According to this story, some Labour Party leaders in the British House of Commons will support a “yes” vote on next year’s British referendum on Instant Runoff Voting.
According to this story, some Labour Party leaders in the British House of Commons will support a “yes” vote on next year’s British referendum on Instant Runoff Voting.
The switch to IRV certainly will not favor either Labor or the Tories. They have the most to gain to keep FPTP. Perhaps some Labor MPs believe they would be in perpetual coalition with the LibDems under this proposed new voting system. I do hope the will have the referendum as a stand alone election so all parts of the UK will have equal incentive to vote rather than tack it on to existing elections in just a part of the UK.
@Casual Bystander, Local elections scheduled for that day, May 5th, are to be held in England, Scotland, and Wales, aren’t they? How much of Great Britain is that, 90%? I think those who are trying to separate the referendum from the local elections are opponents hoping for a small turnout which gives them a better chance to defeat it. And Labour is split between old school and new school. The old school types always hate change, and the new school types are looking to broaden their constituency and base of support. And generally the British have a healthier political culture than we do here in the States, so the calculations can be different just because of that fact.
Pete Healy- I thought the local elections were in Scotland, Wales and Ulster. I was not aware that England was participating which is the reason for my view that a separate election woould be more fair.
Actually, I can spell WOULD!
The party hacks in both the Commons and Lords have stopped various efforts to amend the bill to have the voters vote on P.R. ===== TOTAL party hack EVIL in a regime with NO written constitution.
ANY EVIL law is possible in the U.K. regime — due to the EVIL combination of the super-party hack gerrymander / plurality House of Commons, the appointed party hack Lords and the fossil monarchy.
IF the voters are brainwashed enough by IRV fanatics to approve IRV [Alt Vote], then it may take another perhaps 500-1000 more years for the regime to get P.R. — likely after various IRV perverted election results.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not against IRV. I think getting it implemented in many of the current states here in the US could reduce the Demo-Reps fear of a “third party or independent candidate” taking votes away from them, depriving them of the election, thus loosening up the ballot access laws.
But with (as I understand) no such strigent laws in Great Britain for ballot access, why would they need IRV – other than the Labour Party feeling Liberal Democrats might choose the Labour candidates as their “2nd” choice. But which party curreently existing, would most likely make the Conservative Party there their “2nd” choice?
@ An Alabama Independent:
UKIP, probably? Many of them are former Tories.
#2 The elections on May 5 are for the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, and Assembly for Wales. There are local elections in some parts of England.
The previous election for the Scottish Parliament, using AMS, was held concurrently with local elections in Scotland, using STV (for the first time). There were lots of spoilt ballots in the parliamentary election. There was a perception that the voters were confused by the two different voting systems on the same day. So you started out with a keen idea that holding the two elections on the same day would increase turnout and civic participation and all kinds of goodness, and it blew up in their faces.
In reaction, they deliberately changed the schedule for the local elections so that they wouldn’t happen in the same year, let alone the same day as the parliamentary elections.
And suddenly you get these persons who think it would be a keen idea to hold two different elections on the same day that would increase turnout and civic participation and all kinds of goodness, with one of them proposing a 4th system of elections for Scotland (one for the European Parliament, one for the British Parliament, one for the Scottish Parliament, and one for local elections).
The current legislation will also reduce the size of the British Parliament, thought this won’t be subject to a referendum. This will fall most heavily on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. There will also be some who feel that the British government is showing disrespect for their Parliament and Assemblies by, in essence, equating them with parish councils in England. The only way to vote against this change is to vote against AV. On the other hand, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are not really two-party countries, all have experience with non-FPTP election methods, and so might be more inclined to vote for AV.
So there are actually good reasons for holding the referendum on a separate day, that have nothing to do with what effect it would have on the result.
And besides, it is always great sport to defeat the government, even if it is on something trivial such as the date.
IRV is used to elect the national house of reps in Australia in the various gerrymander districts.
See the party hack total ROT there — the zillion deals regarding who trys to get the votes from the 3rd and lower choice candidates.
See the recent Australia election math.
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Circa 84 percent of the voters in the U.K. will be voting on 5 May 2011 in local regime elections.
Apparently NOT in London however — having many Labour ghetto MP gerrymander districts.
Thus – the whining about turnouts, too many things to vote on, etc. etc. — New Age Brits LOVE to whine about stuff — especially changing ANY thing in the rotted to the core regime since 1066.
Yeah, the idea to reduce the number of MP’s by a third seems to be a brainchild of the Lib Dems, which is really really weird. I lean to “no” simply based on that, while I actually feel if it was a simple change from FPTP to IRV/AV then it shouldn’t have any negative effects.
The gerrymander scheme in the IRV bill has the MPs going from 650 to 600 — likely to maximize the percentage of possible Lib Dems.
One EVIL and vicious conspiracy — by the EVIL and vicious ANTI-Democracy fanatics / math morons in the U.K. regime.
P.R. and App.V.
@Casual Bystander and Jim Riley, it’s my understanding that only London is not holding local elections (and I didn’t know about Northern Ireland).
The referendum is a “YES” or “NO” vote, so it doesn’t complicate things that much, I think.
And the Parliament isn’t going to be reduced by a third, but by less than 10%, I think. And while it won’t be a perfect solution, populations in the admittedly gerrymandered districts will be roughly equalized, rather than wildly skewed as now.
#12 The role of the Opposition in a parliamentary form of government is to hold the Government accountable, or at least whinge about everything they do. It is even more fun in this case, because it was in the Labour manifesto to hold a referendum on AV, while it is being implemented by the other side. Conservatives had campaigned on reducing the parliament to 550(?), while the Liberal Democrats had wanted to reduce to 500 elected by STV.
It is not as simple as not in London or not. About 79% of the English electorate will have some sort of elections on May 5, while over 83% of the British electorate will.
And there is certainly going to be complaints about equating local elections in England with elections for the Scottish Parliament. It would be like treating the Hoboken city council or mayor the same as the state legislature or governor of New York.
After the 2007 joint election in Scotland, Scotland changed the term of local councillors elected then from 4 years to 5 years, so that the local elections and Scottish Parliament would not coincide. They are no longer capable to objectively think about a simple YES / NO question. Of course, Northern Ireland will be having joint election for the Assembly and local councils – because the council elections were delayed for a year while restructuring of the councils was under consideration.
The reduction in Parliament won’t be evenly applied (or rather it will equalize the current disparity). In Wales it will be around 1/4 or 1/5. And in Wales and Northern Ireland, the elections for the assemblies are based on the parliamentary constituencies, so those may require restructuring.
To all, this has been really helpful and informative. I had no idea there was this much interest. I’ve been following the “Take Back Parliament” movement in the media and especially on facebook (they’re the main campaigners for a “YES” vote). While many, or most, understand that AV isn’t a proportional solution, they see it as a stepping stone to a proportionally-elected Parliament. If only we had the strength to move our country like this, I wouldn’t settle for AV (or IRV, which is the same thing).
This stepping stone idea for IRV that it encourages single transferable vote is silly. IRV has been used in Australia’s lower house for some hundred years and it still hasn’t shifted to STV–that’s only in the upper house.
So there’s reason to doubt IRV’s potential to be a catalyst encouraging STV. But even more, if STV is the goal, there’s reason to believe that IRV isn’t necessary as a stepping stone to STV. The US used STV in some dozen cities including Cincinnati and New York from the 20’s to 50s before it was removed via red scare and racism rhetoric (Cambridge was the only city to survive this attack). But note that IRV wasn’t present to act as an intermediary. You can read about this history on Amy’s PR website: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm
Simply put, IRV is a crappy system. The best thing it has going for it is that it buffers against fringe spoilers so that they return the votes to the major candidates. Though it only does this when those supporters have little support. When a third candidate comes in and has some power, IRV behaves crazily.
If you want a good single-seat system, choose range or approval voting. If you want a multi-seat system, take the multi-system and don’t fool with crappy single-seat systems. Note that there are district-based PR systems that use adaptations of approval and range voting. These adapted systems have the perk of being monotonic (doesn’t hurt you for rating a candidate higher and vice versa).
STV is unfortunately nonmonotonic, which can be a big deal when selecting the last seat–the most likely game changer. Even so, one should always use a PR system rather than a single-seat system when possible because it gives better representation to the population as a whole.
P.R. = Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes for each seat winner.
ALL voters elect a legislator — majority rule and minority representation.