Tories is bastards, but now LibDems is gits. So which way to vote?
Anyone made their minds up?
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AV: Utter bobbins or not?
(14 posts) (10 voices)
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Hello all. They've made this such a damp squib of a debate. Of all the nominally PR systems, AV is a shite one to have chosen – unless you wanted to retain the status quo, that is. Electoral reform is so boring and it’s far too easy to equate anything other than 1st past the post, with disastrous Italian PR politics. But because AV is actually particularly weak in true PR terms, it doesn’t offer up many pluses either... I can’t see it getting through. I think this may be a Bad Thing. Because I don’t believe it will be debated for the real pros and cons – just imagined ones.
I grew up in a very safe Tory seat – one person, one vote seemed a tad wasted for me, but I'm not sure how AV would have helped except to have ended tactical voting - thereby giving my wasted vote a slightly less chance of being a wasted vote.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I liked my first experience with AV in the Greater London mayoral elections, because I could throw away my first choice on the Green party, then use my second choice on the pragmatic decision of "Boris or Ken".
In a situation where you have to realistically choose between the lesser of two evils, it is nice to know that you can express what you'd really like, then still have a say in the grown-up bit.
I think it would be interesting (and maybe a bit unsettling) to let everyone have an honest first vote, before deciding between the (usually two) parties who have a chance of winning the seat...
After several tries at this, one might see that the Independents, Greens, BNP, UKIP, Monster Raving etc have more support than the first-past-the-post system gives one to believe, and they may in the end get "traction" in the mainstream.
If it better reflects what people really want, surely it's better?
Obviously it undermines the two major parties, because they need to pretend that every vote cast for them was a validation of their entire manifesto, and not several million election-day compromises, so I suspect they neither of them want it really...hence the rather tame debate...
Posted 7 years ago # -
I'd reform the system, but not like that. What gets me about elections is the pretence that you're voting for a local representative rather than someone who's going to vote however their party wants them to. Ban candidates from being associated in any way to a party, that's what I say.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Any election where only a minority turns out to vote means that extremists who care about politics cast a disproportional number of the votes. The only way for true democracy is to make everyone vote. This could be achieved my mobilising a brutal army to frog march everyone to the booth and show them where to put their cross. A stable government could then stay in power for 30 or 40 years to carry through long-term policies. It wouldn't matter which party got in as long as the army was on their side. Is that communism or a dictatorship. I always get them confused.
Posted 7 years ago #
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