The NO2AV campaign lies about AV and is a front for the Conservative Party and big business

There is not one true claim about AV on the NO2AV website – see below for their four biggest lies about AV and to find out how AV works. While we know 95% of the ‘Yes to Fairer Votes’ campaign funding comes from the Electoral Reform Society and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, the NO2AV campaign refuse to say who funds them.

There are some pretty obvious clues though. The head of the NO2AV campaign Matthew Elliot, doubled as founder of the ‘Taxpayers’ Alliance (which he’ll probably return to after the AV referendum is over). The Taxpayers’ Alliance is funded by the same wealthy business-people who fund the Conservative party and has a director who doesn’t pay any tax in the UK. Just like the NO2AV Campaign, the Taxpayers’ Alliance ‘refuses to publish details of its income or a list of donors’. Liberal Conspiracy were told by a NO2AV press officer that the person who appointed Elliot was Baron Rodney Leach, a Conservative peer on the board of two large companies. No wonder NO2AV won’t say who funds them – it’ll be Conservative party donors just like the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

Electoral Reform : The Existing System, AV or PR?

I’ve been in two minds about AV, because I’d have preferred Proportional representation (in which everyone’s vote counts equally, whoever they vote for – and no votes ending up “wasted”) or AV plus (AV for constituency votes, with a minority of MPs elected on regional lists by PR). However the only choices we’re being given by the government for the moment are AV or the existing First Past the Post system, which allows some parties to get big majorities on a third to 40% of the votes. AV would be an improvement on the outdated and unfair First Past the Post. The constant lies told by the No2AV campaign have made my mind up for me – I’ll definitely vote for AV.

No2AV Lie One: AV will cost £250 million (and enough of the UK’s annual budget that schools or hospitals’ funding will have to be cut to fund it)

The No2AV campaign get their made up £250 million figure by taking the cost of holding the referendum on whether to switch to AV and publicising it (which is the same whether you vote yes, or no, or don’t vote in it at all) and adding the cost of electronic voting machines, which are not needed for AV and are a completely separate issue. Australia has had AV for elections for decades and doesn’t use electronic voting machines. The real figure is £26 million – one off (i.e not every year) to educate voters about it before the next election. This is out of a UK annual public spending budget of about £700 billion (700 thousand million), making the cost less than one hundredth of one per cent of the annual budget – for one year only. Yet the NO2AV campaigns claim we can’t afford this.

NO2AV Lie Two : AV is complicated and unfair (and how AV really works)

They claim that AV is complex and unfair. In fact it’s as simple as 1,2,3. You put a 1 beside the candidate you’d like most to win, 2 beside your second choice, 2 beside your third – instead of an X beside just your first preference in the existing First Past the Post System.

Under First Past the Past a candidate can be elected with less than half the votes – and in fact only a third of the winning candidates in most British elections get more than 50% of the votes in the constituency. The rest are usually elected on 30 to 40% of the vote. The votes for all the other candidates effectively go straight in the bin – they don’t count at all. So the majority of voters get no say under first-past-the-post – their votes are ignored - resulting in governments being elected with huge majorities of seats on a third of the total votes cast. For instance in the last election in 2010 the Conservatives got 307 seats (47% of the MPs) on just 36.1% of the vote, while in 2005 Labour got 356 of the 650 seats (more than 50% of the MPs) on just 37% of the votes. How exactly is either of these results fair, or even democratic?

Under AV, if one candidate has more than half the votes after all the first preference votes are counted, they’re elected. If no candidate has more than half the votes the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and the second preference votes of those who voted for them as their first preference are given to their second preference candidates. If this gives one candidate more than 50% of the votes, they’re elected. If not the candidate with the next fewest first preference votes is eliminated and their voters’ second preferences are given their votes – and so on, until a candidate has more than half the votes. This ensures that far more peoples’ votes count – and that no candidate can be elected without having the majority of votes in their constituency (i.e more than half, not just the biggest minority). So AV is simple, but much fairer.

By giving voters more than one preference when voting it means people can also vote for the smaller parties or independent candidates they may really want to vote for as their first preference, without having to worry that their vote will be wasted or let the party they dislike most in, because they can vote for a larger party with their second or third preference.

NO2AV Lie Three – AV ‘gives some people more votes than others’ and voters for fringe parties get more votes than voters for big parties do / only Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems will benefit from AV

The NO2AV campaign make up the ridiculous lie that “Under AV, the great majority of voters (those who vote for either of the leading two candidates in a constituency) get only one vote, while those who back minority or fringe parties get several.”

See Lie Two above for how AV really works. Everyone’s gets only one vote under AV. Everyone can vote for one candidate as their first preference, one as their second, one as their third. If their first preference candidate is eliminated during counting due to having been one of the candidates with the fewest votes, their vote will be transferred to their second preference – and so on until one candidate has more than half the votes.

So they only have one vote, just as under the existing system, but, unlike in the existing system, there’s a good chance their vote won’t go in the bin if they’re first choice isn’t elected. It may be redistributed to their second or third preference.

AV is fairer and will give any candidate, of any party, who can get the votes of half or more of the voters in a constituency, the chance of being elected. This will help ensure racists like the BNP don’t get elected due to ‘coming through the middle’ with the largest minority of the vote if e.g the votes in a constituency are split three ways between them and two larger parties, because they’d need more than half the vote under AV to be elected.

I despise Nick Clegg for breaking key election pledges he made. I’ve never voted Lib Dem – and I probably never will. AV won’t only benefit the Lib Dems though – because it you have three preferences when you vote you can vote for a small party or independent as your first preference without worrying that it might be a “wasted vote”, as even if your first preference isn’t elected, you can vote for a larger party with your second or third preference. Minority parties still won’t be able to get elected unless they get more than 50% of the votes in a constituency though – under first past the post they can get elected on the largest minority of the vote.

The NO2AV campaign won’t tell you who funds them – because it’ll be the same Conservative donors who fund the Taxpayers’ Alliance

The Yes to fairer votes campaign campaigning for AV are open about who funds them – 95% of their funds come from the Electoral Reform Society and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

The NO2AV campaign won’t say who funds them – but their new head is Matthew Elliot, founder member of the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

The Guardian reported that TPA donors include ‘Sir Anthony Bamford, the owner of the JCB digger company, and Tony Gallagher, the owner of Gallagher Estates, both Conservative donors, who with 32 other businessmen have donated about £80,000 to the group through the Midlands Industrial Council.’ along with ‘Malcolm McAlpine, the chief executive of contractor Sir Robert McAlpine, said he had also funded the group.’ and ‘David Alberto, a property developer supplies office space to the group near Westminster worth an estimated £100,000 a year.’ All of these people also donate large amounts of money to the Conservative party

One of theTaxpayers’ Alliance’s directors – Alexander Heath – lives in France and pays not a penny in taxes in Britain.

You can find out more about AV and the campaign for a 'yes' vote in the referendum on it at the 'Yes to Fairer Votes' campaign site at www.yestofairervotes.org

Why we need PR and not the Alternative Vote, which is just modified first-past-the-post

Why AV would make little difference

The Alternative Vote system which is proposed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown would make little difference to election results. It would reduce the average proportion of votes thrown away unrepresented in each constituency from 60% to 49%. Is binning every second person’s vote unrepresented democracy? Or is it just a sticking plaster to avoid real treatment that would represent the full variety of views in the electorate and end the dominance of the big parties and their leaders? It would not provide representation proportional to the number of votes cast for each party or candidate, just a slightly improved form of First-Past-the-Post which would continue to over-represent the big parties and under-represent votes for smaller parties and independent candidates. As a result it would discredit electoral reform, as people would soon see AV didn’t reduce the power of the established party’s leadership’s one bit.

Multi-member Proportional Representation – e.g STV

A referendum should give an option to vote for real proportional representation, which is only possible by having multi-member constituencies, as in systems like the Single Transferable Vote. The larger the number of MPs elected for each mulit-member constituency the more representative the parliament would be of the views and interests of the whole electorate. For instance with say 6 or 7 one hundred member constituencies the candidates elected would be in direct proportion to the percentage of the vote they got (whether for a party or an independent candidate). This would involve very big constituencies, making it hard to campaign across the entire constituency – but since only 1% of the vote would be required for a candidate to get elected candidates wouldn’t have to campaign across the entire constituency - and since constituents could go to the nearest MP’s constituency office when seeking help on problems or campaigning on issues it wouldn’t make things difficult for them either. In most existing STV systems the multi-member constituencies elect 3 to 5 MPs rather than 100.

This would also allow constituents to choose which MP they wanted to go to - and if they weren’t happy with the response from one then they could go to another. This is unpopular with some MPs, mostly those with seats which are ‘safe’ under ‘first past the post’ because they have an in-built majority for that MP’s party. That doesn’t mean that having the choice of who to go to depending on whose constituency office was nearest to them and who they trusted most would be unpopular with voters.

There are many arguments made against proportional representation systems, none of which hold up to any real examination.

Why PR isn’t the cause of the rise of fascism – unemployment and poverty caused by deregulation of the economy are

First there’s the argument that it allows disproportionate power to small extremist parties. At it’s most hyperbolic this argument’s proponents talk about how the ‘Nazis would march again’ under PR, or claim that it was PR which ‘let the mafia in’ in Italy and claim it would let the BNP into power in the UK.

In fact the Nazis did not get into power due to PR. They got into power because the Treaty of Versailles treated World War One, a clash between rival empires, as though it had been entirely the fault of Germany and placed the entire cost of the war for all countries involved onto Germany – a cost no single country could ever bear. As a result many Germans were left searching through rubbish for food and filled with resentment at the French government for imposing this on them. This combined with the Great Depression (caused by a lack of regulation of big banks and firms in the US spilling across the entire world due to unregulated free trade) to cause mass unemployment and poverty – leading to a rise in support for anyone offering jobs rather than ‘sound money’. As only the Stalinists and Nazis seemed to offer this option, support for both increased massively. Conservative politicians and businessmen decided the Nazis were the lesser of two evils for them and a ‘bulwark against Communism’ and formed a coalition government under Hitler as Chancellor (equivalent to the British Prime Minister in the German system). They believed they could control him – they were wrong.

There has never been a resurgence of fascism or communism in the same scale in Germany since, despite it’s proportional representation system for elections, because after World War Two the Marshall Plan (of massive US aid to create markets for American goods in Europe and reduce support for Communism) created the opposite result from the one the Versailles Treaty had. With rapidly falling levels of unemployment and poverty in Western Europe there was little support for fascist or communist parties. The worrying increase in support for neo-fascists in the last couple of decades has been due to economic crises caused by deregulation – smaller versions of the Great Depression, like the current Credit Crisis (which is now ending due to government intervention that was anathema at the time of the Depression). The fact that Germany has remained stable without any significant fascist or Stalinist element in any government since 1945 shows PR does not “let the fascists march”, deregulation causing unemployment and poverty does.

In Italy the mafia were formed in the nineteenth century, long before there were any elections by proportional representation – and became a criminal organisation by the early twentieth century. They have infiltrated Italian society so completely that repeated changes in the electoral system have made no difference to mafia influence. So the problem there is not PR – it’s that foreign occupation allowed the development of underground nationalist secret societies that became organised crime networks.

What’s more much of the BNP vote in the UK is motivated by a protest vote against the Labour party abandoning working class voters in 'New Labour''s attempt to occupy Conservative party policy positions rather than provide alternatives to them in some of it's policies. The only thing that can provide a viable non-fascist alternative to the BNP is PR, which would make voting for independent candidates or democratic small parties like socialists and greens a viable option rather than a wasted vote.

Does PR lead to ‘shoddy deals’?

Another argument is that PR results in politicians deciding election results by ‘shoddy deals’ rather than the ‘principled government’ created by first-past-the-post elections. Let’s be honest though, no single party or candidate can possibly represent the full variety of viewpoints and interests in any country. There are simply too many of them and they conflict too much. The only way to represent ‘the people’ who have a wide range of views – not just one – is to end the childish system of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and have coalition governments that represent all viewpoints. It’s arrogance for any party or politician to claim that they alone represent the whole population. PR can represent a wide range of viewpoints through coalitions. First past the post cant. Nor are big political parties free of ‘shoddy deals’ or compromises among different factions of the party.

Does PR create ‘weak’ government?

Then there’s the argument that PR gives ‘weak’ coalition governments while first-past-the-post gives strong ones. In fact big parties are as prone to factional infighting as coalition governments – look at the Blairites versus the Brownites in New Labour or the Eurosceptics versus the Europhiles in the Conservative party. What’s more ‘strong’ government in practice means undemocratic government that doesn’t represent the views of the majority and runs roughshod over the views of the opposition – even when the government was elected on the votes of a minority of the electorate. Margaret Thatcher’s bloody minded destruction of Britain’s manufacturing industry in order to weaken the trade unions and the Labour party is one good example. Tony Blair’s Iraq war is another.

Does PR ensure party leaders and officials dominate politics?

Finally there’s the claim that PR gives power to party officials and leaders to control which candidates are nearest the top of the party’s electoral lists and so ensures the dominance of “the political class”, “party hacks” etc. However this is not down to the electoral system – it’s caused by a lack of any law or constitutional article forcing parties to be internally democratic in candidate selection. Under first-past-the-post party leaders and officials constantly replace candidates chosen by constituency parties or party members with their own choices. They even suspend entire constituency parties if they choose a candidate the party leadership don’t like. The only way to solve the problem is to have a law or a codified written constitution making it a legal requirement for parties to allow either constituency parties to choose their own candidates by a majority vote or, in PR elections, to have a requirement that party members decide by majority vote which candidates are where on the electoral list.

Independent candidates of course have no problem with electoral lists or party leaders. Small parties also tend to be more democratic internally. The problem for both of them is getting enough people to believe that a vote for them is not a ‘wasted vote’ under the electoral system. Under first past the post or Alternative Vote this is almost impossible as they’d need at least a third of the vote in the first case and half of it in one constituency in the second in order to get elected. Under PR though votes for small parties and independents count – which encourages more people to vote for them.

So the systems which give power to the party hacks and political class from the big established parties are actually First Past the Post – and it’s variant the Alternative Vote. Proportional representation systems like the Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies give far more influence to the electorate.