On the evening of February 9, the British House of Commons passed the preliminary stage of a bill to provide for a public vote next year on whether to use Instant Runoff Voting for parliamentary elections. See this story. The vote was 365-187. The bill has additional steps before it is passed by the House of Commons, and then it must receive attention in the House of Lords. The British term is “alternative vote.”
This is nothing but one more TOTAL EVIL scheme by the Labor party hacks trying to stay in power — getting enough Liberal Democrat votes to beat the Conservative party hack in enough gerrymander districts.
P.R. for all legislative bodies — even the rotted to the core U.K. House of Commons.
Total Votes / Total Seats = Equal votes needed for each seat winner.
Nonpartisan A.V. — Approval Voting — to elect elected executive officers and all judges — even in the U.K. — i.e. elect a NONPARTISAN prime minister — and perhaps even dump the monarchy — the source of endless deaths and evil machinations over the centuries.
See for example the EVIL King George III regime in 1761-1783 in North America >>> American Revolutionary WAR >>> the 13 original States and the later U.S.A. regime.
Sorry any Brit readers on this list — ALL monarchies = EVIL.
See what it took the Brits [and later Americans] to defeat the EVIL Central Powers monarchs in World War I and Axis monarchs in World War II.
Wow… just wow! What a ridiculous tirade.
It seems to me an interesting response to the dawning fact of British political life that those other parties just aren’t going away, and it’s harder to claim a mandate to govern if you’re not winning a majority of the vote. . . .
I find it interesting that the Lib Dems sided with Labor on this one, because the Lib Dems are adamantly pro PR voting (mostly because they’d get a lot more seats in the Commons).
IRV certaintly does not guarantee a “majority of the vote”.
Here’s a simple IRV election:
33% X>Y>Z
32% Y>X>Z
35% Z>Y>X
X wins, but Y is preferred to X by 67% of the voters!
And Y is preferred to Z by 65% of the voters.
Score Voting and its simplified variant, Approval Voting, are vastly superior.
I would probably vote against this in a referendum. Yes, FPTP isn’t perfect, but at least we have relative freedom in who we can vote for (ie, whoever has the £500 deposit and 10 signatures). Our country doesn’t discriminate against minor parties like the US does, so things like this doesn’t carry as much weight.
I believe the Liberal Democrats put up an amendment to replace the Alternative Vote with a version of the Single Transferable Vote (similar to what the Irish Republic uses). It was, however, defeated by a large margin.
See the U.K. Electoral Reform Society stuff —
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/
ERS folks fighting to get real Democracy into the U.K. regime for about 130 (repeat 130) years.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/news.php?ex=0&nid=455
The Electoral Reform Society’s Chief Executive Dr Ken Ritchie said:
“Tonight’s vote marks the beginning of the end of First-Past-the-Post. A clear majority of parliamentarians have shown they are willing to break with the past and build a better politics. ***** ”
Beginning of the END of the minority rule gerrymanders in the U.S.A. is WHEN ???
How about N-O-W ???
P.R. and A.V.