Alternative Voting thoughts

Out of the blue Labour announce they want to start reforming the voting system. Twelve and a bit years into their government they've finally got round to having a think about making a change that heads off any possibility of proportional representation.

The Lib Dems described it as a "deathbed conversion" which I thought was a rather neat turn of phrase.

So there's a proposal on the table about having a referendum on Alternative Voting, where you place the candidates in an order of preference. Although it's slightly messier than this the intention is to ensure that everyone who is elected has the support of at least half the electorate in the constituency.

This referendum would not take place under the Labour government (unless they win the election, ho ho) and in fact might not take place at all which introduces the prospect of Labour painting the Tories as anti-reform before they've had a year in office for not instituting something Labour couldn't be bothered to do in more than twelve years.

Anyway, there are a number of advantages to this over our current system of first past the post.

Firstly it means that someone who is passionately loved and loathed is less likely to get in as the system seeks the candidate who is acceptable to most voters. I've no doubt that part of the calculation here is that it may keep out various fascists, communists, and eco-terrorists although in practice it may well work the other way.

The English Democrat Mayor of Donacaster won his election on the basis of second preference votes coming over from the BNP and Tory candidates and the experience of the London Mayoralty is that the second preferences for the Greens always far outweigh the first preferences, indicating that where Greens can get a head of steam they may reach a tipping point where AV would be very useful.

The second advantage is that it does allow for a more mature political debate should the parties choose to go down that route. Being able to advocate a second choice vote for Ken in the Mayorals two years ago was a real god send and, in effect, the Greens ended up mobilising extra voters against Boris without having to stand down - under the current system it's hardly sensible for a party to say, "Well, if you're not voting for us I'd recommend so and so from a rival party."

That's a shame.

However, it's still a winner takes all system. It may in fact have the effect of entrenching the established parties rather than allowing for more pluralism and the results would still not be proportional leaving literally millions having voted for parties that get either no MPs or a tiny, tiny handful.

If the referendum was in place and taking place today I'd vote for the AV system. If I were rewriting electoral reform myself though it wouldn't look like this. House of Lords? Gone. Monarch? Gone. FTPT? Gone. And proportion elections for local councils as well as Parliament.