Fitaloon at MicroShaft

Last night the HoC voted for Electoral change, not reform. All it did was ask for a change from one voting system First past the Post (FPtP) to Alternative Voting (AV).

AV is symptomatic of our times,  a system supposedly designed to make sure that the majority wins, but in fact trying to ensure mediocre consensus candidates (or just plain liars) win.  If you vote for one of the two most popular parties only your first preference counts. If you vote for a party that cannot win you effectively vote twice, as your second preference, which has the same value now as a first preference,  then helps decide which of the front runners has won.  How can that be fair.

This is the politics of mediocrity and duplicity, well suited to Gordon Brown, it is the politics of the ditherer, which is why it is no surprise that Gordon Brown has championed it in his death-bed attempt to try and bribe the Lib Dems into helping him in the forlorn hope that he achieves a hung parliament.

The only good thing is that AV will never become law, and Gordon Brown knows this. He only put it forward to try and bribe the Lib Dems, and they as usual did his bidding so that they can again try and jump up on the knees of Labour and Gordon Brown and become their Lap Dogs to be played and petted until their usefulness is past.  They did this in Scotland and the public have shown them the door. You would have thought once bitten, twice shy, but the Lib Dems never seem to learn the hard lessons of Politics.

Putting it beyond doubt | Electoral reform | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian.

As MP’s vote on whether or not they should vote to have a referendum on moving to AV, I just wondered if we could first of all ask them to start voting using AV for everything in Parliament and also have secret rather than whipped votes.

We could then have laws that were the least unpopular. Sounds good to me. Should also suit the dithering and delaying Gordon Brown.

Gordon Brown is the  road-block to proper reform.

Time for a Change

BBC News – MPs to decide on vote system referendum.

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.