This post is part of a series on The Alternative Vote Referendum on May 5th. The polls are not looking good. Tomorrow’s once in a generation opportunity to make a small progressive step is set to be lost in the face of distortions. I was handed a postcard at the station today from the “No” campaign,…

This post is part of a series on The Alternative Vote Referendum on May 5th. Democracy is one person one vote! That’s one of the “No” slogans. The implication is that, under AV, some voters have more than one vote, whilst others do not. This video is from the “No” campaign: (That’s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nz1R8NZrJ0 for facebook pals) It would,…

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th. Vote splitting is a real problem under “First Past the Post”, the system we have here in the UK, and which we share with the USA. Vote splitting occurs when two parties representing very similar viewpoints share votes between them, allowing…

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th. Our nation is in a “time of austerity”, goes the argument, so we can’t afford £250m to reform our electoral system, especially when we have to make cuts to things like maternity provision or flak jackets for soldiers. There are several…

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th. David Cameron has said that he feels in his “gut” that AV is wrong: “It’s about what you feel in your gut, about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have. And I just feel it, in my…

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th. In a previous post, I poked fun at the idea that ranking candidates in order of preference on the ballot (as is proposed under AV) is somehow too complex for the ordinary voter to understand. Here’s the thing. I think First…

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th. The “No” camp claim that AV is too complicated: Putting an ‘x’ next to a choice on your ballot paper is the simple, elegant method of voting that the “man in the street” understands. They infer that writing the number ’1′…

I’m not happy at all that the once-in-a-generation choice we’ve been given to change our broken voting system is whether or not we move to AV. I had hoped that we would have been given the choice of Proportional Representation (PR). The deal that the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives cut in May 2010 resulted in…

Back in May last year, my hopes were answered when a hung parliament was returned by the electorate. I argued then that our electoral system was broken. How could it possibly be right that a party with 36% of the votes gets 47% of the seats, whilst another party with 23% of the votes gets…