danieldwilliam | Why I Like AV

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Why I Like AV

I should preface my remarks by saying that I am a local campaigner for the Yes campaign.

I like the Alternative Vote system. I would probably prefer the Single Transferable Vote or Alternative Vote with Additional Member top up (with open lists rather than closed) but what I’m being offered is AV or First Past the Post.

I both observe and feel the tribalism. I used to a very tribal member of the Labour Party and, after drifting towards the Liberal Democrats, I now feel much more tribally Labour than I have done in 5 years. That’s how I feel. It’s different from how I think, or I think it is.

One of the interesting things for me about working on the AV campaign is meeting lots of different people from different political persuasions. I think I am a more rounded citizen and politician because of it.

My current image of British politics is an arch. Two large, heavy buttresses pushing against each other with great power and energy in order to keep the status quo static. You pick one side or the other and heave away for the rest of your life and you don’t speak to, let alone trust, anyone not on your side. Whilst some changes have happened and the voting share of the Labour and Conservative Parties has fallen over the last 50 years I think that’s how many people in parties feel. They create structures and systems that suit the way they feel and it’s difficult to change the way people think and feel about how they do the business of politics.

Everything becomes very tightly structured around the Party. Your status within the Party is judged on your loyalty to the Party, not to the voters, even voters who actually voted for you personally.

As a thought experiment on tribalism, imagine if you were a very politically aware and active citizen sitting somewhere between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and explicitly said to each candidate “I’ll campaign for you if you convince me that you are the best candidate and the one most aligned with my own views but my support next time round will be contingent on your voting and activism record. I will campaign for your opponent if you fail my interview ”. Imagine how that conversation would go.

So I like AV because it begins to do something about the tribalism of politics by increasing voter power.

I think it increases voter power by

· Creating more marginal seats

· Reduces the risks of vote splitting

· Increases personal accountability

· Allows implicit primaries or splinter candidates

· Reducing the number of wasted votes (ie votes not cast for the eventual winner or runner up)

I also think AV gives smaller parties more influence. They may not gain any more seats but their voters will have to be courted for 2^nd and 3^rd preferences.

AV also creates the potential for larger parties to split. I think the Conservative party are particularly susceptible to this, given the breadth of their views and the existence of UKIP. I think the model of the Liberal / Country / National alliance in Australia is one to look at.

Generally I see AV as lowering the barriers to entry for parties and the barriers to shifting your support as a voter. If a new party enters an election under First Past the Post in order to poll any significant vote is must firstly persuade me to vote for it and then persuade me that everyone else will vote for it too. That is a hard hill to climb.

Anything that creates more competition tends to move power from suppliers (parties) to consumers (voters).

What I would hope from AV is that

· Whips have reduced power as MP’s keep one eye on both voters and rogue challenges from their own constituency party

· More independent or independently minded MP’s

· More accurate polling for smaller parties leading to a better appreciation of voters’ desires

· More influence for smaller parties (arguably more in line with their national polling)

Those MP’s and party managers who are able to enter into a dialogue with other parties and non-aligned activists best will begin to prosper and the culture of our political parties and political debate will begin to change.

I think it will take several election cycles under the new system for voters, candidates and party managers to get used to the new system and we may get some strange occurrences for a while.

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Partially, but they're more helped by the existence of STV for the Senate.

However, with STV being touted for the Lords replacement,a nd with list PR being used for Europe, they're building campaigning capacity nationally anyway, which means that they can target and work seats under AV, without the massive drawback a 3rd/4th party normally has of the 'wasted vote' response.

At the last GE, if we'd had AV, the Green candidate would've got my first pref, despite me being deputy campaign manager for the Lib Dem candidate, she was that good.

But because the three major parties were fighting the seat hard, her vote share got squeezed horribly.

I basically agree with Daniel, in theory, over time, it'll help Greens and UKIP, will probably cause a split in the Tories, will hopefully lead to the Cooperative disaffilliating from Labour, and we shoudl be in a position where 'safe' seats cease to be so because an allied party can compete there giving voters choice.

@Daniel, here via Andrew Ducker, and essentially agree with you completely. I'm attending my first meeting of the YEs campaign locally tonight (I was ill for the last one), and am dreading being appointed borough coordinator. Apparently, we've even got Tories on board.

For me one of the most interesting thing about being involved in the Yes Campaign is meeting people from different political persuasions and being able to talk to them about politics, about politicking and about their values without it being confrontational or antagonistic. It's a revelation.

Yeah, I've known some perfectly nice Tories. One of the things I'd love to see is a splintering of the Conservatives into a nicer Tory party and the UKIP. This would make me very happy indeed.

I'd like to see an intellectually and ideologically free market libertarian / liberal party emerge from the Conservatives.

Whilst I don't agree that it is the best way to run a country I appreciate the intellectual honesty of pure free marketeers and I would like to see the argument put forward without the paternalistic, social conservatism, Euro-sceptic or the cronyism that other elements of the Conservative party bring to their coalition.

Exactly.

The only slight downpoint of that is if the headbangers splinter off, the remaining Tories (let's call them, for the sake of argument, the Whigs) will undoubtedly attract a lot of current Lib Dems, which'll make the remnant LDs on the liberal left, where there's already competition.

But yeah, two of my local Cllrs are former Tories, one defected to us and is now a good personal friend, the other got deselected, is now an Independent, and I'm thinking of endorsing her (against party rules, but I suspect I'll vote for her).

Generally, most people get into politics to try and do what they perceive to be the right thing. The assumption that some tribalists make that "The Others" are simply evil/not to be trusted/whatever always bothers me. I tend to prefer to assume stupidity over mendacity when there's a bad policy being supported ;-)

There's competition on the liberal left?

Where?

I'm being semi-serious here. Labour have shown themselves to be anything but liberal left. There are liberal left people in Labour, just as there are also some of those in the Lib Dems, but neither is actually a left liberal party. I'd be delighted if we ended up with a system where we had a left liberal party, a right liberal party, a left authoritarian party, and a right authoritarian party. The main question then would be whether the coalitions would form down left/right lines or authoritarian/liberal ones.

Assuming the Tories split, and the Cameron/Whiggish wing takes in the right of the Lib Dems (verylikely, and my preferred response, for the reasons you say).

That leaves the LD left. The Greens like to think they're Liberal/Left, and many of their policies, activists and members actually are.

I'd also hope that, with AV, the Cooperative will split off from Labour. This I feel is also possible, though less likely immediately--hopefully something to be encouraged by 2020.

Ergo, IF we get AV, and the current parties begin to split (likely), then I see three potential lib/left parties.

I actually do view the LDs, generally, as being a liberal left party--Clegg is on the left, just, and Laws is, in economic terms, a centrist. The most right wing LDs are Jeremy Brown and the Lib Vision bunch, and they'r enothing compared to headbanging Tories.

That there are some on the left who're genuinely attacking this Govt as the most right wing in living memory shows how little people really know about, say, Thatcher, and how nasty she genuinely was at times, and also that the rhetoric is getting silly in some cases.

The Govt is centrist with a right wing bias. That it is centrist is because that's where Cameron wants it to be, and the left wing counterbalance of the LDs helps him keep the headbangers in check.

I certainly think it likely that the Conservative Party will change post AV. I think it likely that some elements will drift off to UKIP if UKIP shows signs of winning some seats. Who they are and what they do I'm sure of as I think UKIP are still evolving beyond an allergic reaction to the EU and health and safety.

You might also see some of the left (of the Conservative Party) / liberals join the LD's rather than other way round if AV and time help the LD's electorally.

I think a lot will depend on the personalities involved for good or ill.

I take Andrews point - there doesn't seem to be a left / liberal party that puts forward the view point that things are better if they are shared, we have a binding obligation to look after the weak, merit should be supported for everyone's common benefit BUT we'll let you the people get on and do it and tell us what you need instead of the Brownite "We're from the Government, we're here to measure you" approach that the Labour Party have taken in recent decades.

At least I don't see one that is credibly, unambiguously self-identifying as one.

In terms of the parties that we end up with in say 2020 there are a couple of what I call trump issues that imply the existance of party that supports a Yes and one that supports a No on certain issues.

I'd put forward some examples as

Is the envinroment the most important thing by a long way (Yes = Green, No = most other parties)
Should we leave the EU (Yes = UKIP, NO = Conversative Party)
Should Scotland be a leftward leaning Independent state (Yes = SNP, No = Labour & Scottish LD's)

In my head I agree with you on the most people get into politics to do what they think is right and the cock up before conspiracy assumption.

Speaking personally I often find it hard to feel that rather than think it. I am as much a product of the tribal system as anyone.

which is why preferential voting, on its own, should be a net good. Fptp encourages adversarial fights and opponent demonising, av should encourage appeals to supporters, saw a bit of that in the last London mayoral.

I agree. It's hard to start to reach out to people because you are often seen as suspect by your own side if you do and at the moment, under FPTP, there is little advantage to be gained by it. So cross-benching is all pain for little gain.

All this makes me more enthusiastic about the Yes campaign. I really want to avoid a situation where (responsible or not for what happened) we the sort of rhetoric I've heard from Sarah Palin and I'm sure others on all sides.

You're right. PR in the Australian Senate is certainly helping the Greens and I agree with your analysis on the likely ability of parties like the Greens and UKIP to parley seats in PR House of Lords replacement along with Euro representation into a breakthrough in the lower chamber.

One feature about AV that I particularly like is the abilty to vote 1st preference for small parties and still have a say in the eventual outcome. I'm not personally sure if I'm ready to actively support the Green party but I'd like them to have some representation. By using my 1st preference for a Green I can show that the environment is a big issue for me. The worst that happens is that I accidentally end up with a Green MP when I would maybe rather have a red or a yellow one. That sort of thing happens to me all the time anyway.

Yeah--if Kate had become our MP in May, I'd have been happy, I disagree with her on nearly as many issues as I disagree with the Tory, but there should be more Green MPs.

Also, if there were more Green MPs, and they also get more Short Money generally (somethign that's lost a little in some of the debates, Greens will benefit substantially as long as they keep at least one MP), it'll force them to look at their policies and, well, make them sane.

Some of their economic polices are, well, interesting. In the same way that suicide can be interesting.

@matgb

I'd be very interested to hear how you get on and in keeping in touch on a campaigning basis.

That's easily solved. I've not been blogging as much recently, but hopefully I can get enthused byt he campaign and write about that a lot, it'd give me a focus I've been lacking.

Plus, if I'm helping run the campaign, having people say "be careful what you say on your blog" is less likely. FFS, so many luddites in local politics, scared of engaging.

Oh, you don't want to go around writing anything down. People might read it and remember it.

On the subject of blogging the Edinburgh Fairer Votes blog that I and some of the other Edinburgh folk publich can be found here

http://fairervotesedinburgh.wordpress.com/

I really must make it along to that. I made it along to the march from The Royal Mile, but have been dealing with work/home stress since that point.

People have busy lives and lots of commitments.

We'd certainly really value whatever you could do whenever you can do it.

Whereas I (also here via

andrewducker) am dreading my interview for a phone bank manager job for the Yes campaign in London. To be fair, I'm spending half the hours I'd be paid to do it (20/40) volunteering in the Islington phonebank already. I'm hopeful as well as dreading, it just feels a bit like jumping in the deep end (and I'm not sure if, based on our numbers in Islington, we've got enough volunteers for more phone banks yet.)

(sorry for the icon, couldn't resist)

Good luck with the interview.

The appointment of phone bank managers makes me feel confident about the campaign’s continuing organisation. It feels much more solid than it did than when I first got involved last summer.

I like the icon.

Aye. I think part of it comes from all the different people/groups working together – especially at the level of people running it, I think people have mostly come in via other groups that have joined up with Yes to Fairer Votes.

Whilst that means we got all that useful experience and passion, it did make things feel a bit disjointed at first – I properly got involved in a meeting where they created various London local groups, but even at that meeting, there were two people doing speeches beforehand, and it was quite clear that they were from two different organisations.

That's definitely reduced (though perhaps not entirely disappeared), the Yes campaign has its own feel now, I'd say.

Yes, the early days were very disjointed and I think in Edinburgh we lost a few people because we were and appeared disorganised.

Am I right in thinking that the phone banks are still targeted at recruiting volunteers?

In Islington we're now primarily onto the canvassing calls, calling people we're not expecting to volunteer, to find out which way they intend to vote, and to push them towards Yes.

As it happens, due to some technical issues, when I was last in (yesterday), we were going through the potential volunteer list a second time to try and get more people involved, rather than the canvassing list. But overall, it's canvassing we're doing now.

I will admit that one thing I'm slightly unsure about is whether we yet have the numbers to need/use a bunch more phonebanks, as in Islington, we've not got above 2-3 volunteers in at once, and we have long stretches with just whoever's managing being in. Then again, arguably in a new location there will be people who live near it and thus can attend it regularly.

We're a little behind the phone bank curve here in Edinburgh.

I hope things will pick up as the referendum date approaches and people become more aware of it and more excited.

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