Second Choice Politicians
The Scotsman has a story on the delusions of Gordon Brown and AV voting. It has this to say
The Prime Minister said he wanted to hold a referendum next year on whether MPs should be elected through an “Alternative Vote” system, whereby candidates would be ranked by voters. In short, he is calling for a parliamentary vote to decide on a referendum vote, which will then decide on a voting system at a general election. Downing Street insisted yesterday it could push through the reform before the election, but Labour sources were conceding last night that
Mr Brown’s moves were designed primarily to “out-flank” the Conservatives on electoral reform ahead of the campaign.
So in fact this was another of Gordon’s dreamt up policies to try and draw out the Tories so he could try and get one-up on them.
Of course Electoral Reform was one of Labour’s 1997 promises, so far they have conveniently forgotten about it for General Elections until now in 2010 and three months before an election they will lose, they dredge it up in some weird hope that it might buy some votes from the public, or could bring the Lib Dems onside if miracle upon miracle they achieve a “hung” parliament.
However as usual with one of our esteemed leaders plans there is a large hole in his argument, one that goes back a few years to when Blair and Paddy Ashdown were talking about electoral reform until they encountered the “Clunking Fist” of Brown. As Ashdown recollects conversations with Blair about PR/AV went like this
“Paddy, I like it, I just can’t it get it past Gordon”.
Cameron used this line today at PMQ’s to great effect after asking Brown what first attracted him to AV. The response brought hilarity to Parliament as all sides of the House enjoyed a wee laugh at Gordon’s expense.
Of course none of this explains why I have titled this “Second Choice Politicians”. Well that comes down to what can happen in AV elections. In AV we ask voters to rank their preferences with a 1,2,3.. etc . So that if nobody gets 50% of the vote we discard the candidate with the least votes and distribute his/her 2nd preference to the remaining candidates. This goes on until a candidate has 50% of the vote.
All sounds wonderfully good until you think about what happens to the votes of the candidates that are rejected. Voters have expressed their preference for a candidate then receive what is basically a second vote for their next preferred candidate and so on. This means that someone who votes BNP (idiots) can end up with their vote going to the Labour Party directly. So what we have now is the possibility of someone who came second or third in first place votes, getting a lot of peoples 2nd and third preferences and passing the person with the most 1st preference votes.
This means that we have a candidate who has won with votes of people who had made them their 2nd 3rd or even 4th choice. To my mind this is a joke. It promotes and is biased in favour of candidates who pick up second and third preferences. It penalises the independent-minded, and boosts the also rans and mediocre candidates. It makes sure that we get “Second Choice Politicians”. I assume this is what Brown wants so that he can demonstrate to them his superior abilities.
Time for a Change.
Gordon Brown slated over vote reform plans – Scotsman.com News.
