work."
No set time frame though placements typically reserved for those unemployed over three months
Scheme lasts six to eight weeks
Up to 30 hours a week
The jobs must "make[] a contribution to the community"
Refusal leads to a loss of 13 weeks benefit, the second refusal increases this to 26 weeks
24,010 people participated up to Nov 11

The Work Programme

The scheme is for "tailored support" which may or may not include useful work placements
This task is contracted out to organisations that do not have authority over Benefits
Starts nine months for young people and a year for everyone else
370,000 people were referred to the Work Programme as of Nov 11 (as stated not all these involve work placements

Community Activity Programme

Pilot scheme for hose unemployed for more than two years
Work placements are up to 30 hrs per week
Work placements can last up to six months
Help to get into employment is also included in the scheme
The scheme is designed "to develop disciplines and skills associated with sustained employment, (for example: attending on time on a regular basis as part of a working routine, carrying out specific tasks and working under supervision".
The placements must be tasks that deliver contribution to the local community and " must not displace what would otherwise be paid jobs."
As will MWA, this is compulsory and will result in sanctions if quit

As we can see, the schemes are very different and the use by some of the more ruthless critics of data from one to attack the other is not only unfounded but irresponsible and harmful to the many volunteers that have been denied experience in various institutions that have felt the need to pull out of the voluntary schemes.

This brings me to my next point, many of the companies that took part in these schemes weren't doing it for financial gain, they were doing it as part of community responsibility policy. Speak to any employer, especially in the retail sector and they will tell you that taking on unskilled, inexperienced new staff is probably the most counter productive and harmful thing to their business.

Not only are there endless risk assessments, induction trainings, customer service trainings, health and safety trainings, product trainings, policy trainings and supervision to organise, you have to do it all again in the few short weeks (and hours) that the staff are there.

As the goal in many of the placements isn't the job at the end of the placement, it's the real world experience, the discipline, the CV entry, the ability to give references...topped off with a chance of a job offer, the pressure put on these businesses to only take on these people if paid and there is a job for everyone will only make the business heavily reduce the number of placements.

In fact, why would they even bother to participate in the scheme? Why risk it with long time inexperienced unemployed people when you could simply just poach them from a competitor that are fully trained, are already doing the job and are a lot less work to get to unsupervised level?

The answer is simple ..they will not participate in the scheme, the companies thought that despite of it not actually helping them in real terms, that they might get a bit of PR boost for providing the opportunities ...however with that out the window, they are pulling out and fast. Tesco have said they will start paying people and will give people jobs at the end of the placements unless there is a reason not to.

It is very important to actually read that statement with a business head on. Tesco's will not be taking on more people than they need, so whereas they used to grant placements to a large amount of VOLUNTEERS, that number will be shrinking.

Well done everyone, you have succeeded in taking away placements that actually have waiting lists because so many people WANTED to get on them out of uninformed misdirected anger.

I take it you'll be off to shut down the soup kitchens now for not paying their 'slaves' serving the food?

Twitter Vs Strawman / Dorries

2011-08-31T15:08:00.002+01:00

It is rare that I find myself in agreement with the majority of Twitterettes and Twitterinos, so was not unsurprised that I found myself on the wrong side of the herd view, what did surprise me was the ratio.

In a very unscientific analysis of the hashtag, I found only one other poster that agreed with me.

The subject of course is Nadine #Dorries and her proposed amendments in reference to abortion.

Now I understand that many people dislike Dorries so even taking this into account, (That people will say the sky is pink if she says it is blue) I am surprised by the opposition on a couple of parts of what she says.

Opinion One, that any organisation that benefits financially from a particular outcome, should not be classed as independent, when it comes to whether that outcome is taken or not.

That is common sense, isn’t it?

Someone tried comparing it to the RSPCA somehow, saying that ‘Stopes’ having a vested interest in abortion is the same as the RSPCA having a vested interest in cruelty.

That is a bit of a strange comparison on a couple of fronts.

Firstly, the RSPCA would make more money by NOT treating animals; just sending them away, would be easier than operating etc.

Secondly, it is suggesting that the choice between abortion or not abortion is similar in context to animal suffering or non-suffering.

There is an automatic assumption that the only people allowed to give advice will be religious fundamentalists though Ms Dorries has said “This won’t be offered by any religion-affiliated groups, but by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy”1

So unless the BACP have suddenly become religious zealots, I am a bit unsure what the cause of this ‘Straw-man’ nonsense is.

As an atheist and anti-theist I have no enthusiasm for practical decisions to be made in relation to mythological belief, but this is not the only alternative so it is misleading for it to be framed in such an either/or way.

Her second opinion which has upset people, but has been less (a little less) vilified is her opinion that the upper timescale limit of 6 lunar months should be reduced to 5. i.e. 24 weeks to 20.

This apparently makes her ‘evil’.

When I asked why this would be the case I am often ignored.

Her is my research on the subject, and please keep in mind I have no axe to grind, I am pro-choice, I have no moral objection to the idea of pregnancy termination.

According to meta-analysis cited by SpensersHope.org, up to 70% of pre-mature births at 24 weeks can survive; published articles in medical journals put this figure more conservatively at 39%-50%.

These figures alone are quit worrying, now consider that these are where pre-mature birth is caused for a whole range of different reasons, a lot of them to do with the health of the mother and/or baby which would increase the chance of mortality, and you can imagine the levels of survival from babies about to be aborted at a much higher level.

I am all for personal freedoms, I am a libertarian and consider personal liberty paramount but with one very big exception. The acts of a person should never take away someone else’s freedom or life and it is quite evident that life is indeed being taken away in some of these late term pregnancies.

Again, I feel I need to stress that I am NOT an anti-abortionist, but for me what happens to fetuses is abortion, what happens to babies is murder and when something is alive in its own right, it is a baby not a fetus.

Let the vitriol attacks begin

-Interruption to normal service- Rape being rape is rape, but not all rapes are the same

2011-05-19T11:28:00.004+01:00

Hello people,
Slight change of pace and subject I know, but this subject has sucked so much of my time because I cannot bare uninformed or over-zealous arguments to beat down intelligent, rational comments.
Firstly, let's start with Slut Walk.
I have devoted a bit of my time trying to figure this out. I have spoken to many different women in support of it, some fanatically, some more sensibly.
My conclusion is that it is a misguided and pointless march.
Interestingly, unlike most causes that start with good and intelligent intentions but run the risk of being hi-jacked by irrational forces, Slutwalk has been the opposite.

Slutwalk was sparked by a Policeman in Canada making some rather blunt and politically incorrect comments. The exact wording changes depending on who you speak to and to what degree they are trying to use the policeman as a reason for the march, but the jist is 'girls should avoid dressing like sluts to help avoid being victimised'.
At it's heart, this is a sad but probably true comment on society.
The biggest obstacle we come up against is information, as so many rapes are unreported also a great number of rapes reported are found not guilty and a great number of rapes that are both reported and convicted (so count towards the figures) are committed by relatives or people where the target is not randomly selected, so 'stranger' rape is quite rare to have statistics on it either way.
However, this is where common sense comes into play.
Most people will say that if you walk through a bad neighbourhood alone with a Rolex on and draw attention to it, you will increase your chance of robbery. This is quite accepted, it is not shifting blame, it's not saying that the victim deserved it, it is purely a statement on statistics.

I have asked a more relevant question to the debate, which woman is more likely to be attacked, Woman A or Woman B where Woman A is with a group of friends and relatively sober and Woman B is lying passed out in an alley with her skirt pulled up.
Chances are statistically small that either woman will be attacked, but in comparison to each other, there would be, I imagine, a hugely increased risk to Woman B. Again, this is not talking about blame as fault is not implied with statistical analysis.
To bring it closer to the offending statement. A woman that has gone to the effort of making themselves attractive and sexual will likely increase the chance of people being attracted to her sexually and with increased attention, the likelihood of a bad type of attention from verbal harassment, pinching of girls bums also increases.

The choice of words may well have been objectionable, but this was, by the sounds of most accounts, an off the record,throw away comment by someone that is probably a lot more familiar with the subject, seeing as he has to deal with it on a day to day basis, than most of us (thankfully) that is probably logically true even if it is a terrible truth.
This is not a basis for a international march.

Other reasons given

Reclaiming the word slut (slut is an insult and will always be one..used just as much by women to describe other women than by men. There is no need to reclaim it..just don't use it)

Highlighting 'Rape is wrong' (now to me the fact that rape carries a custody sentence as a minimum in most cases and can be 'life' ..I am quite sure rape is acknowledged to be wrong already..except perhaps by rapists, but let's be honest, a group of angry women are unlikely to change their mind)

Combat victim blaming (this is the reason I said was the sensible cause that is trying to hi-jack the irrational core. Victim blaming is wrong and nearly everyone except the really foul fringes of our communities agree. Let's be clear here, there is a HUGE gulf between saying refraining from certain actions can statistically lower risk and saying that if you don't refrain from certain actions you DESERVE the outcome. One is statistical analysis, the other is victim blaming and is unacceptable)

The problem is, this last idea, the hastily added extra by women who want to get angry about something and go on a march but require rational reasoning, for me is too far removed from the core and often leads to the mistake I clarified above between talking about likelihood and how much someone deserves actions against them.

The second part of the article deals with the comments of Ken Clarke.

A similar over-reaction to sensible comments on a controversial subject. He said nothing that isn't understood by anyone working in the law profession or in fact any other objective person.

Let's firstly deal with the definition of rape in the UK's court process, which is a lot stricter than many country's.

Rape is the non-consensual act of sex performed on an unwilling participant.

The concept of consent is quite blurry in UK law too. For example, a 15 year old is below the age of consent, but if it is mutually agreed, it doesn't class as rape, it is unlawful sexual intercourse or U.S.I. Only at 12 yrs or younger is mutually agreed but non-consensual (due to not being seen as fit to consent) sex considered rape, even if committed by someone of the same age..or younger in the case of a male.

Other countries don't have this complication and consider statutory rape (sex below the age of consent at any age) as rape.

Mutually agreed sex can also be considered rape in the case of adults if one of the parties later decides they weren't fit to consent, even if they initiated and carried out the act.

Say for example we have a Boy -B and a Girl - G.

B and G meet at a party, both are drunk, perhaps B even a little more so.
As the evening draws on, things become sexual and G asks B to go somewhere private with her. B obliges.
G performs a sex act on A and initiates intercourse with B.
After the deed, they lay together in bed, and after a while leave the party to go to their respective homes.

In the morning G wakes up and decides that if she was sober she wouldn't have gone all the way with B on the first 'date'. In other words G has decided due to alcohol, she was unfit to consent. At this point the exchange above becomes rape by law.

I am not here to argue the wrongs or rights of that. However if you look at this objectively, you can see how this crime does not deserve life imprisonment for B, which is the possible sentence he could have faced had he abducted G, threatened her with a weapon and violently had forceful sex with her.

I'd like to think that anyone thinking about this objectively will see this. This is what Ken Clarke said, he also said the first example of rape , i.e. date rape as we would understand can be as serious as the second example in some instances, for example had B specifically medicated G in order to have sex with her that he knew G would not consent to.

The whole 'Rape is rape' argument is misleading because it can mean any different things to different people. Logically rape is of course rape otherwise it wouldn't be called rape, but it is often meant to suggest that there are no differences in the severity of rape. This I hope we have dis-spelled but further evidence is the amount of trauma that the victims go through.

Now I am quite sure the number of people that regret a drunken fumble is quite high and the amount of times this can involve penetration is almost equally high, but I doubt many people would claim their trauma caused from this is equal to that of a forcefully raped victim. It would be interesting to pair the latter with the former and ask the latter's opinion.

Key Points
Blame never lies with the victim in any crime
Rape is rape but not all rapes are equal in severity or seriousness evidenced by trauma caused and circumstances.
Political capital can often be made to try to twist words of sensible people

Hopefully this will be the last time I need to deal with this terrible subject, but I think it's important we don't let the highly emotional subject matter to lead to us losing our rationality.

Rally Day!

2011-05-14T20:08:00.000+01:00

Hello Dearest Chums,
Just sitting down after getting back from the 'Rally Against Debt'.
Must say it has had quite a bit of attention on the news as well as the social networking sites and despite the less than ideal travel, I had a really good time.

From suits to sweats, ordinary people from all walks of life attending 'Rally Against Debt'

I decided to use my time wisely there, I met a number of fellow twitter users, I kept an eye on the treatment of the Parody protesters, which rather predictably are being touted by their own as examples of the 'Craziness' of our movement (pushing the straw man argument to it's very extreme by actually being it's own straw man). I spoke to a couple of the policemen (think I counted 14 odd) who I asked if they had been especially called in to police the rally, and I must admit he had a slight smile on his face when he said no, they were all on duty anyway but instead of being on call driving around, they were on call from there.

Steward finding controlling the radical's are self-regulating (spot the twitter user)

At 12'O Clock the speeches began..which considering we were standing pretty much next to Big Ben were almost instantly drowned out by the bells. My highlights were Mr Durkin and Mr Farage..which shows you how bi-partisan it felt as there WAS a Tory for me to pick too .

Some of the speakers..
Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes), political blogger (Order-Order)
Mark Littlewood, Director of the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs)
Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance
Martin Durkin, documentary film maker and activist

I think an important organisational note should be the need for a bigger PA system next time (oh yes, this is only the beginning!) as the excessive noise of London traffic made some of the more eloquent speakers hard to hear, it's a lot easier to hear innane guttural screams of "F*ck the Cuts!" than it is to hear excellently delivered criticisms of the slavery called debt.
Still, I'm sure we all appreciated the toots and thumbs up from passing traffic.

A lot was said about the demographics likely to be at the rally and I think it prudent for me to honest and as objective as I can be. The numbers, firstly ( quite fittingly considering the subject matter) weren't as good as I had hoped for, I would say that there were somewhere between 350-400 people with perhaps 15-20 of those seeming to be press of some type or the other.

@le_mcevoy @ollyneville ...Sorry Neville, you will insist on blinking

Now while this initially made me sigh, as soon as I started talking to the attendants all was forgotten, and as was pointed out by one of the speakers, our placards weren't in the same mood as the TUC march..there were no "F**k off Socialist scum" or "Labour Pr*cks" placards that would have been the mirror of the TUC march placards. In fact a lot of the TUC banners "Capitalism isn't working" for example would have been more fitting at this rally but corrected to actually critique the system that failed us. "Socialism isn't working"...perhaps there was a double entendre joke there we could have used (I was myself wearing a "The problem with Socialism, is that you eventually run out of other people's money" Thatcher T-Shirt).
PS My favourite placard "Go stimulate yourself!"

Hayek' splosive Interview (sorry)

The people were from all over the country, some would look quite at home with a shotgun screaming at you to get off their land, some of them looked like they normally wore berets, there were different accents from all over the UK and a lot of people that travelled a lot further than I did!
In short, this was no rich person's rally, it was no young person's rally, it was no middle class rally, it was a rally from and of the people, who have nothing to gain from a successful outcome except the chance to pay their own bill, and have a bit of say in what was put on the shopping list.

All pleasant people, very friendly..and even Old Holborn was smiling...I think..though he was towering over a burning Euro flag...enough to make most smile.

We don't want poor people to get poorer, economic interference does that and that is what we are campaigning against.
We want all working people to benefit from what they do and to reintroduce supply and demand. At the moment we are supplied what the government deems is right for us and have the cost added to the bill.

We do not need diversity co-ordinators, we as a species, have been diverse for long enough without needing it co-ordinating. We do not need the thick layer of bureaucracy feeding off the hard working people of the country.What we do need is to stand up to the politicians bribing us with our own (and our children's) money and tell them enough is enough.

Today we made a start. This is just the beginning and eventually the majority of people who pride themselves on paying their own way will be with us. Then the politicians will finally have to learn that our freedom, and that of our children and our children's children cannot be bought.We will not surrender ourselves for the circuses and bread being offered.

*The scandal that is publicly funded union representatives was also brought up, this isn't anything new but will be brought before parliament soon, so if you can spare the time, write to your MP and tell them that Nurses should be Nurses, Firemen should be Firemen and unions who are very well funded as it is, should be unions.

ALL PHOTOS

Where's the sense in paying more for less UKuncut?

2011-05-11T14:37:00.000+01:00

A report from the IFS looked at public spending between 1997 and 2010 pre election last year.

In it, as you can imagine, it shows that the growth of spend on public services, rose tremendously under the Labour government. This shouldn’t surprise anyone that has looked at the figures, but I think it best we look at it in more detail and quantify it before moving on.

In 1997 when Labour was elected, as a percent of national income, spending on public services was 39.9%, when Labour left office it was 48.1%.

The growth in real terms of this spend is 4.4% year on year. Under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997 the figure was 0.7%.

So we can safely say that we are spending a lot more on services than we were.

Out of the 28 countries that we have comparable figures from we went from 7^{th lowest} spend on percent of National income to the 6^th, in 2010. This represents the biggest % jump out of all the 28 countries,

“… BUT” I hear you cry “we had to bail out the banks”. Yes, we did. So if you like, we’ll look at the figures from 1997 to 2007, a year before the recession. Our % increase spend was the 2^nd largest out of the 28.

I think we can safely say we have established that we have spent more, however this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I spend more at the supermarket sometimes too, especially if there is an offer, because although my weekly spend has gone up, I normally walk away with a bigger increase of value to money spent, or ‘Bang for buck’ as the calculator jockies call it.

So, did things get better proportionally to our increased spend?
Well, our public services have got better, the social security funds and eligibility for them have grown almost every year since the end of the war, this is a good thing, but has it got 8.2% better?

The ONS aimed to calculate this based on output figures and input figures from 1997 to 2007. They found that the ‘bang for buck’ had actually gone down by 13.4%.
In other words if efficiency and productivity had remained at the levels in 1997, for the extra money injected into the system, we should have had a 15.5% bigger output.

Philip Hammond doing a similar comparison, this time in ‘bang for buck’ growth in the Private Sector VS Public Sector concluded that the same services, if 1997 levels of efficiency were kept, should have cost £60 billion less than it actually did (if you compare it strictly Public Sector VS Public Sector we would have benefitted from the same output but for £42.5 billion less).

ONS Graph

So I think it is very important we keep this in mind before we go barrelling off to stand still in front of a shop we believe should pay more tax than it has to by law and the like UKuncut style. What really is the point in protesting over a few 10’s of £million’s when we have a £60 billion a year short fall on services as it is?

Surely all that is doing is throwing more money at an obviously failing system.

Firstly, let us address all the reasons why £1’s worth of spending on public services does not equal £1 of ‘bang’. Until then all we are doing is becoming ‘busy fools’ with a lot of input and not much more to show for it.

Somewhere in the public purse, there is a hole, no matter how much money you throw at it, even if you ignored the huge risk in scaring away the top 1% who pay for 25% of all tax, the extra money doesn’t give you the correct value.

We need to cut this out of the public services system, if that means jobs, then I am afraid that is what is needed. The public sector is not a charity and cannot afford to keep them bloated for the sake of it.

We need to get our house in order before we invite extra guests.

When we achieve that, you may find me calling for Tesco’s to pay an extra £60 million a year on top of the billions paid already, until then those actions seem quite pointless.

I would encourage UKuncut to treat each waste of our money on a level playing field instead of cherry picking which bit of lost money is a good loss and which is bad loss.

Anyone striving for a better, efficient country should be at the Rally Against Debt on the 14^th of May.

Why I support 'Rally against Debt'

2011-05-08T00:31:00.000+01:00

For most of you that are on Twitter or Facebook you may have come across #RallyagainstDebt before.

This post will be used to introduce it to you if you haven't already and will be a brief explanation of why it has my 100% support.

On the 26th of March, I like many in the UK was sat at home, little did I know that while most people were at home, at work, at the zoo or booking a day out to a pirate exhibition, we were apparently also supporting the 'March for The Alternative'.

I found this out when reading lefter-than-Lenin's-left-sock newspapers and news reports telling me that it was a view held by the majority of Britons...and good ole Red Ed Miliband told me that if I opposed the march that I ...er, supported apartheid? Hmm..this went too far for even the action loving press.

I could not reconcile this, however with the fact that most people that I tutted to about the march didn't even seem aware of it's existence.

The newspaper reports were 'proved' by a poll by YouGov.

Total sample size was 2,720 adults and was asked online.

Total	Conservative	Labour	Liberal Democrat
Support	52	19	83	40
Oppose	31	66	9	43
Don't know	17	15	8	17

The first thing you will notice is that you are only likely to support the March if you're a Labour supporter..if you look at the General Election '10 results you will see that you are statistically not likely to be a Labour supporter.

Not a surprise that a lot of Labour people were supporting the March, officially it is a TUC march and secondly it is a march against the actions that were taken to fix the problems inherited by Labour. It would be political suicide to NOT back it if you're the Labour leader because you would pretty much be saying "Yes, sorry guys, all these things that are being cut...that is to pay for OUR faults".

Anyway, enough back story. It was at this point that Rally Against Debt was dreamt up I believe. With the simple premise that yes, of course if there was a way to fix everything without every having to take responsibility that would be the most popular order of the day (this is why the the March for the Alternative was well attended, promoting new taxes like the Robin Hood tax, which even if it went well has no scope for fixing any problems even by its own advocate's figures and a clamp down on Tax planning methods..all ways by the public that can help them escape any need for austerity).

Coincidentally (smirk), a lot of the marchers had financial interest in the public sector not being cut. From the workers who benefit from a bigger salary and better pensions on average than their private sector brethren and the unions themselves that feed off of them. However, it did seem to have escape people's minds. I doubt that this would be allowed to go unmentioned if the banking sector ripped through London on a 'Bankers against the Banking Levy' march...but that is the mentality I guess, it's only greed when other people do it.

One thing should be noted and I think should be widely agreed before we continue. The public sector is too big. That is a fact. 'Whether we should cut it now, instead of keeping it too big in order to try and kick start growth' is the question, not 'is it too big?'.
That is mathematical, not ideological.

The amount of people in interviews who started by saying that the public sector wasn't too big had me sighing deeply, they don't even know why they are there. Even their beloved Labour party were going to cut back the public sector and when Labour are planning on cutting the public sector, that is a good indication that it has ballooned FAR beyond what is efficient.

I will not mention blame for this problem by Party from this point on, because it doesn't really change what our options are. It doesn't make a blind bit of difference which party ran up the debt or presided over the problems, the problems are here and we need to fix them.

Let's start off our thought process slightly differently.
What is economic growth? and is it always a good thing?
Growth is the expansion of GDP, is the common answer..however I do not see that as an accurate way to describe it. This doesn't take into account the reason for a higher GDP.

To bring it into loose terms that could be understood easier. GDP is like the value of all your possessions, your home, car, bank balance and furnishings. It is presumed that that any growth in the value of these things is a good thing.
What we do not consider though is the difference in growth because you spent wages ...or borrowed to buy goods.

This makes a crucial difference.
If we use our wages for it, it is sustainable, yes, we may have cash flow troubles sometimes, but as we are not committed to future liabilities, we are safe.

If, on the other hand, we use all our wages, but in an attempt to 'grow' our assets decide to get a loan using our friends as guarantors on the loan, this is very different. Firstly, our assets value will never grow by the amount we spend, that is the nature of commodities, there will always be value lost in the process of manufacturing them in labour costs and profit, meaning in affect, our £500 TV is made up of £250 worth of assets.

This is not normally a problem if spending your own money, but if its borrowed, it means that the value of your item is less than the loan, PLUS you will need to pay interest on the loan.*

*Real World- It has been shown that for every £1 borrowed and spent to encourage growth, it succeeds in growing the economy by 30p, and as that pound is borrowed, we pay back closer £1.05 to get 30p worth of growth.

The best option in our analogy would be to A) increase our REAL income or B) make efficiency savings (or both, which is what the current government are trying to do)
Neither of these options increase our asset value as much as borrowing but it is real and not tampered with.

However, what we had before the crash was a high growth, powered by the dynamo of credit. Sooner or later this had to stop and it caused just as much trouble as the boom had caused success. Economics has a way of balancing itself like that.

I would suggest that, excluding an event of Industrial revolution scope, we should ALWAYS fear the line on the graph steeply going up just as much as the steep decline, the later is caused by the former in most cases.

To suggest that we should start this cycle off again after we are still struggling from the last is ludicrous, but that is what is being demanded. Yes, they suggest sources for this money, but as discussed briefly, they are very unrealistic and even when achievable are so ineffective that the nature of the game doesn't change.
They are asking the country to take on debt to pay for the current spending, with the add-on line of "So it kick starts the economy".

This brings together their two reasons for fighting the cuts, they don't want to suffer cuts themselves and they do not see the problem with artificial growth. Not the strongest position.

What I believe in is real organic growth, based on more produce at same cost / same produce at less cost and/or new markets. The other concept I believe in is self-responsibility. By suggesting we borrow against our future tax income, we are getting something for nothing. The future generations that have to pay it off will be getting nothing for something ( a something bigger than what we received too!).

I cannot do this in good conscience, I cannot sit back and let the overly optomistic, who benefit in the short term on the gamble that over-spending might solve our problems, go unopposed.

I strongly agree with the sentiment of the following quote

"we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children"

This may not be our mess (another article is to come on the cause of our current situation), but either we clean it up, or our children do. That is the only choice..and the cleaning method has to work!

Support 'Rally against Debt', a fair, honest and most importantly, realistic alternative to pretending 'boom and bust' do not exist.

Tell us why YOU support Rally against Debt by emailing the organisers here

Visit the website at http://rallyagainstdebt.org/ and Facebook page to get more info on the first Rally on the 14th of May in London (say hi if you see me).
Alternatively, follow the #rallyagainstdebt or #rad hashtag and @debtrally.

And me, obviously @DBirkin

Well that is how we do that.

2011-05-07T22:11:00.000+01:00

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, we did it.

We as a nation not only voted against AV, we absolutely trounced it into oblivion.

There will of course be a few small minded* 'Yes to AV' campaigners that wish to complain, but besides that very small minority, most seem to accept the democratic will of the people of the UK.

*If you're wondering why I called them small minded, it is because they believe the main reason 'Yes' lost was that the UK public are stupid and must have been influenced by the 'lies' from the no campaign and were too stupid to realise it.

However, good hussle guys. Thanks for reading my Blog which has been up until now 100% AV related...It will now become a RALLYAGAINSTDEBT blog.

The wisest cat of them all...

2011-04-29T19:18:00.001+01:00

AV Oddity Part 2

2011-04-29T14:34:00.000+01:00

Let's say that we have three candidates
10,000 people turn out for the vote

A has 34% of the Vote
B has 33%+1 of the vote
C has 33-1 of the vote..

All C second preference A.

A wins with 6699 votes 3400 first and 3299 second preferences. =67%
A Majority of 1699 votes

Let's re-run that election but this time two people change their mind from B to C

A has 34% of the Vote
B has 33%-1 of the vote
C has 33+1 of the vote..

All of B second preference C

C Wins on 6600 votes 3301 first and 3299 second preferences. =66%
A Majority of 1100 votes.

So we go from a majority for A to a majority for C from just two votes...thats a 2799 vote swing!

AV is not logical, is "disturbingly unpredictable" and "unacceptably unfair"

Due to it's elimination process, it turns the competition from a 'winner takes all' to a 'loser takes all' where the will of whoever loses being the deciding factor

NB. this example is not likely to happen on this scale, but is only a magnification of the unfairness and inequality that exists in every AV election

Part two ...

A has 34% of the Vote
B has 33%-1 of the vote
C has 33+1 of the vote..

Perhaps, lets say in the second example, after the two voters have changed their mind, that only 1%of the total vote (100 votes) belonging to B transfers to C and the rest are exhausted..

We now have A on 3400 votes and C on 3401

C wins the election on 34%+1 of the total vote (or 50%+1 of final round votes)

In this example just two votes had a swing of 3299 votes..

and because of those two votes instead of getting a winner that had 66% of the total vote...who happens to be the FPTP winner (don't ever let someone tell you AV is only better than FPTP) we have an AV winner that is on 34% of the total vote...about half!

Vote No to AV on May 5th

Two Cheers and some beers for AV

2011-04-28T19:05:00.000+01:00

I was directed to this article "Two Cheers for AV" by @Hens4Freedom.

I will start off by saying that this article is very good in selling AV, it admits some faults of AV and makes the case that it isn't such a simple choice...but of course, he has picked AV so there are bound to be a few things we disagree on.

Claim One
Av requires a majority.

This isn't true in our version of AV, as votes are not compulsory and preferences are not compulsory the chances of a majority are middling, normally around 40% of the time according to most research, the MP elected will not feature at any preference level on the ballots of a majority of the voters.

Of course you can say this under FPTP but with 60% I believe at the last election. However the two do not compare that well, one is not preferencing a candidate at any level ..say from 1st- 8th preference...so is infact a vote against, whereas the other is simply not selecting them as a first choice, with nothing said about the other 7 possible preference levels.

Claim Two
Under AV a winner cannot be disliked by a majority

As with the first claim and for the reasons discussed, this is simply not true.

Claim Three
Fptp lets extremists in

We have not had an extremist MP at WestMinster for a very long time.

Claim Four
The Chirac claim..

Here is an odd one, firstly he criticises the system for allowing Le Pen to appear as a top two candidate..well yes, I can see how that can be annoying, but let's remember that the French know their system and they know they are likely to have a second vote before Le Pen could possibly become President..he then goes on to make a rather strange claim....

"The result was an apparent 80 per cent landslide win for Chirac. But Jospin, who was probably preferred to any other candidate by a majority of voters, and therefore would have been a democratic choice"

Well, ACTUALLY, luckily there were numerous studies on this particular election, as there are on most single winner elections.
So, we know that Chirac would still win under both approval voting AND range voting.
I am hoping the original author was unaware of these studies..but he should probably have checked if he was going to write about the subject.

Source is LSE and Rangevoting.org

Claim Five

"AV will not lead to a gain for the compromise party."
Yes, a lot of seats are Labour vs Conservative and in this case it will not change..BUT there are many seats when one of the main parties are Lib Dem.
In these seats, I am sure the author will agree, the Lib Dems will benefit hugely from transfers from the other main party. Also, one of the main claims from the Yes campaign is that many Lib Dems in Labour/Tory marginals vote tactically. Under Av this would not happen so I think it is a particularly bankrupt point to try and make.

The Author then speaks about two points that he believes make AV better than PR

1) That FPTP leads to extremist winners and AV prevents that.
2) That AV will mean no tactical votes

And lastly the author says that he hopes AV will lead to PR.

So 1) we have already dismissed, we do not have extremist MPs under FPTP..the good things about claims about FPTP is we have working examples..

2) This one is a yes and no..Yes, our first preferences will be more honest and NO more of our votes will end up with parties that we do not consider to be the best candidate.

So we are being HONEST about it, but it is doing what tactical voting does on a much wider scale than ever happened with FPTP.

His last point is an interesting one, as half of the article is based on how AV is better than other systems at keeping out extremists ...he then says he wants PR ..which is the single system that does allow these in to power. I am not making a comment on whether this is right or wrong, simply pointing out the clashing logic.

I think it is time for us , on both sides, to start being honest with each other, arguments like those above belong to people that have not researched what they are talking about...and I am not sure if this is BECAUSE the author doesn't know what he is talking about...or knows and is misleading the reader on purpose.

Vote No to Av

Is politics just a choice between A or B?

2011-04-28T16:20:00.000+01:00

The Yes To Fairer Votes rally...er, Debate

2011-04-28T01:00:00.000+01:00

I have just returned from the Yes to Fairer Votes event/rally/debate at Canterbury Christ Church University.

When I first turned up to the venue, I was treated to tables covered in Yes Campaign paraphernalia. I was kicking myself for not bringing any No2AV leaflets, but due to not living in Canterbury for four years I had stupidly forgotten the traffic situation and was therefore slightly out of breath, I probably wouldn't have had time to prepare anyway.

The debate kicked off with Daniel Hamilton for the 'No' side and John Ault for the 'Yes' side giving their opening bit.

The usual issues were called upon, for the Yes side John opened up by saying he wouldn't pick AV if he had a choice, but
*AV would make MPs work harder
*AV would prevent MPs from only targeting safe voters
*AV would end safe seat and jobs for life
*That the No campaign think you're stupid

He informed us that 64% of people that didn't vote in the GE10 would be voting for them and that AV would prevent MPs from only targeting marginal areas..........

At this point, I must say his buddying up to the audience was still making me smile, "Who here has a job for life?" ... but as the evening went on this general quiet amusement turned into a rather uncomfortable feeling..similar to how you feel when your parents tried to relate to you as a teenager.

It became very clear from the off that the Yes speakers argument was very much 'Aren't politicians bastards!'. He made several comments likening the 'Yes to Fairer votes' campaign to the suffragettes and the fight for universal emancipation and continued to tout the claim that AV gives power back to the people (Which the main funder for YTFV, The ERS, disagrees with).

Daniel Hamilton then stepped up to the plate. He spoke about

*FPTP producing stable government
*FPTP produced a more proportional result in 3/4 of the last elections than AV
*FPTP produces safe seats because the people vote for them
*That under AV 4/10 of all elected will get less than 50% of the total vote
*That while AV is easy to vote with ( Any one can rank 1-2-3-4 after all) that it produces some weird results, like when it can benefit your candidate more if you vote against them sometimes.
*Av would cost £250 million (I disagree on this>)
*That AV IS tactical voting in all but name built into a system
*Fringe votes would decide some of the seats

I know that looks like I have written more of the No points than I did the Yes. This is only because that is all that was said.. but in many different ways.

Then we came to the questions.

Q. Will the referendum be the only one seen in our life times if we vote no?
John - Yes
Daniel - Don't know

Well obviously 'Don't know' is the honest answer there. I wouldn't have guessed that I would have to defend FPTP against AV this year if asked a year ago. We cannot really know what will happen. The electoral system we use wasn't really spoken about until now so as long as the pressure is kept after the 'No' vote, I see no reason why we won't see STV or something similar on the manifesto of one of the main parties...though of course, I don't know.

Q. Would having Primaries be better than a change to AV?
John. Maybe, but that is up to the party to decide
Daniel. (same)

Q. Will AV see the end to short term change in policy
John. No
Daniel. No

This question seemed to be a bit of a strange one as it has nothing to do with AV or FPTP.... the only way to not have a change in policy is to not have a change in government.

At this point I must admit my note taking takes a turn for the worse so will go through the rest of the points I remember as I do.

The issue of cost came up and in a different question the 'right' cost.

Now as a No supporter I cringe when I hear the £250 million price tag..even if we use the counting machines, which I don't think we will especially not with the fuss that has been made, the largest part of the remaining money is on the referendum..with the remaining money being on education.

The cost argument only works if, like me, you would consider AV a waste even if it were free....

Both sides made the point that elections should be as cheap as they can be without limiting effectiveness.

Another question was about whether the debate had been made worse by it being made political...

The Yes campaign attacked the No campaign for using the imagine of Nick Clegg...then it was deathly silent as no-one mentioned the Dinosaur/Nick Griffin campaign from the Yes side.

The issue of Fringe groups was brought up and as a No supporter who doesn't go along with the 'AV will lead to BNP' nonsense, I was happy to find out that Daniel would match my view on this.

We then were treated to an over passionate promise from John that he "wouldn't let the BNP get a seat"...which I thought was nice of him...except of course that as he said he was an advocate of PR ...which would let the BNP get at least a few seats....
Another logical fallacy. Not due to AV but because of a rather over passionate speaker.

Then we got on to coalitions..

Coalitions are tricky. They can in some circumstances work..in others not, but my concern is that I believe coalitions will lead to unaccountability..
Example, in the last half of the 20th century in West Germany the Free Democrats had on average 9% of the vote.
However due to the wonders of coalitions they were in Government 86% of the time...with 19% of the cabinet posts....

No... coalitions aren't for me.

John claimed that coalitions aren't more likely under AV...even though I have never seen an independent analysis that agrees with him.
He goes on to point out that in Australia they have had less hung parliaments and less coalitions.

!!!WHAT!!!!
I mean HONESTLY WHAT??!!

Firstly, out of the 44 elections held since their introduction of AV, 22 of them were coalition governments! Secondly, because of the permanent coalition, Australia is effectively a two party state (which was also denied by the 'neutral' host..but not by any other commentator I have ever heard from) ...so in order to get a hung parliament, you have to, in effect, do the equivalent of flipping a coin and have it land on neither heads nor tails....which funnily enough, they did at the last election. (72/72).

The usual nonsense was rolled out

"All the parties use AV to select their leaders"
...the survey says...EH EERR!
Only Labour (that brought us Ed Miliband instead of David Miliband) and Lib Dems (Nick Clegg) were elected by AV. Cameron was elected by a hybrid Exhaustive run off MP nomination with a FPTP member vote..(for those that want to compare it to FPTP, Cameron won 65% of the total vote at first pref..meaning he would have won under FPTP and if it was under AV, it wouldn't have gone further than first round).

"No longer will we have an MP that most people are against"

Nope, in fact I have seen elections where the winner got 37% of the TOTAL vote under AV. (NSW NEWCASTLE 2007).. that means that 63% of people not only not wanting them as a first choice..they didn't want them as a 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,5th,6th,7th and 8th choice (it went to 8 rounds). In fact 40% of all elections, like we have said , are likely to have a MP with less than a majority...now yes 60% at the moment have less than a majority now..but that is just from the first preferences...to have everyone have to choose between you or nothing ..and a majority still don't pick you..well, that is bad.

To Sum Up...

Nothing new happened at this debate, the same arguments, the same nonsense and the same lies, mixed in with what , to me at least, a very non-independent independent host. This was reflected in the before and after poll hardly changing.

I know this will sound biased but Daniel, to me, was by far the better speaker and stuck to the issues instead of going off into utopian rants, unlike John, Daniel was respectful of his opponent and neither pulled silly faces at everything being said by the other speaker or started conversations with the host instead of listening to his opponent.

A rather disappointing night really, though it was nice that people were getting engaged with the issues.

For an alternative Yes To Fairer Votes Version of the same night, I would encourage you to read this blog

Is AV better than FPTP ...revisited

2011-04-26T13:59:00.000+01:00

I was recently pointed towards Gowers' Weblog by @lipscombe1 (James Lipscombe) ..to be honest it was something I have come across in my AV saga before, read a few lines of, chuckled to myself about, and then left.

It does seem however, like the 'Voting Power index' and the 'the Jungle Animals had an election video' that the Yes campaign..or at least it's campaigners are taking it quite seriously.

So let's get in to it.

I will not be copying over all the text and then reviewing it as I believe his post is far too long and would only make it worse. I may however copy over bullet points which in combination with the link to the original post here you can see for yourself to check I haven't used anything thing out of context. It isn't my aim to do so and as always my comments box will be unmoderated (except for when I am attacked with foul language rather than my posts of course..and perhaps even then I might let it slide if it makes me laugh).

Ok, the post opens with a brief background of the referendum, past referendum's etc and informs the reader that we will be treated to a more mathematical slant of Blog, which I am always in favour of (maths is a lot easier to debate).

A Little History is where we hit our first snag.
It becomes very obvious that this is going to be a FPTP is not PR section..which is a valid point..however in the context of FPTP vs AV it isn't.

The second point is comparing NATIONAL % of votes when we do not have a national based system but a constituency based system, this is pretty misleading for two reasons. You can have two areas where a seat is hard fought and won under fptp, compared to a safe seat. This will throw the national results..secondly and most importantly, the constituencies are not all the same size.
You can have two constituencies where 90% of the population vote for someone, but because the constituencies are different sizes it would appear that a seat for A needs X votes, where a seat for B only needs Y votes.

This is a valid criticism none the less but that has nothing to do with FPTP and is just as likely to happen under AV. What is good though is that the other part of the act that brought us the referendum will also aim to fix this problem.

The usual suspects are called upon, Thatcher and Blair. I personally think this is a hook to get anti thatcherites and anti blairites into the debate in a kind of "FPTP was the reason we had X" fashion.

What he has conspicuously left out of course is the poll results from the time that could be useful when comparing both systems historically.

To save time, I'll concentrate on the last election mentioned in this section, 1997.

Labour, 43.2% of the vote, 418 seats 64% of the seats

Conservatives, 30.7% of the vote, 165 seats 25% of the seats

Liberal Democrats, 16.8% of the vote, 46 seats 7% of the seats

Now, that looks quite damning doesn't it and I can see why a Yes campaigner might like to use that.

However, let's look at the same thing again, but with AV seat % according to research.

Labour, 43.2% of the vote, 418 seats 64% of the seats Under AV 471 seats 68% of Seats

Conservatives, 30.7% of the vote, 165 seats 25% of the seats under AV 70 seats 10% of seats

Liberal Democrats, 16.8% of the vote, 46 seats 7% of the seats Under AV 115 seats 18% of seats

Source being BBC findings which Roy Jenkins also backs up

So instead of giving Labour 21% too many seats, it gives them 25% too many.
Instead of giving the Conservatives 6% less of the seats, its gives them 21% less.
Instead of Giving the Lib Dems 10% less seats it gives them 1% more.

If you add all the results together, this election is 10% less proportional under AV than under FPTP.

I feel I should make it clear here that I am not saying one system will be more or less proportional, they are not proportional systems and some of the elections he mentioned will be more proportional under AV, some less.

The point I am trying to make is that this argument belongs to those promoting STV, (even though it would still produce some disproportionate results) or national lists.

This point is also missed by him in his section
Does FPTP reflect the will of the voters?> in which he ironically says about the election we have just looked at , the 1997 election of Tony Blair "However, it is not reasonable to say that the size of Blair’s majority — he had almost two thirds of all seats — reflected the national mood."

He then makes a similarly flawed comment on the party with the most seats not getting the most votes, this statement suffers from the same problems we have discussed.

To be honest with you readers, it was at this point I chuckled and clicked the X in the corner of my page. I have seen many of these arguments in the last 8 months and I have replied to so many. I have not read the rest of the article, so I will read through it now and post some more :)
OK, he has admitted that AV is not proportional so the top bit of his blog is irrelevant..interesting tactic "..there is no obvious reason to expect AV to be proportional."

Ah, the wasted vote/tactical vote argument.
Here, is another Yes campaign line. That if you don't vote for the winner, your vote is wasted.
However I feel that a vote is NEVER wasted. If I want to vote for a party, that is my democratic right, if i lose, it's not wasted, calling it wasted is very cynical.

The phrase "It's not the winning, it's the taking part that counts" should be the motto of any democracy lover.

He then talks about monotonicity with AV, i.e that sometimes it is possible for you to benefit your candidate of choice by voting against them.
He judges that this is unlikely to catch on..well I can agree with that, but it's likely to go on as you will see here

Very importantly we have to think about what people gain from voting tactically under both FPTP and AV and the cost of doing it.

Under FPTP, people tend to vote tactically when they are beyond reasonable doubt their candidate of choice will lose. So they vote for someone else, the cost is your favoured candidate is even less likely to win. You have made a compromise.
Under AV, when you vote tactically you risk causing your candidate to lose but you only do it if you are beyond reasonable doubt your candidate of choice will lose, if it pays off, you candidate of choice will win. The cost is much more worth it. No compromise has to be made.

This is why, although less likely, I believe tactical voting to be worse under AV.

Of course, depending on what definition of 'tactical voting' we use, if it was for example "having your vote go to a party that isn't the best standing, in your opinion, in order to stop another that you dislike from winning" we could describe AV as a whole as institutionalised tactical voting.

The FPTP name is brought up. I can answer this, the winning post is when your votes are X+≥1 where X is the number of votes of the second place.
It is not a fixed post in the terms of votes needed, but nor is 50% of final round votes+1 so there is no real change or advantage with AV..

Boy, this blog is long...

I will skim through some bits "It was the FPTP system that allowed Mrs Thatcher to rule for eleven years with large majorities and well under half the votes" ...as above, in some circumstances it would have got 'worse' under AV with Thatcher so another slightly misleading statement there.

"Under AV there is a real chance that Labour would have won the 1983 election", not according to the research..it suggests Labour would have lost 20 more seats...

"it is unlikely that John Major would have had his shock victory in 1992, for instance" again not according to the research

"Probably in 2005 it would have left Blair a little more punished for the Iraq war" not according to the research

We then get on to the counters to No2av arguments..
1. the horse race, i know where he is coming from on this one, though i will say there are races like what he has described as silly, where you see how far you can run in a set time (or set amount of votes) and the racer that has run the more laps or distance is the winner.

2. Av being unfair.
This is a tricky one, i am not exactly sure what no2av mean by unfair..what I mean when I say unfair is this...not all ballots are treated the same, you can have some ballots where every preference is used towards the result and you can have people that only have their first preference used. Kind of like this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFbYwHAqrC4

3.this leads on from the 2nd nicely. Think of a system, where instead of preferences, you have X ballots, but multiple rounds...every time you vote, the least popular candidate is eliminated and everyone that voted for that candidate gets another vote to use on adding to the remaining candidates vote total
This system quite clearly gives some people more votes than others.

It is what I have referred to as DB voting, named after myself ;) ...It will produce the same results AV every time, because it is the same thing but worded differently. We have got into the realm of semantics here. Clearly though, having your second preference ignored if you first doesn't win while other people have their 2nd, 3rd 4th and 5th preference influence the result is not equal or fairer.

4.This works if you don't believe people's first choice should, if we are being objective, be more valuable than a 4th preference. I do believe that, so I see an unfair advantage.

5. I agree in part with this one, Av doesn't help the BNP but where I disagree is that it will not help the extreme issues become mainstream.

Yes, I am sure many extremist people vote for mainstream parties, but there WILL be more of these votes up for grabs (SEE George Foreman Grill analogy)

6. The cost i am not going to comment on, I do not think no2av are lying, i do think they are wrong...and especially now all the fuss has been made, counting machines will not be needed...there will be a cost in education but this point only really counts if we do not consider AV better than FPTP, so is more of a reason to back up someone already voting no then to convince people who think AV is the best system.

7. Av is not simple..ranking is.

"Labour, A
Conservative, B
Lib Dems, C
BNP, D

where and (let us suppose)

Those lucky BNP supporters now get their second-choice votes counted. Let’s suppose that and that and are the percentages of votes transferred to Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, respectively. So after the first elimination the position is

Labour, A+E
Conservatives, B+F
Lib Dems, C+G

Suppose now that the Lib Dems are third. Now we have and and the standings are

Labour A+E+H+K
Conservatives B+F+J+L

Let us think carefully what and stand for. is the number (expressed as a percentage of the total number of voters) of Lib Dem voters who transfer to Labour, which means Lib Dems who either put Labour as their second choice or put the BNP as their second choice and Labour as their third choice. is the same thing but with “the Conservatives” replacing “Labour”. is the number of BNP supporters who put the Lib Dems second and Labour third, and is the number of BNP supporters who put the Lib Dems second and the Conservatives third."

Put your hands up if that is simple?

We may think it is simple, I think playing piano or guitar is simple...but not everyone will..i would go so far to say, most people won't like it.. hence the increase in spoiled ballots even in OPV in Australia.

8. It is fair to say that some politicians will become more extreme, others will become more safe..depending on what is needed.
He also makes a point that under FPTP you can elect someone that most people dislike, I agree..this can of course happen under Av, as long as they aren't the MOST disliked. I doubt very often the condorcet loser does win under FPTP though, not with the likes of the BNP and other such "healthy grill waste" parties.

9.This is an odd one, hung parliaments are believed to be more likely with AV, most independent sources will say this, from 4 Fact Check, BBC, FullFacts.org etc.. they will become more likely anyway but will get more so with AV. That is not the odd bit though, the author argues my point..that in 1997 AV could have led to a bigger swing to Labour..even though he criticised FPTP for the swing being too much already.

10. Is true, but will change over time, like who benefits under AV in Oz has, but at the moment the lib dems would benefit from AV.

11. I agree with the author here, you shouldn't vote not to hurt Clegg..you should, in my opinion, vote no because it is fairer.

12. Not too swayed either way here, only way to dislodge a government is to take away it's MPs, only way for a MP to lose in FPTP is for someone to get more votes than them, under AV someone can get more votes than them, but because the new party is a polar opposite to the other non-elected party, they second preference the incumbent.

An example would be say a Lib Dem MP.. he is unpopular, so labour over takes him in the first round, but the tory voters, while unhappy with the lib dem are unlikely to preference Labour highly...in fact they may see another Labour Mp as a threat to a possible Tory government, so they tactically preference Lib Dems, meaning that the Lib Dem is safe even though unpopular because at least they're not tory/labour..this would be unlikely under FPTP.

13.Ahh, this is pretty much the Voter Power Index argument. The more marginal your constituency the more value your vote has as it has an increased chance of changing the result.

This is only true of course if you view your vote in isolation of everyone else's.

To say for example that in a game result that ended A 20 vs B 21 ..the last score for B was worth the most, is completely in accurate.
If you took away any of B's goals, that last goal would crash in its perceived value.

It should be plain to see that every goal is important and every goal counted as 1 goal.

The same can be said of votes.

Every vote is worth one vote for one person under FPTP. Everyone can change the result by '1'

A nice way to demonstrate this is to go to the GE2010 results page and look at you constituency and look at your chosen party's result. Everyone changed that number by '1'. That is all ..and that is every voter.

14. I also don't go for the "it's been done this way for ages so let's keep it" but i also don't go for the "it's been done this way for ages so let's get rid of it" argument.
I want to keep FPTP because it is, in my opinion better than AV.

Conclusion,
I liked this post, I feel no need to change my mind, but at least they're arguments.

I hold many of the authors views on what is wrong, but most of the time completely disagree with the cause or remedy.

I would hate to think that we sleep walked into a Yes vote because "anything must be better".
Yes, sometimes FPTP is crap, I have many blog posts where I make this clear, but AV doesn't fix these problems and can make some worse.

I'd encourage everyone to vote NO in May, AV is not a step in the right direction, it is a step to split the reformer vote.

The reply to the reply to the No 2 AV reply

2011-04-20T20:55:00.000+01:00

I came across a post from "Raggedy-Man" asking questions to the No2AV campaign about the leaflet. He then got a reply and decided to comment on it. I thought it fair that I reply back to flesh out some of the points No2AV made.

1) The funding part. It was mentioned probably for the reason that many times when I am campaigning I am asked how much money we are wasting...the answer in my opinion is a lot...but not on this leaflet..It's true that no tax was spent on the Yes to Av's campaign either...but anyone who gets both and assumes because it doesn't say it on the 'Yes' flier that it MUST be funded by taxes is going to be in the extreme minority.

2)They should have answered your Voting Index query better...
The short answer is that the voting index is nonsense. The only way for everyone to get "1" is to have a single part system.
Infact before they manipulated the formula to make the 'Yes' campaign look better, their results would have made interesting reading.

Let's look at the results from the old site shall we...

Where your vote is worth the most was Arfon where you get 1.308 votes each... the winning MP got 33.88% of the vote...now, let's look at the WORST place according to the Index..Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough where your vote is only worth 0.002 votes. The winning MP got 69.59% of the vote.
Now, as a Yes to AV supporter, shouldn't this prevent them from using the Voting index? I mean considering that they think that the MP should get more than 50% of the vote..but the voting index says you have less of a vote the higher the % the winning MP gets??

3)Not really much to add to their reply, with finite money, money saved will be spent on something else more worthy or to reduce how much we have to borrow so less interest to pay..

4)Again, not much to add besides the fact that AV doesn't find the most supported candidate all the time...I have blogged on this too.

5)This one is strentching it a bit, they talk about fptp and then say but under AV someone lesser can win.

6)Well he has nicely dodged the logic here. Under AV coalitions ARE more likely, in coalitions promises are less likely to be kept. This is true.
No claim was ever made that all FPTP policies are enacted..but normally they have to explain why and have credible reasons. Under coalitions they can just say, "Sorry, not our call".

7)There is obviously a huge difference in how complicated both systems are..in one you cast a vote, you walk out of the booth knowing who you have voted for and if they get more votes then anyone else, they win.

Under AV you rank all the preferences you want, you do not know when you leave the booth who you have voted for (after all according to the YES to AV campaign, you only have one vote), then there is the counting method which goes on for a bit at the very least the same length as FPTP but sometimes much more...Also consider in amongst that, that you can actually be better sometimes voting for your opponent under AV as sometimes this ca cause your favorite candidate win whereas if you voted for the person you really wanted, they may lose. ...But pointing this out I guess shows that I must think everyone is stupid..not that AV IS complicated.

8)Under FPTP and AV we do not vote for governments..we vote for MPs.

9)You have used a run off analogy to counteract a FPTP position.
There ARE no rounds 'or heats' with AV, that is nonsense.
In heats or rounds, everyone gets to run again..if in some heats they only let the loser run again to see if they could beat the fastest persons time without letting the fastest person run more than once..you'd think it unfair right? As these do not constitute 'heats'.

The better analogy would be a single round (as thats what both AV and FPTP is)...
..Everyone runs a race to see how far they can get in 10 minutes...but because the winner doesn't run further than all the other people put together, the loser gets to choose where he wants to donate his distance to...if someone hasn't got more than everyone else's distance put together, the next slowest person gets to decide who he wants to donate is distance too...

Does this sound like a good way to decide who is the winner? This is AV.

10)I have never got this argument, the BNP will undoubtedly get more votes but will still count for nothing to them as smaller parties have less chance of winning under AV..what WILL increase though is the need for people in the mainstream to take on these more radical elements in order to try and get second preferences..

I would rather the fringe vote be left in the fringe.

11)The point they made was that coalitions lead to broken promises and coalitions are more likely under AV..

12) You answer your own point, this isn't about PR. People vote for MPs, AV which is basically losers ganging up to take down winners, isn't going to lead to 'fairer' wins for MPs.

13) Canada is rather a different country to the UK, made up of a lot of regional politics..this is why there have been more hung parliaments.
..and see my reply for 6..

14) Nick Clegg is the leader of the party that will often decide who gets into coalition under AV. Maybe we'll have another Lib Dem leader decide in the future but the sentiment doesn't really change, the policies will still be decided in coalition deals, not manifestos

One final point, the original E-Mail was written to No2AV to help him 'make up his mind'.. is anyone thinking that really he may have made up his mind already? ;)

The George Foreman Grill analogy (AV vs FPTP in extreme views)

2011-04-01T13:22:00.000+01:00

For those of you that do not have the pleasure of owning a healthy grill, the concept is that you cook your food on a sloping hot plate. This means that as the food is cooked, all the fat and excess liquid is drained off the food (with mine it drains into a removable bowl).

The benefit of this is that you can buy and eat food that if cooked traditionally, would normally have nasty bits in it and be unhealthy, without those drawbacks.

To bring it back to politics, this is a perfect way of thinking about FPTP, AV and PR.

By filtering out the extreme vote, FPTP is effectively draining away the 'fat and nasty bits' leaving the most supported in place.

With PR, you 'eat the food' as it comes. You get the good bits, you get the nasty bits. Nothing has been changed from how it was given to you.

...then we come to AV.
AV also 'drains away the fat and lard' however, in the worst of both systems, it then poors it back on top of the 'healthy food'.

With AV you'll have the respectable parties courting the views of the extreme parties in order to try and gain the second preferences of their voters.

Unlike PR, you will not have good bits and bad bits represented, you'll just have goods bits with a layer of lard over it all.

FPTP may mean that not everyone's views are represented, but this is because those views do not represent a large enough proportion of the voters in that area. I do not see what is wrong with that in a democracy.

Much like finding the median can sometimes be a much better way of finding the average than the mean.

Vote No to AV for healthy politics (centuries without extremists)

The Voter Index and its use by Yes2av

2011-03-29T22:00:00.000+01:00

Just a short post tonight. I will be making a video or presentation with this subject so feel a quick explanation will suffice.

Yesterday evening I was looking through an unofficial Yes2AV facebook page and came across a critique of the "One Person, One vote" No2av campaign.

This, obviously, should be expected..but what struck me is HOW they were attacking it...
then this
"So, No2AV think that FPTP means one man one vote. Let's make our own video to show them exactly what one man one vote means under FPTP. Use http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ to find out how much your vote is actually worth. Write it on a piece of paper and record yourself for a minute. Send all the footage to mevanbabakar@gmail.com. Like this post if you'll take part!"
..was posted

I tried explaining at the time that this is a bit of an own goal, the voter power index is not designed with AV in mind and would not look favourably on it.
What did I get for my trouble? A quick "Oh yeah..whoops" perhaps? "Thank you" ?

Nope, got banned!

So, here we go. Here is the ready made reply to the video they haven't even made yet.

Please keep in mind that AV's whole principle is 50+% good, -50% bad.

Here is the list of the BEST constituencies according to the voter index.

The format is constituency, followed by supposed vote worth and then the amount of total vote the winning MP received.

1.Arfon                                    1.308 votes 33.88%
2.Ceredigion                           1.220 votes 36.52%
3.Clwyd West                         1.217 votes 36.12%
4.Belfast South                       1.077 votes 30.15%
5.Wirral West                         1.053 votes 41.77%
6.Preseli Pembrokeshire       1.036 votes 36.38%
7.Sittingbourne & Sheppey    1.032 votes 41.72%
8.Na H-eileanan An Iar          1.031 votes 44.90%
9.Aberconwy                          1.018 votes 33.00%
10.Edinburgh South               1.013 votes 33.23%

Notice something a bit weird there?
Gets better...

Same thing, his time with the WORST constituencies..

650.Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough    0.002 votes 69.59%
649.Knowsley                                                 0.002 votes 71.8%
648.Easington                                                   0.002 votes 71.29%
647.Barnsley East                                          0.002 votes 70.97%
646.Washington & Sunderland West             0.003 votes 68.79%
645.Liverpool Walton                                     0.003 votes 71.75%
644.Bootle                                                        0.003 votes 71.05%
643.Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford   0.004 votes 65.34%
642.Islwyn                                                        0.004 votes 64.35%
641.Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill          0.004 votes 64.48%

The average is 0.253 if anyone wanted to know.

So according to the VoterIndex site, the WORST place is where 72/100 people voted for their MP...and the best is where 66/100 voted against their MP...

Hopefully they'll realise this themselves...that if they are campaigning for 'a majority' to vote for their MP, the voter index is not their friend..and using it to berate FPTP when it is going to rank AV lower, is down right mental.

But hey..video to come.

DB Voting

2011-03-27T19:17:00.000+01:00

A new voting system.

I have had an idea chaps and chappesses.
It's a brand new voting system.
Much like Jenkins before me, it is a modified version of a previous system, in this case FPTP.
It's called FPTP + or DB Voting.

This is how it works, due to all the data being collected, it is going to be down in one round.

Method

Each voter writes a number on as many of their ballot papers as they want to, only using the same number once and numbering consecutively.

The Count

Every ballot with a 'one' on is put into piles depending on what candidate's name is on the ballot.
If a candidate gets more than half the number of ballots, they win, if not the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. Any one that used their first vote on the eliminated candidate, gets another vote and if they have written a number two on any of the other ballots, that is added to any non-eliminated candidate.

If at this stage a candidate has more than half of all ballots used excluding the eliminated candidate's votes, they win. If not we continue the process. We eliminate the candidate with the next lowest amount of votes and their voters get to use their next vote..and so on and so forth.

The votes that the eliminated candidate receive before being eliminated are kept with the candidate so they can see how many votes they got.

Now obviously, this seems like a bit of a messed up system doesn't it..some people having more votes than others. Some people getting to use more of their ballots than others.

Say your candidate came second due to other voters sixth or seventh vote while your second vote has been completely ignored. Doesn't seem 'fairer' does it.

This is AV.

AV without the spin of 'rounds'.

If AV was buying a round of drinks, they would go and get themselves a drink, bring it back to the table, pick up everyone else's drink and put the same drink back down again and say "There you go, a whole new round for everyone"

It's a clever bit of spin, like when people compare the number of hung parliaments in the UK and Australia..while leaving out that Australia is a two party state, meaning their chances of a hung parliament would be the equivalent of flipping a coin and having it land on the edge, not heads or tails.

How AV Manipulates a Majority for a Candidate

2011-03-12T00:54:00.000Z

The latest in my series of reviews, or character assassinations as some of our #yes2av friends call them, is of the Article -

"How AV Builds a Majority for a Candidate" by Antony Green.

Apparently he does something to do with politics Down Under. Though I can only imagine he is freelance due to the amount he writes for the UK "Yes to fairer votes" campaign.

We have a few loose straw man arguments here and a few down right bizarre comments from him too, so let's get straight to it.

He starts his argument by asking:
"If a candidate in an election heads the field with 26.3% of the vote, should they be viewed as the most popular candidate ...or should the fact nearly three quarters of voters didn't support the candidate play a part in determining the outcome?"

Just a few nit picky comments with that question, one answer is, don't know, who were the other candidates and what is there political stance compared to the other runners up?
Two is the wording, "didn't support" ...well if you don't support anyone your first preference doesn't go to, what is the point of AV exactly? "didn't vote for" is probably more accurate (even if it gives up some of its zest).

Next he talks about Wagga Wagga's politics under AV as if it were under FPTP which as we all know (all together now) "is completely irrelevant and pointless because electoral process changes political landscape".

He points out that under FPTP the anti-labor vote would have been split, allowing Labor in! Oh no!
"If this were an FPTP contest, McPherson would be elected as a successful Labor candidate in an overwhelmingly conservative electorate"

Of course he fails to mention, that this wouldn't have happened under FPTP because the "conservative" party didn't fragment until after AV was brought in.
At the last FPTP election out of almost 1,900,000 votes cast only 35000 (or less than 1.9% of the vote) was for anyone put the two "conservative" or labor parties.

No chance of vote splitting there.

Moving on,

Under FPTP, other candidates in the count would have set about urging voters to vote tactically.

Well, like we have discussed, no, there would still be two parties..as there is now under AV, they would just be FPTP parties instead of AV coalition parties.

...but he has got a point..wouldn't it be awful to have politicians trying to influence voters on how to vote by telling them..
*whistles*..

...DUM DUM DUM!!!

He then goes on to talk about the counting process, using very unique to Australia politics etc blah blah blah...

Low and behold we have a winner and it isn't even those pesky Labor chaps! Brilliant.
The winner with 46% of the total vote..hmm...*scrolls back to top of article*..obviously this is some new type of 'majority' I haven't heard before.

He then continues to crow about how the politics involved, which have evolved due to AV and work because of AV as were built on the rules of AV wouldn't work if the rules were changed to FPTP. This apparently is vindication of AV.

To use a topical analogy, that's like suggesting that because a Koala bear couldn't survive in the savanna of the African plains, that it must be Africa that is wrong and isn't Australia great for keeping this very Australian being going?

AV in the UK would be different. We have a three main party system. We have three main different ideologies (one of the main reasons we have three parties in the Uk is because unlike Australia's two party system, FPTP doesn't punish smaller parties, or encourage absorption to the same degree as AV).
Yes, the Lib Dems split the Anti- Tory vote..in the same way that the Lib Dems split the anti Labour Vote... in the same way that Labour splits the anti-Tory and anti-Liberal vote etc..

You get a supporter of each of these three parties in a room and every one of them is going to be out numbered by people against their party. Should we really let the decision be made by whoever gets to speak first like AV does?...Especially if they get to speak first by having the LEAST support?

An unfortunate series of events (the perils of AV).

2011-02-21T18:05:00.000Z

Ok, as requested.

There is an election.
For Simplicity only, lets say it involves three candidates.
One Labour,
One Liberal Democrat,
One Tory (what the hell, we've taken back the term ;) .

Results are as follows.
Labour 45%
Lib Dem 30%
Tory 25%
FPTP winner Labour. But this is an AV election, so onto the next round

The Tory Candidate is eliminated. In the spirit of the coalition (and to keep out Labour), 18 of the 25% second pref Lib Dem and 2 of the 25% vote labour (SHOCK!), 5 were exhausted.

We now have a winner. On 48% of the total vote, the Lib Dem's against 47% of Labour.
Close , but it is obvious that the most popular person won right?

Lets have a look at the information that AV doesn't reveal then.

Lib Dems second pref'd 20 of their 30% voted Labour and 5 of the 30% voted Tory, 5 were exhausted

Labour second pref'd 15 of their 45% to the Lib Dems (Yellow Tories) and 5 of the 45% to Tory, 25 exhausted.

So how does that make the end result look?

Lib Dems AV winner has 30% first round votes and 33% of the second prefs. (63% of people preferenced them 1st or second)

Tory has 25% of the first round votes and 10% of the second prefs (35% of people preferenced them 1st or second)

Lastly we have Labour, FPTP winner. Has 45% of first preferences and 22% of the second prefs (67% of people preferenced them 1st or second)

This highlights the problem of allowing just 25% of people in a vote to second preference.

*Obviously I could have made these figures a lot more biased to prove my point even more but I think this is a quite fair representation of how it could look.*
The AV winner had neither the most support from the populace or the most concentrated support.
In short, it is perfectly possible for the person with the most votes in FPTP to be more supported in the voting populace than the winner under AV.

Which is one of the reasons I support FPTP, not that it'll always get it right, but because it processes the information given to it right.
If 45% voted labour, that is what it will tell you. If 25% voted Tory, that is what it would tell you.

What AV would tell you under that election up there is that 48% of people support the Liberal Democrats and 47% people support Labour. It is a system that is designed to misinterpret the raw data given to it.

The End (or is it? DUM DUM DUUUUUUM)

The fanatical supporters of electoral reform think we're stupid

2011-02-20T12:04:00.000Z

OK, that's it.

In response to the ever increasing misinformation about AV from the 'Yes' campaign, I have deemed it necessary to start holding them to account.

Where better to start then today's article by Andrew Rawnsley

He starts his monologue by telling us about his support for AV before even mentioning it, by saying that the election of Tony in '97 and Margaret in '87 were unstoppable whirlwinds (as I am sure he knows AV would have only have made any opposition to these even more futile, so he is getting those out of the way early).

He then goes on to tell us his geek credentials even going so far as saying "debating the pros and cons of different electoral systems can be better than sex".

So are we clear now guys? This guy loves electoral systems, while we're all away making hay, he is straw counting.
Of course we can trust his wisdom then surely? He must know these systems and politics in general, inside and out!

Well, let's see.

He starts off by saying all the 'No' side of the debate are doing are negative campaigning..next he says "[Nick Clegg] attributed the parliamentary expenses scandal to..first past the post.." and lists Nick Clegg's mentioning of all number of scandals that have nothing to do with FPTP..and while he admits "I'm sceptical that AV is the miracle cure which will purge us of every lazy, disconnected or corrupt MP" he doesn't consider THAT negative campaigning.

OK, now let's get down to this 'better-than-sex' self proclaimed nerd's understanding (or supposed understanding) of the systems involved.

1."It will be a worthwhile improvement if MPs have to gather some form of support from at least half of the voters" Indeed it would..this is not AV though is it..as according to the London School of Economics and Political Science " more than 4 out of every 10 MPs would still be elected with the endorsement of less than 50% of the voters" (Rallings and Thrasher).

Not a good start and for those of you that will say "at the moment we have 6 out of 10" ...Yes, we do...but that is only looking at an X. I'm sure if you use your noggin you can see that under AV many people that won with FPTP would have been pushed over the line with second preferences anyway.
Not so much them gaining extra support, but just adding on the support that is already there.

Next.
2."The parties will be impelled to engage with more parts of the country than just a minority of marginals"
The same amount of seats have been singled out to be marginals under AV as FPTP..he knows this, he also knows that no political party will spend money preaching to the choir when the unconverted are next door.
This will happen under any electoral system.

3. "it will pay MPs to connect with more parts of their constituencies."
This is linked to '1' i guess. However an interesting point is that you would not want to convert too many of your rivals if the party in third place is more open to you. Otherwise your rivals will become third and you won't get any 'alternative votes from them'. Best not court those under AV.. wouldn't want having more supporters to make you lose now would we.

4."[David Cameron] contended that "hung parliaments will become commonplace" which will lead to more "haggling" and "stitch-ups".

Being a clever chap, who studied electoral systems at Oxford, he knows this is disingenuous"

Studies by many institutions have shown that hung parliaments in the UK will be more likely under AV. Yes, people will point at Australia "They have only had ONE hung parliament" ..Yes and for a system where 96% of the seats went to two partys last election, that is hardly surprising.
However we do not have a two party system otherwise the fptp system wouldn't be a problem.

5. Well this is an interesting one, because it seems to go against what we have just heard from him.
" AV will, at most elections, distribute seats a little more fairly than first past the post" well..surely then as the Liberal Democrats got 23% of the vote but only 8.8% a fairer system would lead them to have more seats and thus a hung parliament. ..but no "but AV is not a proportional system. It is a majoritarian system" nice twist.

Remember that PR fans, maybe the FPTP squad don't like PR, but nor do the AV club.

6."Well, let us accept that numbering candidates 1, 2, 3 does require a slightly more advanced level of numeracy than simply making a cross. I think Britain will cope." Yes, that's right. paint everyone who doesn't understand AV as stupid by suggesting it is that simple. "Can't you see the Emperor's clothes?! What's wrong with you!"

The long and short of it is yes, marking out a preferential ballot is easy. Explaining why a candidate can still win under AV when they have less first, less second, less third and less forth etc preferences than others is a little bit trickier.

unless of course we are suggesting that people shouldn't have to know what happens to their ballot? We should just say, "Fill this out and don't worry your pretty little heads about it, we nerds will fix it"
There are literally dozens of different preferential systems that all require the same data and a lot will produce conflicting results so of course they have the right to know what it is they are saying will make things 'fairer'.

7. Then another good one.
"Had they used first past the post in their last contest, the leader of the Tory party would not be David Cameron. It would be David Davis."
Wow. This is where I take away your nerd badge.
The MPs pick two candidates out of the total list, the two candidates with the most votes go to postal ballots. The most ballots declared wins.
Now considering he was in the top two candidates in the first round of voting (these are real rounds BTW where everyone can decide on their vote again ;) ) he still would have been selected to the postal ballot stage and as the postal ballots elected him with almost 68% of the vote I can't see that changing.

What a bad argument. Either an outright attempt at misinformation..or he doesn't understand the leadership process for the Conservatives, which means MAYBE he shouldn't be telling us what it would and would not do

8. "The prime minister is surely not suggesting that the fine people of Britain have a lower collective IQ than our friends in the Antipodes?"
No, but considering you have made so many mistakes, it isn't that unlikely that non-'nerds' will not quite get it right either.

9."Whether or not they know it, many millions of Britons already have extensive experience of using preferential selection because they have been regular voters in Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor."

Preferential selection doesn't mean AV.

Imagine for instance, those shows mentioned about but with AV.
Week one, everyone is excited. All the contestants turn up. They all do their thing, some well, some not so well. Everyone votes.

"And the winner is X!" End of the series.. "What what what?" You will cry (and a significant part of the population would shout "Woo Hoo!" too I'd imagine).

And here is the kicker, the decision is not made on who you like the most, but deciding who out of all these people you have only just heard from is the best, in order, while trying to balance up what you might have missed (while having a coffee perhaps).

AV, is not Exhaustive Run off voting, which is what those shows are. At any one point they are asking you to vote for ONE person.
Even then, are we all happy that the right people win those shows? Huh

The No campaign are not saying you are stupid people. They are saying the system is a lot more complicated than now, often produces unfair results and offers minority party voters more say than others.

Reasons to vote no

2011-02-11T14:27:00.000Z

1) Fptp is the easiest, most inclusive system available. There is not one person in the UK that has trouble understanding it and therefore there is not any group of people that will be disenfranchised or cowed away from voting if they wish.

2) FPTP is one voter, one vote.
I have offered the yes campaign to critique a voting system let’s call it ‘DB Voting’
where everyone votes, and if someone doesn’t have 50% of the vote, the lowest candidate is eliminated and anyone who voted for them gets given a brand new fresh vote to add to any un-eliminated candidate.

Obviously, this is a system that gives some people more than one vote. The results compared to AV are however exactly the same. So if it produces the exact same result as some people being given an extra vote, then that should give cause for concern straight away.

3) AV counts someone’s third preference as the same value as someone’s first.
I have asked a few AV people if you had 49% of people give a 1st preference to candidate A, and Candidate B get 25% 1st preferences, 15% 2nd preferences, 11% 3rd preferences, who would they think had the most SUPPORT? They invariably say candidate B ..which I disagree with. Quality not just quantity.

4) Leading on from point three…
In the average AV context even though almost all voters will give preferences, only 35% of voters will have anything but their first preference taken into account.
If the AV supporters claim that 2nd preferences are so indicative of support, why are we ignoring a majority of the information that can help?

5)The 50% myth,
AV supporters often quote the 50% myth to push their arguments. They sometimes wrongly say 50% of the total voters, or 50% of the electorate. This is no true. What they mean is 50% of the last round of voting.
I.E. 50% of people who preference’d the two remaining candidates out of the starting 8-12 or so.
They then hold this up as an achievement, normally saying something like “see 50%...its more than 35% which a lot of MPS are elected with”.
However they are comparing two incomparable figures.
One is % of last round of votes, one is % of total votes.

So if you have 100 voters, 35% of the total vote would be 35 votes.
If only 70% of these choose to preference either of the two candidates that end up in the last round, 50% of this is 35 votes again.

6) ..this point only affects you if you favour PR, i.e. 1% of votes =1% of seats.
Out of the last 4 elections AV (according to studies) would have led to a less representative government than FPTP in three of them.

7) Coalitions will be more likely.
This point you’d imagine to be self evident. If AV encourages smaller parties and more single issue groups (which AV says it will and I agree) then the % of seats held by the bigger parties will be less.
This will lead to king makers, not just one but many. Policy will be decided in back rooms where one policy is dropped in return for support of another. The recent events with the coalition show the trouble with coalitions in a country not used to them better than I can explain.

8) Politics under FPTP can be decisive. Under AV a politician would have to hedge their bets. Will their be cuts in spending and in tax? Or will their be spending increases and tax increases? Best not to say really at AV election time as you have to remain as neutral as possible. After all, like discussed, it isn’t about how much people support you, it is about the quantity of people that will put up with you.
This to me means each election we will be guessing what the MP will be doing for the next 5 years.

….
off the top of my head that is about it…
comment if you have any further points or if you want to discuss one 

Preferences and weighting

2011-02-07T00:27:00.000Z

It's the world cup, and like always England have been knocked out of the competition.
One England fan decides to support his back up team Brazil.
Of course if England were still in he would prefer them, but he doesn't mind Brazil now England are out.

Brazil is playing Spain in the final and in a pub our England can is sitting with a Spaniard. They are both cheering on their respective teams.

Now who do you think is likely to be most happy if their team wins?

Who cares more would you imagine?
Both teams have one supporter, but who would you imagine has most support?

AV Voting and the split vote

2011-01-29T22:31:00.000Z

One of the flaws with FPTP is it's ability to split vote.

So the idea is

Candidate A
Candidate B
Candidate C
and Candidate D

Are all running.

55% of people prefer A over B but some of the would be A voters also vote for C

Candidate A gets 35%
Candidate B gets 40%
Candidate C gets 20%
Candidate D gets 5%

Candidate B wins

So by taking away C we would have got

Candidate A gets 55%
Candidate B gets 40%
Candidate D gets 5%

We will try this example with AV .

Candidate A gets 35%
Candidate B gets 40%
Candidate C gets 20%
Candidate D gets 5%

end result say is
Candidate A gets 55%
Candidate B gets 45%

...

However, say you took out the winning party

Candidate B gets 45%
Candidate C gets 55%

..But what if we take out the runner up instead??

Candidate A gets 35%
Candidate C gets 65%

Perhaps?

...so by taking away the winning OR runner up before the election, we can influence who wins.

It does not end split votes.

Reform, it's definition and application

2011-01-27T14:34:00.000Z

I am getting a bit tired of the speculation and shock of people over the BBC's decision to not use the word 'reform' in the referendum to decide if we are to use AV for elections.

So let's discuss the word's definition and see if we can see why an organisation that has to stay unbias might want to not use it.

thefreedictionary.com - "1. To improve by alteration,
correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition."

Answers.com - "To improve by alteration,
correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form "

Yourdictionary.com - "to make better by removing faults and defects"

Merriam-webster.com - "to put or change into an improved form or condition b : to amend or improve
by change of form or removal of faults or abuses"

wordreference.com- "verb. 1 make changes in (something, especially an institution or practice) in
order to improve it. "

or from the oxford dictionary - "to improve a system, an organization, a law, etc. by making changes to it"

So, this is the word that so many people seem shocked that the BBC may think it suggests improvement??

I dare say that if in the referendum we vote in favour of it, THEN they can start calling it reform, because we collectively have decided that AV IS an improvement.

...which brings me onto the next point.

Reform can be used by the government for the same reason. They are the representative body of the UK. They are in power by our votes. Therefore it is widely accepted that they are using the people's authority to enact these changes and that agree with them. Therefore they are reforms.

I hope we can put both of these...well, stupid is the word that keeps popping into my head( but desperate, innane, illogical etc will all do too), arguments to bed and get on debating the worth of AV.

The Huge (not at all similar in anyway you idiot) difference between two preferences and two votes

2011-01-27T09:35:00.000Z

Hello and Welcome,
One of the main arguments of the No2AV squad is that A.V. would give the supporters of eliminated candidates extra votes.
The standard retort to this by the Yes2AV club is "You do not get two votes, just two preferences!" Normally followed by some of the more moronic elements by something like "You just want to tell lies and keep the status quo ...nazi!" or something to that effect.

Now, I think it is very important to deal with this once and for all so I am going to run a mock election under both of these completely different systems.
The end result does not matter in this case at all, so hopefully I will get no shouts of "You can use facts to prove anything" like I have in the past. It doesn't matter how the preferences are set out and are done at random in this example to show it.

AV,

Voter A
He Wants Candidate Sam to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Jane,
Doesn't like Candidate Fred.

Voter B
He Wants Candidate Fred to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Jane,
Doesn't like Candidate Sam.

Voter C
He Wants Candidate Fred to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Sam,
Doesn't like Candidate Jane.

Voter D
He Wants Candidate Sam to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Jane,
Doesn't like Candidate Fred.

Voter E
He Wants Candidate Jane to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Fred,
Doesn't like Candidate Sam.

So Jane is eliminated with only one vote, Voter E's second preference now gets her vote.

Fred Now wins, with three votes to two votes.

Now lets try the other weird, completely different, not like in any way, stupid system of the eliminated candidate's voter getting another vote.

Voter A
He Wants Candidate Sam to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Jane,
Doesn't like Candidate Fred.

Voter B
He Wants Candidate Fred to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Jane,
Doesn't like Candidate Sam.

Voter C
He Wants Candidate Fred to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Sam,
Doesn't like Candidate Jane.

Voter D
He Wants Candidate Sam to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Jane,
Doesn't like Candidate Fred.

Voter E
He Wants Candidate Jane to win,
Would Put up with Candidate Fred,
Doesn't like Candidate Sam.

So Jane is eliminated with only one vote, Voter E's second vote now comes into play. As she prefers Fred, with her brand new vote she votes for Fred.

Fred is declared the winner by 3 votes to 2 votes.

Hmmm, wait a minute *gasps*. That is exactly the same result!

Whatever the Yes2AV club want to call it, getting another vote when your first choice is eliminated is the same as getting an extra preference.

There is no difference.

An AV oddity

2011-01-25T16:21:00.000Z

A very important issue to me as you may have gathered from my previous blows is equality.

I believe every vote should count as one, and every vote should only affect the result by one. However this is not the same under AV.

Example.
Party A has 50%+1 of the vote
Party B has 30% of the vote
Party C has 20%-1 of the vote

Under Fptp and AV this is a comfortable win.

However, even from an election pool of 10 million voters, under AV party A may have lost with 2 less votes.
So, to recap..at the moment, they won by 20% or 2 million votes...but take two away and they can lose.

Extreme obviously, but it demonstrates my point in the huge swings possible.

It would seem that under AV, a vote can be worth a lot more than one.

Is AV the portal to a different dimension?

2011-01-19T23:48:00.000Z

Ok, very short one.

After speaking to many people on various networking sites about AV, the same argument keeps coming up again and again.

"This MP only got 40% of the vote and still won, that means that 60% voted against him, under AV people cannot steal elections".

This is pretty much the range of arguments, in the same family, that i have encountered.

I am in no way saying this is the official line of 'Yes to Fairer Votes' or even that it is used by anyone but their most 'dragging of knuckles' supporters, but it is there.

So let's discuss a few of the points.

The MP got elected with 40% of the vote...that is pretty high, from an election where perhaps 6-8 people ran, to get 40% of all votes is pretty good. Then factor in the tactical vote working against them which seems to fluctuate depending on what is most useful for the critics of my points. I however will use the same percentage I always have 9%. So even if the MP won by 1 vote, he didn't really win by 1 vote.

Pushers of this point also seem to forget that no matter what trash they throw at the MP for winning on 40%, the runner up is only going to come off worse as they didn't even manage to get that. So who exactly have they stole the election from?

Now, to get on to the title of the blog piece.

I am starting to get the impression that proponents of AV are expecting that if and when AV is introduced, a whole new wave of MPs will rise out of the ground or pop through a worm hole and will be able to please 50%+1 of everyone.

What they seem to forget is one (a lot of the MPs on close to 50% will be elected again), the 40% person is most likely to be re-elected, but this time with 50%+.

Is this a magic trick?? Or has he just announced free unicorns to every voter in a Nick Cleggish way?

No, he is just as popular as ever but the 'looks better on paper' system of AV makes it LOOK like he got more support. Please bare that in mind next time you talk about AV increasing the popularity of the elected MP.

5 is 5% of 100, and 50% of 10. You can change percentages quite easily by condensing the available pool.

Voting Flowchart

2011-01-18T22:52:00.000Z

I came across this flow chart floating (haha) around on twitter today.

published by Anthony Smith

Ok, those of you that have spoken to me about similar subjects will probably know where I am going with this.

The argument comes down to one thing.

What is an election for and why do you vote in one?

Is it A) An election is to evaluate the support of each candidate standing for election and we vote to let them know OUR view.

Or

Is it B) An election is a process to try and second guess and/or manipulate in an effort to ensure the rightful winner is only elected if you support them yourself (and trying to ensure they don't win by any means necessary if YOU don't want them to).

I am an "A" person. The author, seems to me, to be a "B" person.

FPTP to any "A" or honest, people (who accept that democracy means the most supported should win) FPTP is simply relieve the list, vote for who you want most.

This is commonly accepted to be a minimum of 91% of people from the research into tactical voting I have read [I am always open to learning so let me know what you find out].

While a falacy so I will not claim it as an argument on its own, the fact that "B"s advocate AV, does very little for the case for "Fairness".

In the same way that Nick Griffin's support doesn't help FPTP at all, but only idiots would use THAT argument right?

Can you be the most beloved and most hated?

2011-01-18T20:30:00.000Z

A lot of talk has occurred between the AV club and The FPTP order in which the terms "Most supported" and "Least Disliked" have come up.

I quickly came to the conclusion, as you have my wonderful clever readers (have a cookie), that this is probably not going to be the same candidate.

This sparks in my memory the Marmite/ Nick Clegg debacle.

Now there are two very subtlely different points I will be making here, so I will split them up.

1) Most Supported vs Least Disliked

If we assume these are two different candidates, who should the system we use look to elect?
If you have read any of my other blog entries you will know my preference and I will not spoil your reading by telling you now.
~~Supported~~

My case.
Think of something 'least disliked', I don't mean most loved (though this doesn't exclude it of course).
I have a friend in mind from my rather small group of friends, who I would say is the most disliked. They don't offend anyone, they haven't said anything bad about anyone, always remembers to 'poke' back, shows up at anyone and everyone's parties and is well known. What's he like? I'll tell you. Haven't got a clue. The reason why, is because he has no views! Nothing distinguishing.

By that, I mean of course, he has no 'vocalised' views, I am sure he mutters under his breath...or in the shower...or into his pillow, but he doesn't go out on a limb, he isn't decisive, he is not confident...in other words he is the opposite of a natural born leader.

What if we forced him to be a leader? We don't know and cannot predict at all.

I fear that if we elect the most disliked we will end up with the grey luke warm soup of a government that offends no-one but does nothing.

2) Most Supported vs Most hated

So, now we have a different problem. What happens when the most supported is also the most hated person?
I have thought about this too and it may not suprise you either but came conclusion that Love beats Hate.

The way I can explain my view on this is very practical.
I can name the stance on most issues of parties I support. I generally know their history, their central ideology and how it has changed over the years. I can even do this with affiliated groups from other countries (oh yes, I am a treat at parties as you can imagine). However, I cannot say the same as the parties I dislike.

I dislike the BNP. I dislike what they stand for, I dislike their leaders, present and past, I dislike their central theme but I cannot tell you their economic policy.

I can imagine it has probably something to do with getting rid of everyone not from this country (bye bye uncle John, shouldn't have been descended from Normans, bye bye Jeff, too much Norse blood, Bye Bye Simon too much Germanic blood....wait a sec, there is no-one left) , cutting links with Europe and demanding that the deficit clear itself up or be shot with the Citizen's Assault Rifle.
But that is just a guess.

I tested this theory out the other day too.
In numerous places (chosen by the number of labour voters and complete with my Thatcher/Che logo) I posted the following message.
"I think that everyone should get the child benefit, even millionaires"

Within minutes on 3 of the 5 locations I was called a "Tory C**t", accused of being detached, not knowing how hard it was for the REAL people (I guess I AM an illusion afterall) and here is the extra extra fun one, called a "Prick" because...and I quote "Benefits should be means tested".

It took half an hour for someone to realise, after a few hints, something which I hope you have figured out already. "I think that everyone should get the child benefit, even millionaires"...is a socialist policy. DUM DUM DUM!!!!

Infact, it was used to ATTACK the Tory lead coalition. by no other than Ed Miliband.

Isn't that scary? Labour people calling ME a 'Tory C*unt' for claiming to have the same opinion as their leader...used to attack the Tories. They then tell me things should be means tested...a fundamental idea of the Tories.

I can't claim I was speechless, because I did it on purpose knowing that this was the likely response, but it is worrying.

People know so little about who they hate, that they are willing to hate them even if they adopt policies they claim to agree with.

Hate is not conducive to understanding. It is in a lot of cases born from ignorance, prejudice and hearsay.

An exercise for you to try at home kids.

Try to think of something you love, and then something you hate in the same family and then name as many facts about them as you can.

I predict you will find more in the love column in most cases.

This is why even the most hated is the best choice in my opinion if it is the most supported.

Principles of AV/FPTP in real life

2011-01-18T15:08:00.000Z

The Famous Fire Analogy

Two men are standing outside their respective houses.

Unfortunately for the two men their houses are on fire.
Each man has a wife, a beloved pet and a TV (they are minimalist).

Out of the two men, one of the man's wives, let call him Man 1, has already evacuated his wife. Man 2 on the other hand, hasn't.

Out of the two men, which one would you imagine is more prepared to charge into the flames?

Now, is it far to say that the newly introduced Man 3, who has got both his wife AND his pet out of the house is even more likely to charge in?

Transfer this over to the AV voting system.

Who has most support, someone voting for their first choice (wife) or someone voting for their second choice (pet) because their first choice is now out of the picture or someone voting for their third choice (wardrobe) because their first and second are out of the picture ?

Would it be accurate to Man 1 cares no more about charging the flames than Man 3 does? I don't think so and when the Fire Department turn up I know where any non bias person would send them first.

1st preferences count more than 2nd , 2nd count more than 3rd. Any system that does not recognise this, does not accurately measure support.

Ignorance vs Lies

2011-01-18T12:56:00.000Z

My (completely unrelated to any bias the system gives to support one party over another i.e.) mathematical problem with AV.

If we take on board that different preferences differ in amount of support they symbolise (which is the definition of a preference after all) and we accept that averaged out people’s first preferences have more support that second, we can make inroads to putting a value against the preference.

I started out on the assumption of values that showed that first preference is 1, second preference is .5, third preference .25, fourth preference .125 but after much talk with various people was convinced that people do often favour their choices a lot closer.

For this reason I have revised my example to 1, 0.75, 0.50, 0.25

This area can be studied and is in other fields like pain research where the collective subjective value is averaged out to approximate an objective value.

So say we have three parties running

A B C

A has 12 votes, B has 9 votes, C has 8 Votes.

This under FPTP would produce a win for A.
Arguments against this would be that 17 people DIDN’T vote for them. This is a valid argument.
Arguments for this is that given what we know, out of A, B and C,
A has most support. This is a valid argument too.

Now lets try under AV

A has 12 votes, B has 9 votes, C has 8 Votes.
C is eliminated. Let’s say the votes are split 6 to B and 2 to A.

Votes now read
A has 14 votes (12 first preference and 2 second preference)
B has 15 votes (9 first preference and 6 second preference)

Under AV, B wins.

Argument for this is that it allows some of those eliminated to still be involved.
Argument against this is that not every voter was as involved as the next.

Now, lets apply value of vote

A has 12 first preferences and 2 second preference, meaning a total support value of 13.50

B has 9 first preferences and 6 second preferences, meaning a total support value of 13.50
So in affect we have a draw.
Please bare in mind this is with a generous weighting as it is (that you might support your second preference candidate only 25% less than your first).

So AV has given us a false result.
The margin of error will only increase more and more when smaller preferences weighted at 0.5 and 0.25 are introduced into the mix.

That is the first mathematical problem under AV, but stick around because the level of potential error is going to get a lot bigger.

Let’s go back to our previous example to keep things fair.

A has 12 votes, B has 9 votes, C has 8 votes. Under AV we asked for the preferences and since AV does not publish them all, lets do that now

A has 12 votes, they second preference C (they are dead against B, their main rivals)
B has 9 Votes, they second preference C (they are dead against A, their main rivals)
C has 8 Votes, they second preference 6 to C and 2 to A (no real rivalry, just a leaning to B)

(Can you see who it is yet?)

Now we have a much better understanding of the will of the people, don’t we.
Why would any system not tell us this?
Why take all that useful data and class more than half of it as irrelevant?

Now let’s use the value weighting.
A has 13.5 as before
B has 13.5 as before
C has 23.75

If we changed the weighting to 1, .5, .25, etc
The result would be
A has 13.5
B has 12
C has 18.5

Say we took it ridiculous and changed weighting to 1, .25, .01
The result would be
A has 12.5
B has 10.5
C has 13.25

Even taken to that degree, it is quite clear that B should NEVER win.
It didn’t have the most first preferences, and it didn’t have the most second preferences. (Adding logical 1st prefs would only help A as only C are likely to 'third preference'. A are likely to get 6 third prefs and B only 2 third prefs but that isn't even needed to show my point).

The weighting value which I conceded to of 1, .75, .5 makes it more obvious. Under my previous 1, .5, .25 it is closer but still obvious who should win.

That is just one anomaly. What if the people from A didn’t mind B? Or vice versa? You could have a different result again to the AV result. In fact the mind boggles at how much data is ignored by AV.

For this (mathematical) reason, it is clear to conclude that by counting only the smallest parties vote, you are getting an incorrect picture of total support.

FPTP, even though not ideal and less sophisticated has at least one thing going for it that AV doesn’t. You can only win if you have the most votes according to ALL it's data.

The difference in a sound bite would be
"FPTP can be ignorant, but AV can Lie"

Everyday Scenarios with AV/FPTP principles

2011-01-16T21:35:00.000Z

-Medical Research

When researching new drugs and treatments they sometimes need to know how much pain the patient is suffering.
There is no real way of finding this out to an accurate degree medically, as heart rate, reactions etc while affected by intensity of pain are very varied to begin with from person to person.
So they use a questionaire in a lot of cases, for example the patented 'McGill Pain Questionnaire' or the pictured 'wong-baker FACES scale'.

This allows sufferers to rank pain. Some from one to five, others up to twenty.

(Many of you will probably see where I am going with this now)

The doctors are under no illusion that one persons '2' will be less painful than one other persons '4' all the time without fail.

What they DO accept however is that if on average a treatment results in figures from 1-2 that it is less painful than a treatment that results in a 3-4 and the accuracy of this goes up with each new participant in the trial (so it would be more accurate say if 20 thousand people took part instead of the thousand or so in most medical trials)

Now to bring elections back into it.

Can an individuals 4th choice be guaranteed to have less support than someones 2nd? The simple answer is no..it is more likely but cannot be relied on. However, 1000 4th preferences suggest almost beyond doubt that it has less support than 1000 2nd preferences.

The law of averages is a marvellous thing you see, trusted by among many sectors, the medical profession.

If it is good enough to make life saving decisions, surely it is enough for life changing decisions like the election.

Supporters of AV will say that 1000 votes is a 1000 votes no matter how much support those votes have.
Do you?

Everyday senarios with AV and FPTP principles

2011-01-16T13:24:00.000Z

Scene- Two Flat mates (Jane and Sam) are sitting down to watch TV.
Dia.
Sam - I Hope 'Hollyoaks' is on I love that programme.
Jane - Oh, I hope 'friends' is on, it's my favourite.

action.
*Tv is turned on, flicking through the TV Guide, Hollyoaks is on but friends isn't...Eastenders is though.

Dia.
Jane -Oh, Eastenders is on, now THAT is my favourite now
Sam - But you just said Friends was?
Jane- That was before I knew it wasn't on, now this one is my favourite.

action. There is a glitch with the BBC, a message scrolls across the screen asking viewers to stand by, while waiting they flick through the channels

Dia.
Jane- Oh look, Location, location, location is on.. that's my favourite.....
Sam- *Sighs*

Now very crudely we can test the principles of FPTP and AV here.
Does someone's second or third choice equal the same amount of support as others first?

Is it fair that they are still undecided what to watch and in a stalemate?

Under AV this is a draw. Plain and simple and if the third preference goes down, then her fourth or fifth or sixth 'favourite' will be considered the same as their first, despite obviously lower levels of support.

Should people be elected with support or technicalities?

Problems with AV 2

2011-01-16T02:33:00.000Z

This is a very quick one.
Should the candidate with the most support be elected? I think so.

Second part of the argument is slightly more complicated..but not by much.
What would you say has most support on average? A first or second preference?
If we agree, like I hope we can, that the higher the preference the higher the level of support, we can agree that counting all preferences the same does not accurately show support.

Who would you say has most support out of this example for instance?
Candidate A has 10 1st preference votes.
Candidate B has 5 1st preferences, 3 2nd preferences and 2 3rd preferences.
AV would say there is no difference between the two candidates.
Fptp would say that ' A ' wins

That is a simple one, what about the same example but with candidate B having an extra 4th preference vote.
How much more would you say a 1st preference shows support than a 3rd or 4th? Would it cancel it out perhaps?
Under AV ' B ' would be elected..

I don't think this reflects support at all.

Problems with av

2011-01-16T00:49:00.000Z

Ok, it's important first of all to explain that I am fully aware that very specific examples can be bandied around to 'prove' anything.

That said the mechanics involved in this example are universal.

Candidates A B C D
Candidate A has 10 votes
candidate B has 7 votes
Candidate C has 4 votes
Candidate D has 2 votes

Fptp would say A is the winner

AV would eliminate D...
D's votes transfers to C.

We now have
Candidate A with 10 votes
Candidate B with 7 votes
Candidate C has 4 first pref votes and 2 second pref votes.

C is eliminated. Say 1 1st pref vote goes to A. the rest goes b

And we now have our winner

B wins with seven 1st pref, three 2nd pref and two 3rd preference.
Vs
A with ten 1st pref and one 2nd pref.

Now this result sounds pretty dodgy to me as it is.

We have asked 23 people for first preferences, 6 people for a 2nd preference and 1 person for a 3rd preference.
What about the 17 people who didn't get their 2nd preference registered. Being that you only need 12 votes to win, it is very silly to ignore these 17 2nd preference votes and to go on to other people's less relevant 3rd choices.
What if all 17 had C as their second preference?
Or any other type of combination...this is still more relevant and representative than going onto 3rd preference votes.

This can mean (and will mean) that under AV, people will get elected who wouldn't under Fptp, and who wouldn't if the two most popular candidates supporters weren't ignored after their 1st preference, but were treated the same as everyone else ( or as it is known in the wider world outside the yes 2 AV club, fairly or equally).

Candidates will be voted in not on support but by the quirks of a counting system.

Under Fptp because we do not ask for preferences, we have to go with what we have.
Under AV they ask for preferences...and then ignore in most cases most of the data..so even in a four horse race someone can be elected even if they have less first, second and third preference votes than other candidates.