AV 4: AV yet again, Or Counting's Not Hard: A Simple Real-World Example

It seems pretty clear that there are lots of people out there who, even if they can grasp the mechanics of voting in AV, nonetheless have issues with how the counting system works.

AV Voting is pretty simple, of course: instead of the current British system where you put an X for the only person you want to represent you, and let's use the word 'want' loosely, leaving aside issues of second-guessing and tactical voting, in AV you put a '1' next to the candidate you'd most like to see represent you, and if you so wish, a '2' next to the one you'd next most like, and so on. It's the same process that says 'I'd like a ginger beer, please, but if that's not possible I'd like an orange juice.'

What of counting? People seem to think it's horribly complicated, even though the Irish and the Australians find it fairly straightforward. Well, let's take a simple real-world example of AV in action, and look at the 1990 Irish Presidential election*, as that's about as simple an instance of AV as you're ever likely to see. I was in school at the time, and we did a mock class election to learn how this worked. I've understood the system since.

There were three candidates. Fianna Fáil's Brian Lenihan -- the deputy prime minister -- and Fine Gael's Austin Currie both ran as centrist figures, put forward by the two traditional centrist parties. Mary Robinson, an independent, ran with the support of the Labour Party; anything but a bland centrist, Robinson was an eminent liberal, who had campaigned back in the seventies for the legal availability of artificial contraception and who worked as a legal advisor for the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. She was about as polarising a character as one could get in Irish politics back in 1990.**

When the election was held, Lenihan received the highest share of first preferences, with 44.1%, Robinson coming second with 38.8%, and Currie coming third with 17%.

Now, the problem with this is that all three candidates received a minority of votes. Not one of them had received a direct and explicit mandate from the majority of voters.

Currie, as the recipient of the fewest votes, was eliminated so that his votes could be redistributed. It turned out that while a few Currie voters had expressed a secondary preference for Lenihan, and about half that number had taken the view that it was Currie or nothing, the vast majority of people who had voted for Currie had expressed a secondary preference for Robinson.

The end result of this was that Robinson won in the decisive final count, with 51.93% of the poll, Lenihan coming second with 46.44%.

Like I've said, this is basically how I learned how transferable voting works. We held a mock election in English class, of all places, with us being asked who we wanted to win, and with the class roughly breaking down along what would be the national line: three minorities, with Lenihan supporters being the largest minority and Currie ones being the smallest, and then almost all of the Currie voters switching their allegiance to Robinson.

Before you ask, yes, I was a schoolboy would-be Currie voter. And I was one of the ones who switched to Robinson. Was she my first choice? No. Was I happy with her? Yes.

If you're good, I'll talk about the 1997 Presidential election soon. That's a little bit more complex, with more candidates, and probably a better guide for how AV would be likely to play in a typical British parliamentary constituency. But still, the principle's the same.

___________________________________________________________

* Yes, Ireland. Because despite the lies that even the Guardian seems to be swallowing, AV isn't something that's only used in Australia, Fiji, and Papua-New Guinea.

** Because preferential voting systems don't inevitably lead to bland centrists getting elected, despite what you'll read in the Spectator, the Mail, the Telegraph, and on ConHome.

AV 3: AV yet again, or why archers should practice on live targets rather than straw men

Sigh.

There's a piece on Conservative Home which a friend of mine rather extravagantly pointed to yesterday, billing it as 'a comprehensive case against the introduction of AV by statistician Graeme Archer PhD'.

It's a  slightly different approach to the three standard ones for opponents of voting reform, those being, of course:

• I'm opposed to voting reform for a whole host of reasons all which are demonstrably false, such as lies about which countries use AV or lies about people having more than one vote under AV or lies about the cost of introducing AV.
• I'm opposed to voting reform because only first past the post produces strong candidates rather than bland ones, though it's best not to ask why my party doesn't use first past the post in its internal selection processes.
• I'm opposed to voting reform as the current system is good for my party and is therefore, by implication, good for the country.

The second point is, I think, the only anti-AV argument that has any real merit, being capable of being maintained sincerely and without cynicism, but I think it ignores real-world evidence and invites some very serious questions. This point rears its head in Archer's article, but his argument is somewhat different. Instead he goes for smoke and mirrors, wheeling out some of the more absurd and unusual claims people have sometimes made for voting reform, and then attacking them as though they're the main arguments.

Before loosing his volley against his artfully-arranged battalion of straw men, Archer starts his article with the ostensibly reasonable observation that:

'The likely anti-Conservative outcome of an AV election wouldn't matter, of course, if the AV algorithm were capable of delivering a fair outcome.'

Why does everyone automatically assume that an AV election would lead to an anti-Conservative result? It might, sure, but given that the Lib Dems, not long ago regarded as the most left-wing of the major parties, are in government the Conservatives, doesn't it rather look as though anything might be possible? Why assume everyone hates the Conservatives? Or course, if everybody does then they probably shouldn't be in government, because I don't think democracy is about allowing a minority to dictate to a majority. Still, I think the basic thesis is wrong.

  

Straw Man No. 1: AV will end safe seats

Archer says it won't, because around a third of seats can be called 'safe', and will continue to be so under any reasonable electoral algorithm. I presume he's talking about the fact that a third of MPs are elected with the support of most of their constituents, and that this is unlikely to change. I'm inclined to agree, albeit with the proviso that nobody knows for certain. After all, in such 'safe' seats, people who might be inclined to vote against incumbents may nowadays simply not vote, thinking there's no point in their voting: AV may actually encourage them to vote.

The key issue, which Archer should be aiming at if he was interested in, well, accuracy, would be that AV would end precarious seats. You know, like Brighton Pavilion and Norwich South, where MPs can be elected with less than a third of the vote. Where more than twice as many people vote for losing candidates than for winning ones. It's odd that he doesn't address this, and given that he doesn't do so, I don't really think he can be said to be comprehensively addressing anything.

  

Straw Man No. 2: AV will make candidates work harder...

Archer doesn't so much demolish this claim as rephrase it, saying 'a candidate will have to appeal to people who don't want to vote for him', and then fail to refute it at all. Indeed, all he manages to do here is basically to say 'imagine what would happen under AV - nobody would say controversial stuff in case it might scare off transfers'. It's disappointing that he just relies on imagination here, rather than looks at real-world evidence for how politicians appeal for transfers in countries with electoral systems based on transferable votes.

He could just look as far as Ireland, say, and ask whether of the current crop of new TDs -- let's just say Gerry Adams, Shane Ross, Luke 'Ming' Flanagan, Richard Boyd Barrett, or Stephen Donnelly-- are really examples of candidates smoothing out their message to get transfers? Could any of them be described as a bland non-entity? Just google them to find out what they're like. Or Joe Higgins, say, who I remember running and coming very close to winning in an AV race in my constituency once upon a time...

Straw Man No. 3: ... by aiming for 50% of the vote

I don't think the issue is that AV requires candidates to aim for 50% of the vote; rather, it requires them to get 50% of the vote, or more precisely 50% of the vote in the only decisive round of counting. The important thing is that it's not about what candidates aim for, so much as what they need. Archer misses the mark on this, again.

He goes on to insist that 50% is meaningless, anyway, and that it's an arbitrary target, which it is, if we treat it as a number, but if we translate it into English, it makes more sense: AV requires elected representatives to have the support of most of the people they're representing. Is this really a made-up fetish?

  

Straw Man No. 4: AV will end the expenses scandal.

According to Archer, this is something that Nick Clegg believes, and to support this claim, he links to a scanty London Standard article written the day before Clegg gave a speech, reporting on what it expected Clegg to say.

Look, I don't care one way or another about Nick Clegg or what he thinks, but Archer's citing on that Standard article rather gives the game away regarding the level of research he's done. He could have linked to the speech itself -- http://www.newstatesman.com/2011/02/vote-mps-means-post-past -- in which case he'd have learned that Clegg certainly saw a link between MPs abusing the system and MPs feeling invulnerable in their seats, and envisaged a whole package of reforms to help sort out Britain's broken political system, but never simplistically claimed that AV would end the expenses scandal.

He could have done that. He didn't. Instead he just misrepresented Clegg. He could have done research and checked his facts, but instead he just made stuff up. Sure, why not? If lying about AV is good enough for the Prime Minister, why not for an ordinary party hack? The fish stinks from the head, as they say.

Straw Man No. 5: AV will help minor parties flourish.

This, Archer says, is obvious rubbish, but rubbish which lots of centre-right readers are inclined to believe.

The reality, of course, that this is another thing that people just don't know about. Nobody knows. It'll all depend firstly on whether people who currently don't see a point in voting start to exercise their right and do so to support parties other than the established if declining big two, and secondly on whether people who currently and reluctantly vote for the big two will feel it's worthwhile to express their honest opinions, even if that comes down to 'I really want the UKIP candidate to represent me, but if that's not possible then I'd be happy with a Conservative'.

In the short term, I'd expect this to mean that the smaller parties would get a boost in their share of the first-preference vote, but without any significant boost in seats, so that the end result isn't radically different. In the longer term... who knows?

  

Straw Man No. 6: AV is fair.

Not many people say AV is fair. They just tend to say it's fairer than First Past the Post, which it is, irrespective of what formulae Archer waves around to impress the easily impressed.

In 1992, the Liberal Democrat Russell Johnston was elected MP for Inverness, Nairn, and Lochaber, with just 26% of the vote. That'd not be possible under AV. What's more, imagine if that'd happened in every single constituency in the country, with the Lib Dems topping the poll with just 26% of the vote. That'd be 650 seats being awarded to a party with just 26% of the vote. Would that be possible under AV? No. Is it possible under FPTP? Yes. Yes it would be.

I know, that sounds crazy, but given that the current system is such that a party can get 76% of seats with just 55% of the vote, or 55% of the seats with just 35% of the vote, I don't think it's all too fanciful to imagine a party getting an absolute landslide with the support of just a quarter of the voting population. It'd be unlikely, sure, but it'd be far from impossible.

Look, it's very simple. General elections are about electing parliaments. Parliaments are representative assemblies. Representative assemblies should be representative of whoever of whatever it is they represent. Parliament, therefore, should be the United Kingdom writ small. The challenge is to create a parliament as representative of the people as possible. As things stand, under the current system more people vote for losing candidates than for winning ones. AV is a very slight change -- one that was recommended by Royal Commission as far back as 1910 -- which goes a small way towards correcting the current imbalance.

  

Archer's witterings are based on what he assumes AV would be like. Well, I've participated in AV elections in Ireland to pick a member of parliament and head of state, and I can assure you, he's wrong. The fact that he doesn't draw on any evidence from, well, anywhere that uses transferable voting, rather shows that far from being a comprehensive argument, it's just another piece of dishonest fluff.

I really think the Electoral Commission wouldn't need to spend half as much money educating people about AV if they weren't obliged to counter the constant stream of lies from the opponents of AV.

AV 2: AV Again, OR If you have to lie to make your case, then it probably isn't a good case...

See, here we go again. Have a look at this article and especially the three quotes from David Cameron. Every single one of them is a lie. It seems as though he has no respect for the truth, the British people, or the integrity of the referendum process.

"It is a system so undemocratic that your vote for a mainstream party counts once, while someone can support a fringe party like the BNP and get their vote counted several times."

Leaving aside how in a quarter of UK constituencies, the Conservatives are at best a third party, this is nonsense. In AV your vote is ultimately only counted once. However many rounds of counting there may be, there's only one decisive round, and in that round everybody's vote is counted just once. Not several times. Once.

"It's a system so obscure that it is only used by three countries in the whole world: Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. I'm not making it up, three countries in the whole world. Our system is used by half of the world."

Leaving aside how its just an accident of history that lots of countries have inherited First Past the Post -- with there being no shortage of ones that have abandoned or rejected it -- this just isn't true. I've voted twice in AV elections in Ireland, as we use AV for presidential elections and parliamentary elections when there's only one seat at stake, and India uses AV for presidential elections.

"Just think forward to the Olympics. Usain Bolt powers home in the hundred metres but when it comes to handing out the gold medals they give it to the person who comes third. You wouldn't do it in the Olympics, we shouldn't do it in politics, we've got to vote no to this crazy system."

These are the same Olympics that'll be held in a city where the Mayor is elected by instant run-off voting? And not by FPTP? Just making sure...

Look, the metaphor's wrong for starters, as an athletic contest has a clear finishing line, which AV has and First Past the Post, despite its ironic name, lacks: AV basically requires a winner to be supported by half of the voters, whereas FPTP just requires the winning candidate to be supported by one more voter than the next guy. Depending on how many credible candidates there are, that figure can be pretty low. That's why the Liberal Democrat Simon Wright is in Parliament with just 29.36% of the Norwich South vote and why the Greens' Caroline Lucas is there with just 31.33% of the Brighton Pavilion vote. Neither of them even needed 29%.

That aside, Cameron obviously doesn't believe this. If he did, he'd favour using First Past the Post when selecting Conservative leaders and candidates. Granted, that'd have meant that Ken Clarke would have won in 1997, Michael Portillo would have won in 2001, and David Davis would have beaten Cameron himself in 2005. The Conservative system is, after all, a sensible one: a series of preliminary rounds of voting is used to winnow the field of candidates down to two, those two then being decisively voted on. AV does exactly the same thing, except that preferences are all stated at the outset, which is why it's also known as Instant Run-Off Voting.

And none of this nonsense about run-off voting being okay for choosing individual candidates, leaders, presidents, or whatever, but not for choosing parliaments. Given the British system of single-seater constituencies, a general election is just a load of individual elections happening at the same time.

No, Cameron obviously opposes AV because the undemocratic advantage the Conservatives enjoy in the current system might be cancelled out under AV. Might. The fact is that nobody knows what the effect of AV will be. The only thing we can be certain of is that it will allow people to express honest preferences, without fearing that doing so could mean that their vote will be wasted.

I have a fair idea of what the broad effect of the change will be, in the short term, but I'll save that for another day. Back to work, methinks.

AV 1: AV and the Silent People

The AV Referendum's more than a month away, and I'm already tired of it.

I'm tired of the lies, and the misinformation, and the hypocrisy. I'm tired of the ignorance, and the stupidity, and the confusion. I'm tired of people masking vested interests beneath a veneer of principle, and of good people standing shoulder-to-shoulder with liars and making liars of themselves.

I'm sure that the British people -- or whatever fragment of them bothers to vote next month -- are going to reject voting reform. I'm certain of it. But why? What would a no vote mean?

Would it mean that if Nick Clegg wants Alternative Voting then you don't?

Great. Cut your electoral noses off to spite your Lib Dem faces, why don't you? Presumably you've already stopped eating Spanish food and Hob Nob biscuits, because, y'know, Clegg likes them.

Would it mean that you're rejecting AV because it's not PR and that's what you most want? You know, the David Owen approach?

Wonderful. Make the perfect the enemy of the good, why don't you? You know full well that your 'no' to AV will be read as a 'yes' for the status quo. You don't think the government are planning on doing a survey, like in Ireland after Lisbon I, to find out why people voted against the government's proposal, do you? No, they'll interpret it to suit their own purposes.

Would it mean that you think people should only ever be allowed vote once?

Come on, surely you're not thick enough to fall for that. As the pro-AV crowd keep saying, the thinking behind AV is simple: it's the same thinking that says, 'If you're going to the shops, I'll have a ginger beer, but if they've none, I'll have an orange juice'. In AV systems, every individual's vote only counts once at the the sole decisive stage. That's why political parties are happy to use run-off systems when selecting candidates and leaders. Nobody claims that William Hague only became Conservative party leader ahead of Ken Clarke back in 1997 because Michael Howard supporters were allowed to vote three times!

Would it mean that you think the country's in dire straits and can't afford £250 million to be spent on AV?

That's what the No2AV crowd are saying, after all, that around £130 million will be needed to pay for vote-counting machines, and that over £100 million will be spent on the referendum  and educating people about AV. Well, the referendum money's spent anyway, and the Conservatives who are backing the dishonest No2AV campaign agreed last year that they were going to spend that. As for the voting machines, well, aside from the fact there aren't any plans to buy such machines...Australia doesn't use counting machines, and neither does Ireland, with a more complex system, so do you think the British are uniquely dim and incapable of counting? Is that your problem? That you think the British are too stupid for any system more grown-up than the current one?

Would it mean that you think AV is a discredited system, used only in three countries in the world?

Why would you think that? Is it because the No2AV people keep telling you this? They keep saying only Australia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea use AV, but India elects its President with AV, and I've voted twice in AV elections in Ireland. They're lying to you. Again. And here's the thing: all British political parties elect their leaders along AV lines. They select their candidates the same way. If it's good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for you?

Would it mean that you're convinced AV is a recipe for chaos, whereas First Past the Post guarantees stability?

Have you done any research into this at all, or have you just listened to the No campaign's lies? I don't think Australia's doing too badly, is it? It's certainly had no more hung parliaments over the last century or so than Britain has. Meanwhile Canada, with its First Past the Post system, has had three hung parliaments in a row.

Would it mean that you want to stop minority parties like the BNP from getting into parliament?

Assuming you think it's okay to rig the system to block those whose views you dislike from having a say in how their country is run, this makes sense, I suppose. I'm not even sure how we define parties as fringe or minority parties, though. In a quarter of UK constituencies, the Conservatives are at best a third party; should their voters be thought of as the kind of extremists who should be made to keep their mouths shut? All else aside, though, it seems odd for the BNP to be opposed to AV if AV would help them gain power. Maybe they think it's not British...

Would it mean that you believe First Past the Post is a British system and part of your cherished heritage?

Well, ignoring the fact that none of your political parties use First Past the Post when choosing leaders or candidates, I suppose this makes a kind of sense. After all, of the nearly forty democracies in Europe, only Britain is still hanging on to this way of doing things, which I suppose is a good thing: somebody needs to stand up for how things were done in the nineteenth century. Of course, a Royal Commission recommended as long ago as 1910 that you should ditch First Past the Post in favour of AV, recognising that First Past the Post doesn't really work when there are more than two parties, but maybe the time's still not quite right...

Would it mean that you like the current system because it means that your favourite political party sometimes gets to rule as though it has a national mandate even when scarcely one in three voters have backed them?

This, at least, would be honest. I'm pretty sure this is why most Tory and Labour MPs who oppose reform are taking the approach they're taking. Turkeys rarely vote for Christmas, after all. It just leaves me wondering why they don't insist on this system being used within their parties too.

I can't see AV getting passed. I think that through a mixture of laziness, hypocrisy, and stupidity, the British people are going to vote to keep the current system. You know, that current wonderful system which a Royal Commissions as long ago as 1910 found outdated and inadequate, and where since then...

• No party has won a popular majority since 1931, when some people could vote more than once.
• In 1951, the Conservatives won more seats than Labour despite getting fewer votes.
• In 1974, Labour won more seats than the Conservatives despite getting fewer votes.
• In 2005, Labour won a big parliamentary majority with hardly more than a third of the vote.
• In 2010, more people didn't vote than voted for losing candidates, and more people voted for losing candidates than for winning ones.

I don't believe the current system is either sacrosanct or fit for purpose anymore, and I don't believe the de facto disenfranchisement of most of the British population is a good thing, so I think reform is needed.

Sure, I don’t think AV is the best possible voting system, but I think it's a far better one than First Past the Post.  I've elected representatives under four voting systems, including both Alternative Vote and First Past the Post, and have never felt voting so pointless as in the First Past the Post elections. It's the system where I've felt least empowered.

I think we should be wary of making the perfect an enemy of the good. While not perfect, I believe AV to be more likely to return a more representative parliament than the current British system, and I also believe that changing the system, even in so mild a way, could help change mindsets, so that people might be more willing to countenance other changes without fearing the apocalypse.

That won't happen, though. They say people get the politicians they deserve, and it looks as though they're determined to keep the electoral system they deserve too. Chesterton once wrote of the English as a silent people, who have not spoken yet. I fear that in a month's time they'll vote to continue their silence.