Defeated UK AV vote explained

A couple of videos posted here to explain the UK Alternative vote referendum that went down to defeat last May. The AV referendum was a manifesto piece of the Liberal Democrats, and despite getting the Conservative coalition partner to promise to bring the referendum, the referendum had PM David Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg campaigning against each other. The top video is a good, straight forward explanation piece that promoted a YES vote. The bottom mocks the negative, fear-filled NO campaign that supporters of YES said killed the reform of the first-past-the-post system.





The AV Referendum: What went wrong?

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/blog/the-av-referendum-what-went-wrong

AV would only have minimally effected 2010 general election results

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7708964/General-Election-2010-how-different-voting-systems-would-have-affected-the-result.html

Prime Minister David Cameron went through a Fact Check when he claimed:

“It's a system so obscure that it is only used by three countries in the whole world - Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.”

David Cameron, 11 April 2011

But today’s Independent labels this claim a “myth”, and argues that we can add at least one more Western democracy to this list: Ireland. The paper writes that: “[AV] is also used to choose the Irish President, in many US mayoral elections and for the Best Picture at the Oscars.”

Leaving aside the Academy Awards and the US mayoral elections (which, like the London mayoral ballot, cannot be considered nationwide polls), the example of Ireland is intriguing.

A glance at the Irish Government’s own guide to its election system might suggest that the Independent has erred: “The President is elected by the direct vote of the people. Voting is by secret ballot on the Single Transferable Vote system.”

However this is not necessarily so. The Single Transferable Vote (STV) system is indeed used by Ireland for most of its parliamentary elections. Like AV, the system asks voters to list the candidates on the ballot paper in order of their preference.

So blog here on whether you would vote YES or NO to an alternative vote system to replace First Past the Post.