Comment: One simple reason to back AV
First-past-the-post is prejudiced against idealism but AV lets us to pursue our beliefs without wasting our vote.
By ian Dunt
I support AV but I’m not about to get particularly excited by it. I’m not going to man the barricades. I won’t leaflet or demonstrate and I won’t put a twibbon on my avatar, whatever that is. If I’m perfectly honest, I’m dreading the weeks of tedious technical debate approaching me, like some monstrous argument whale.
I support AV for one reason: because political choices are complex.
The ‘no’ camp says that allowing people’s secondary votes to influence a decision is somehow undemocratic. It’s by far their best argument. “First past the post” one poster announces. “We all vote. The person with the most votes wins. Simple. Fair.” That’s a damn good poster. It’s very convincing.
Because smaller parties are thrown out the race first, their secondary choices are distributed among the remaining (presumably mainstream) parties. AV therefore opens the door to MPs being elected even though they have fewer first preference votes.
Reduced to a slogan it’s a particularly compelling argument. But it’s weak. The argument is prejudice against complex political views, general political sympathies and idealism.
It’s a strange collection of prejudices. My decision to vote for one party, and my secondary expression of general sympathy with another, seem to me proper and relevant.
It’s quite obvious how this will work. Voters will express their support for a party they feel passionate about – perhaps the Greens or a socialist party for the left, Ukip or maybe even the BNP for the right. They will then throw their secondary vote at the mainstream centre-left or centre-right party. My guess is that many of the voters who currently vote Labour to keep the Tories or Lib Dems out in their constituencies will switch their vote to a more left wing party and then give Labour their second preference. Many Tory voters will go for Ukip, I presume, and then give the Tories their second vote.
That seems entirely legitimate. We all have specific political views, but most of us have broader political allegiances. Most voters are also highly capable intellectual human beings, however foolish the conversations we overhear on the bus may sound. Voters are aware of what is happening in their constituency and who is likely to win. They want to be part of that, but they also hold firm beliefs, say on immigration or Europe or socialism. They want to be able to express this too.
There’s nothing odd about wanting to do both. There’s nothing unhealthy about it. Quite the opposite. Politics is made up of both idealism and practicality. AV expresses that much better than the stricter First Past The Post system, which forces many of us to substitute our actual beliefs for a damage limitation exercise, where we vote for a party we don’t really like just to stop a party we like even less getting in. That seems an overwhelmingly negative process.
The people who seem least able to comprehend that idea are those with strong sympathies to one of the two big parties. This goes someway to explaining way the ‘no’ camp is dominated by former Cabinet secretaries from Labour and the Tories. Their first preference vote is for these parties anyway. They don’t understand why someone might want to express their genuinely held beliefs with one vote and have an effect on the mainstream debate with the other. This isn’t about the Lib Dems and any attempt to make it so is pretty barren stuff. This is about the role of idealism in electoral politics.
A candidate who wins on the back of secondary votes has not cheated. He or she has benefited from people’s general political sympathies towards the right or left. Again, that sounds legitimate and, most importantly, less rigid and constricted than the current system.
Of course this triggers several other arguments about helping smaller parties- most controversially the BNP – become more influential. I’m not sure any of that stacks up but regardless – you defeat the BNP by fighting their arguments, not rigging elections against them. It’s pitiful to argue otherwise.
So there you have it. One small reason to support AV. Just don’t ask me to add one of those twibbon things to my avatar. Is it as important as cuts to public services or revolutions in the Middle East? No. But it’s worth talking about and it’s worth voting for.
The views expressed in politics.co.uk’s Speakers’ Corner are not a reflection of those of the website or its owners.
