Jolly Old England (and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) are set to begin counting the votes in their referendum on whether to switch from the First-Past-The-Post system to the Alternative Vote system. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a video (produced by AV supporters) explaining how it works for cats:
The cats are cute. 🙂
the Scottish parliamentary results are even Cuter. (Your turn, Laird Alasdair. 🙂
“Alternate Vote”?
*watches video*
Oh, that’s Instant Runoff Voting.
I don’t care how cute the cats are and how hip the video-makers are with their Internet memes, and I don’t care what you call it, it is a horrible idea.
Well, it’s losing horribly at the polls, so there you go.
Well, you get the impact of a runoff system without the added cost. Not really a bad idea. Any electoral system employed will have some flaws. If this expands the field of viable candidates and ideas I think it’s not such a bad thing at all.
How is Instant Runoff Voting/Alternate Vote a horrible idea? It more accurately reflects the will of the people. Isn’t that the whole point of voting?
Whats the downside? Other than for the guy who takes advantage of splitting the votes of two candidates that would be more supported by the majority if either one was running alone?
Under our system you get a (somewhat)functioning government. Under the alternate system you get Belgium, you get a year without a government.
(Hey wait..maybe I’ll change my mind)
Sorry but thats a single data point and you can’t seriously believe that the entirety of whether or not Belgium’s government works or not is based on whether or not they use IRV.
I first encountered the Single Transferable Vote system – known as STV (not to be confused with Scottish TeleVision – known as STV) last millennium during Computer Science classes … it was used as a standard exercise in programming, to set up such a system as simply as possible …
Electorally-speaking, however, it has yet to gain popular support … mostly because parties who have anything more than a vaguely-sporting chance of an actual majority in elections don’t like the idea … those parties, on the other hand, who traditionally come in 5th and 6th place in a 4-party election *LOVE* STV …
O resident davidkian #7 – thank you for your consistency … gahrie #6 stated a general truth, followed by a specific supporting example … and *you* responded with {paraphrasing} “I disagree with your example so I will reject it condescendingly without offering any counter example supporting *why* I might disagree” …
The problems of STV (and most other forms of Proportional Voting (PV)) tend to be those which lead causally and directly to minority governments – where small marginal parties can wield disproportionate power as castable (well, actually, more like buyable) deciding votes …
FPTP, for all its perceived flaws, does tend to lead to governments who can actually do useful things (and, yes, who can do useless things (and avoid doing needed things) qv Obama Administration and 111th (Democratic) Congress) …
More Scots electoral humour …
“NATURALLY Scottish politics is playing on the minds of Diary readers.
An SNP supporter phones with the advice: “Labour MSPs. Don’t forget to click on your ‘Out of Office’ message on your emails.”
Gloomy picture
AND another, trying to combine two major new stories, declares: “Nick Clegg is still refusing to release a picture of the Scottish Liberal Democrats to prove that they are dead.””