1. The 2011 referendum is actually on adopting the Alternative Vote, which we call Instant Runoff (IRV) or Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in this country. The term Single Transferable Vote (STV) ordinarily refers to its proportional sibling, in which legislators are elected from multi-seat districts. When the U.K. gets around to reforming the House of Lords, there may or may not be a referendum on some form of proportional representation for that body.

2. The IRV/ Alt.V./RCV stuff in the U.K. is one more EVIL scheme by the rightwing U.K. Cons to try to have PERMANENT control of the regime — along with having fewer House of Commons gerrymander seats – i.e. pack more and more of leftwing Labour voters into fewer /larger urban districts.

   P.R. and App.V. in ALL regimes NOW — before it is too late.

   The Western Civilization political alarm bells have been ringing for decades — due to the EVIL control freak party hacks in the various gerrymander / plurality regimes – U.S.A., Canada and the original U.K. regime.

3. Wonder if UK will forget debacle with Scotland’s 2007 election with STV and new voting machines? The election was described as “Not so much an election, but a national humiliation.”

   Its very likely that if UK adopts STV they will be propelled into computerized vote counting.

   Open Rights Group did a good report on that election and on UK’s experiments with electronic and computer vote counting.

4. Just like Australia and Ireland, the UK would very likely implement instant runoff voting — aka “alternative vote” — with hand-counts.

   Scotland has expanded use of single transferable vote since 2007, and all studies of that election finger other issues than use of STV for the election administration problems in teh election. Indeed far more errors were made on the non-STV ballots than STV ballots.

5. Both the Scottish Parliament and the Assembly for Wales have expressed opposition to holding the referendum on the Alternative Vote (not STV) on the same day as the Assembly and Parliament elections in those areas. It was the combination of the Parliament and local elections in Scotland (using different voting systems) that were given a large share of the blame for the voter confusion.

6. The plans for a Referendum still has to pass through Parliament interestingly enough. Its expected the Conservatives will allow the Lib Dems to go ahead with this plan, one of the things they agreed on regarding the Coalition deal.

   Interestingly though, the STV/”Alternative Vote” system was actually mentioned by the Conservatives as a less extreme alternative to what the Lib Dems were proposing prior to the Coalition deal. The Referendum will probably go ahead, but it looks like its dead in the water before it even starts.

7. Whoops, forgot to mention above, it appears the Conservatives are expected to be campaigning “no” to the exact thing they were proposing prior to the Coalition deal.

8. #7 The coalition deal was that the Tories would be whipped to support the referendum legislation, but would be free to campaign against it. What likely will happen is that everything will be bundled in one big bill, including reducing the size of the Commons, with the provision for a referendum. Labour will be against the legislation, and this will probably carry through to Labour voters voting against the referendum.

9. No, Labour leaders have clearly stated they will campaign in favour of it. (At least from Ed Balls and both Miliband brothers, I could give you references for this.)

10. #9 If it is all in one big bill, how many Labour votes will there be for reducing the number of constituencies?

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