I can't believe you poms voted this down. Why wasn't it called preferential voting (like here in Australia) on the referendum?

I love preferential voting. You get to vote for a minor party or candidate while also ensuring the candidate you hate most does not benefit from you doing this. There is basically no need to vote strategically and back candidates you don't like purely because you hate them less than someone else. You just list all the candidates in your personal preference from 1 to x.

The Yes campaign was somewhat naive and the No campaign played dirty. The new system was apparently going to cost £50m more per election, so they put up loads of posters showing children in incubators and soldiers wearing body armour, saying effectively 'these people will die if AV is introduced':

http://nicktyrone.com/sick-baby-billboard/

I am surprised that the Yes campaign didn't suggest saving 10x as much by getting rid of all elections and asking the Queen to come back as an absolute monarch.

I guess we Australian can't be too smug as we voted no in a referendum in 1988 asking if we wanted freedom of religion. Apparently the FUD then was over funding for religious schools.

There was a lot of FUD put out against it. Since most people don't really understand voting systems, nor their pros and cons, I guess they voted for the devil they knew.

I think this is the key point. Proportional representation is very simple to understand, and likewise first-past-the-post (in its essence, at least; the actual implementation we have in the UK perhaps less so). Alternative vote is plainly more complex - first something happens, then perhaps something else happens, then... etc; it's not complex for smart HN readers, but even trying to explain it in a few words shows it's more involved than the other two systems.

I am fundamentally uncertain that a majority of the electorate understood AV when they were voting - and this was certainly supported by my own conversations at the time with moderately intelligent people who plainly did not understand it. And, in fact, the majority of the electorate did not even vote at all on the issue.

Proportional representation is undeniably more democratic than either FPTP or AV, but it does mean you end up having to live with the fact that a rather alarmingly large proportion of people have views that the majority find unsavoury (eg. the BNP managed nearly 2% of the votes in the 2010 election).

>it does mean you end up having to live with the fact that a rather alarmingly large proportion of people have views that the majority find unsavoury

That's democracy for you.

Besides, the BNP arose from a climate of austerity and declining real incomes. If you have a functioning political system that doesn't do that to the majority, you deprive the unsavory minority of political oxygen.

They ran the message "it's too complicated for you to understand", and most accepted that at face and spent no more thought on the matter.

Same phenomenon as "math/computer is hard" being acceptable and an excuse not to try, or even listen. You can see the roller shutter come down in their eyes.

There was a pretty poor campaign around it, and only 42% of people bothered to vote.

The other consideration was that many people wanted a different system to AV.

It created some interesting propaganda[1].

[1]http://i.imgur.com/Row95qp.jpg

The whole thing made me really angry to be honest. The LibDems gambled their entire future electability on the referendum, and it was so plagued by FUD that it never had a chance.

Would save even more money if there was no elections...

Yeah, what about a man who simply decides everything. No need to worry about anything. He'll probably promise everyone a job and will improve the road network. And some people can go on a free vacation by train which will last until the end of their life.

The ad is quite horrible though, a cheap way to manipulate the viewer by appealing to his emotions.

Thank you good sir for knowing what you are talking about.

The UK establishment doesn't want PR. That alone is a great reason to get it, besides many other good reasons.

Voters in Britain do not elect a parliament or a party. They vote locally for a member of parliament - namely - someone to represent all people in the constituency no matter what their party allegiance is, in the House of Commons. Everyone knows who they are and can communicate with that person. Fairness means that the person who gets the most votes, gains that privilege. Example: 3.9 million people voted in this British election to gain one single UK Independence Party (UKIP) MP. Unfair? No - given that, at this election, voters did not give majority votes to a UKIP candidate except in that one instance.

Occasionally people vote for an outstanding personality who does not belong to a party they generally support. This is as it should be.

> Fairness means that the person who gets the most votes, gains that privilege.

In your opinion this is what fairness means. In my opinion, this system leaves millions without a say in the direction of the country proportional to the support their opinions have in the populace.

Not only do I find it unfair, I find it offensive and undemocratic, and as a result I don't see a government elected under such a system as having any legitimacy.

It's worth pointing this out: It is not up to you to define what is fair. Nor is it up to a majority. It is up to everyone. When a system leaves a substantial number of people finding it unfair and feeling robbed of any opportunity to be represented, it is unfair, whether or not the majority thinks it's the most awesome system ever.

If you care about fairness, you need to care about gaining consensus, not about whether or not you're above or below 50%.

> Unfair? No - given that, at this election, voters did not give majority votes to a UKIP candidate except in that one instance.

First of all, it is not majority of a constituency but a plurality. This is a big deal. My seat was won with 43%: The majority of his constituents wanted to be represented by other people. We won't ever know who would have been preferred by a majority of constituents under one of the many systems intended to actually get to a majority choice.

Secondly, that the results matches the rules does not mean they're not unfair.

When peoples votes carry different value based on where they live, then that to me by definition is unfair.

Voters in Britain (specifically Scotland and Wales) use the AMS system that takes this into account and balances both desires while also avoiding the stupidity of unpopular candidates winning because two similar candidates compete for votes, as demonstrated in the fear that UKIP votes would weaken Conservative candidates, leading to front page headlines telling you not to vote for who you wanted to vite for, but for someone else instead.

...But aren't campaigns fought on a party-by-party basis? Who gets to choose which politicians get the secure constituencies? If all the candidates were truly independent I might see your point, but as long as they belong to parties I don't.

What you're essentially saying is, "the rules of FPTP were followed, therefore the outcome is just", which is a red herring when it's the system itself that's being questioned.

"Voters in Britain do not elect a parliament", but shouldn't they?

And even if the majority had been against PR in general, that would not make it moot: The current voting system is not democratic. It is actively disenfranchising a large proportion of voters. I will never have representation under the current voting system, because my views are not mainstream enough to get a majority in a single seat constituency.

The fiction that someone who gets the majority of a seat will represent all their constituents is just that. And blatantly offensive to many of us who consistently sees our representatives acting against our interests and not care the slightest about the portion of their constituents who are not likely to be possible to sway to vote for them.

Your representative is not supposed to represent individuals, but communities. By definition this is going to be the majority opionion of everyone in your community. I don't expect my representative to share my views, but I do expect that they will reflect those of my community. If I want to change something I lobby my community not my representative.

To me, that makes matters worse, not better. You are telling me that disenfranchising people like me that hold non-mainstream political views is by design. That's outright offensive to me.

You are also wrong: It is not by definition going to be the majority opinion of everyone in my "community".

For starters, the person who won the seat I live in got 43% of the vote. The majority of my community wanted other people to represent them.

The current system the worst of both worlds: Single seat constituencies without even the pretence of trying to find a candidate a majority would stand behind.

Secondly, lets disabuse ourselves of the notion that the electoral boundaries matches a "community". They do not.

My seat includes uppper class areas in Shirley, with million pound mansions, as well as council estates like New Addington - the latter is one of the places in the UK with the lowest average life expectancy. The electoral seat encompasses perhaps a dozen separate communities that rarely mixes other than superficially. We can see clearly how divided this seat is - as many others - by looking at council election results, where various wards go very, very firmly on way or the other, while the seat as a whole is a very marginal seat (this election the Tory incumbent held onto his seat with a 165 vote plurality).

In reality, if one were to draw up geographically based communities based on how people actually live and work and interact together, there'd be maybe a dozen separate areas.

Apart from the flaw of thinking that areas as large as a parliamentary seat - even in London where the population density means the physical areas are fairly small - will be homogenous enough or closely enough linked to represent a single community, when you look at the overall electoral results you see pretty clearly that "community" does no longer - if it ever did - match geographical boundaries. Communities are split between parties that stands so far apart that pretending that community is geographical is a joke.

But in the end whether or not you believe that the representative should represent a community, or that the point is to represent the voices of the people, the fact is that this system leaves millions upon millions of users without a voice where it matters, and without the ability to influence decisions in parliament if they vote their conscience.

You may think that's acceptable. I don't. I find it an affront to the very idea of democracy.

You are not disenfranchised. Every single person has opinions that are not supported by their community and hence their representative does not (should not) support these minority views. If you want to change things you need to convince the people around you that things need to change.

I should say I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but the solution is to change the mind of those in your community and the politics will follow.

While I may not technically be disenfranchised, the effect is the same: My vote does not matter. My opinions will not be represented.

From my point of view, having the right to vote or not is worthless in this system, as it does not provide any influence (I accept that it matters to many others - if your views are close enough to one of the big parties, then things are different).

Democracy is about legitimacy first and foremost: If those who take part does not see the system as legitimate, it isn't legitimate. And that is not down to a majority to decide. That is down to society as a whole. And this is a lesson many "democracies" still have yet to learn. Yes, we can't get everyone to agree on what makes a legitimate system, but a system that actively shuts out millions is not legitimate whether or not a majority thinks it is.

> If you want to change things you need to convince the people around you that things need to change.

This is just pure nonsense unless you happen to live in an area that is politically homogenous and populated with people are politically relatively close to you.

We have a problem where the system is geared for a century ago when communities where geographically close. I have more in common with people politically close to me on the other side of the globe than I have with my next door neighbour (who'd like me deported since I'm not born here).

I should not need to convince a plurality of a local "community" (that doesn't exist) of my views to get a single voice in parliament if far higher number of people across the country holds the same views.

So to me, this government has no legitimate authority. I abide by laws because of the consequences of not doing so, not because I accept the legitimacy of this government.

A single voice in parliament unless it shared by many other is worthless. To effect change you need convince the majority that change is needed. Take marriage equality (gay marriage) as an example. This is most definitely a policy of importantace to a small minority that the majority did not once support. Over time a small core of strong supporters have been able to convince their communities of the need for change. Once the greater community is onside the political will follows.

Anyone with minority political views is always going to frustrated in a democracy. Even if every issue was voted on directly by all citizens then without the support of the majority any proposal you support will be rejected. To effect change you need to change the minds of your neighbours. The good thing about modern society is improved communication allows an individual to influence others far away and effect change on a national and international basis where once they were confined to those physically around them.