AV and all that

I've decided to vote in favour of AV in the coming referendum; not because I am actually in favour of it, but because the "No" campaign talks such bollocks.

For example, they say that AV is like the third placed person in a race being given the prize - of course it's not like that at all. This "argument" is just an example of the type of sloppy thinking by analogy that I do my best to beat out of people. Analogies are fine to illustrate a point, lend weight to an argument and occasionally give insight into a complex subject. Unfortunately, lazy and cynical people use analogies in place of actual thought, and you can see how easy it is to end up talking nonsense.

Then the Noes say that it is unfair that some people get more than one vote. This is just either a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts or a total lack of understanding of how AV works. In truth it works as if every round of counting started again from scratch, but with the first preference votes of the least popular candidate being discarded and the second preference votes of their supporters being counted instead. The reality is that everyone gets the same number of votes - one for each round of voting.

But perhaps I'm doing the Noes a disservice in thinking that they are cynical and or deliberately misrepresenting the facts; the other "argument" against it that they use is that its too difficult to understand! True for themselves perhaps, but anyone who can understand the complexity of the voting for "X-Factor" or "Strictly Come Dancing" will surely have no trouble ranking the candidates in order of preference. Patronising so-and-sos.

My own objection to AV is based in my view that the purpose of voting is to choose a new government - that is, one that is constituted of new people - every 5 or 10 years. People get fat and lazy and start to believe in their own infallibility if they are in power too long. My fear is that under AV there may be a party (Lib Dems for example), who are permanently in power and become corrupted. Happily, I'm persuaded from reading a few articles on the Internet, that AV is no more proportional the FPTP and my be even more perverse! I feel oddly comforted...