Can we have alternatives to the AV campaigns please?

In my continuing attempt to shake off any remaining readers I've decided to use this space to come out against both the yes AND no campaigns on the referendum for AV. I mean I'm difficult to please at the best of times but the both of them seem to delight in parading false information, vapid slogans or just generally seem to be talking to themselves.

If we start with the no camp we have people who tried to demand a 40% turnout requirement despite the fact that they are perfectly happy with councillors, MEPs and MPs elected on any turn out at all - and of course these were people in the Lords who weren't even elected but think they have the right to run the country.

The fact that they are proud of this undemocratic motion fills me with disdain.

We also have their campaign saying the cost (which they claim is £250 million, although their full article shows they have no idea what the figure might be really) would be better spent on other things. Their video shows one gentlemen suggesting we could use the money on tax cuts. Well that's less than £5 per person over a year - I simply can't imagine what I'd spend my forty pence a month on, the possibilities are limited.

The no camp have a series of posters saying things like "He needs a bullet proof vest not an alternative voting system", "she needs a home help not...", "she needs a maternity unit not..." etc. I have to say they've made that invented £250 million stretch quite a way haven't they! The fact that this also appears to be an argument cancelling all future elections seems to have escaped them, but hey ho.

The main problem with the cost argument is that they seem to be including the cost of the referendum itself, which they are clearly encouraging people to take part in. They're fighting yesterday's battle and hoping we wont notice.

William Hague wrote to me today and said that AV was unfair because "supporters of extreme parties like the BNP would get their vote counted many times, while other people's vote would only be counted once."

Which is a deliberate attempt to imply it makes the election of BNP candidates more likely even though AV is actually stacked against minority candidates. As Rupert Read points out the BNP are campaigning against AV for that very reason.

Jo points out Labour are little better than the Tories and seem to be arguing that it's the number of Labour MPs that get elected that determine how democratic a system is. I keep forgetting how alienating I find tribalism and then up pops john Prescott to remind me.

But what of the yes camp? What have those blighters been up to? Well, for a start this week they decided to hitch themselves to the Royal Wedding. A spokesperson said "around the wedding it will be a coming-into-summer, more optimistic, more of a yes mood," That's another reason to vote against then as it's spitting in the eye of Clegg AND the royals - bonus.

And of course they've been telling us to "follow your heart", or in other words stop thinking about it. Simon from Bristol tells us "Lately it seems like people have fallen out of love with politics. We were out on the street at the weekend to make shoppers the best proposal they’ll get this year; to love their vote". That's the best proposal the good people of Bristol will have all year? I'd heard it was a miserable place but Christ alive it's worse than I thought.

Just for the record my heart tells me to vote no, but my head is still open to persuasion. When people tell me to follow my heart I tend to think "Interesting, I wonder what they don't want me think about too hard?"

In this case I assume it would be the fact that AV embeds the idea that only those with majority support should get representation in Parliament - the polar opposite of the kind of system I believe in, where every party is represented according to the proportion of the electorate that supports it. My system says 10% of the population should have the kind of representation they want - AV, of course, says if you can't win 50% of the vote you'd better learn to lump second, third or fourth best.

Rupert argued the other day that AV contains FPTP within it and therefore we can all relax and vote it through. Apart from highlighting the fact that AV is just another variant of single constituency voting that keeps minority voices out of Parliament it also completely fails to address the argument it claims to have put to bed.

Rupert says that FPTP fans can just use the one vote themselves and leave others to do as they please, but the argument, as anyone who has followed the debates will know, is that party loyalists don't think someone else's second, third or fourth preference should count as much as their first preference. In other words it is precisely the fact that others get to vote differently that irks them.

I don't have much time for this particular anti-AV argument but it's pretty disrespectful to not bother trying to understand someone's argument before claiming that "it really is unnecessary for FPTP-lovers to oppose AV at all."

There are lots of good arguments on both sides, but neither campaign seems to be putting these at the front of their stalls. Instead we have misinformation and empty posturing, which at times can feel little better than bullying.

Ed Miliband argued in the Guardian the other day that "AV will also force parties to admit where there is agreement between them, prising open our confrontational system so that similarities sometimes become as important as differences". I completely agree with this and one of the tempting points to AV is the idea that it could undercut the compulsion political parties suffer from of treating all other parties as "the enemy".

However, overall we just have point scoring or emotive tosh from the campaigns. While I will vote one way or the other in the referendum it wont be an endorsement of either campaign but on the basis of which system I'd prefer us to go to the next election with.