I don’t have a solid answer for this, except that I feel that the main advantage of AV is that it isn’t too radical a change, likely still leading to large party advantages as at present, but ensuring that each voter is more likely to have actually voted for the winning individual, even if they were their second or third choice.

Godwin’s law is more an example of when “someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis”. Which is not what I did.

Also, surely, since its a hypothesis involving all online discussions, every online discussion invokes it…?

(As Slashdot say with polls – Don’t complain about lack of options. You’ve got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.)

In the article “What we stand for: a vision for political reform” it doesn’t actually mention STV at all, except in its guise as AV. There it gets one mention, but it doesn’t even say Lib Dems are in favour of it, just that they are in favour of a referendum on it!

Since I wrote this article, the Yes2AV campaign has launched, and is now on their site, but still: read through “What we stand for”, or their manifesto, and tell me exactly what political system they feel would be ideal…

In order to assess the merits of various electoral systems, we must be clear about what the most valuable benefits of democracy are – what we hope that it can achieve.

Why is a more “representative” *legislature* valuable for democracy? Nothing follows from this about the way we are actually *governed*. Nothing follows from this that the policies that will be implemented will also be “representative”. All you get is a more “representative” House of Commons: so what?

Let’s see who decides on governments and policies in “representative” systems:
The* politicians*, NOT the electorate because the norm will be coalitions.

People can rejoice to their hearts’ content that they get a more “proportional” legislature, but look what they lose:

they can never trust anyone’s manifesto promises; they don’t decide who should be in government (and pass laws); they cannot *dismiss* a government that is woefully lacking and failing (in a coalition, which party is at fault? The coalition parties can always stitch up a deal with another party if they lose support as a whole).

So we see that a more “representative” legislature leads to a complete breakdown of democratic accountability. To illustrate this point, why don’t supporters of PR want representative *governments*, as well as legislature (i.e. cabinet posts are divided up proportionally)? Because then there is no opposition to hold the government to account! All the politicians will be in it together, with no incentive to listen to the people! So maybe, just maybe, democracy isn’t all about “representativeness”.

That’s why a two party system is actually BEST for democratic accountability: one side is held inscrutably to account by the other so the electorate are clear about what each offer and their respective failings. The electorate have the power to choose decisively for one or the other. Finally, there’s an in-built inertia for the two parties to move to a position that serves the best interest of the people, as long as politicians are power-hungry and want to win elections. Surely not too controversial a premise?

This is also in part since it seems to me that most constituencies are either largely labour or conservative, and where you have a lot of one you have a lot lot less of the other (maybe I should research this?) but it seems lib dem and lefter voters are in pretty even numbers most everywhere so we always miss out.

I feel very fed up too of people telling me that people shouldn’t go on protests as this is somehow unfair as we’ve had our say, when clearly masses of people do not have their views represented by their local MPs and there is no way we are just going to shut up for the next 3.5yrs or so.

I did vote in the polls, I am pro-AV but I would keep the Lords as is. And lol of course discussing voting reform in a post like this is appropriate, just talking about the amount of energy the left is spending discussing replacing one system that works for one that works slightly better when the NHS is being dismantled and forests are being sold off!

1. I’m happy with politically aligned Lords too – in fact, I think this would make them more aligned. They wouldn’t be elected – still chosen by parties for their expertise. Just the numbers of Lords for each party would be based on number of votes nationally for that party.
2. The wording of my comment on the CofE seems a bit harsh in retrospect – I apologise for any offence. However, my point remains, I don’t want to be associated with statements like this…
3. I think a moral group, of various religions (and antitheists) would be an interesting idea, but, as I said, I feel its more appropriate to do this with the MPs.
4. I agree, reducing number of contituencies just reduces the amount of representation.
5. Finally, yes there are much bigger issues at hand; but in a post about political reform, probably more appropriate to talk about reform than world hunger lol…

Did you vote in the polls?

With regards to the bishops, I personally (and this is me speaking as an Anglican – intrigued to know why you don’t think our church is any good!) think there should be representatives from all major UK faiths, including different Christian denominations – say, a Catholic, an Anglican, a Church of Scotland/Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Quaker and a Pentecostal along with Muslim, Hindu, Sikh etc.

I’m a Labour Party member and being on the left of the party, have been paying attention to the Fabian Society (left-wing Labour-affilated group) discussing AV. I disagree strongly with reducing the number of constituencies/MPs, and to be honest I think there are more important things for the left to be dealing with right now. We use AV in our elections (eg the leadership election) and it is a good system, but there are bigger issues at hand at the moment.