Or, is it one of those things that has to be submitted to Brussels for consideration?
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What happened with your referendum?
(14 posts) (11 voices)
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be reasonable
offlineMemberAssuming you want a reasonably factual answer, the alternative vote system was overwhelmingly rejected by those who bothered to turn out and vote. Partly, it seems, because even the Liberals who supported it regarded it as a shoddy compromise, the real goal being proportional representation. It's a pity it turned out this way, because opponents of change (i.e. those who benefit from the status quo on right and left) will possibly/probably use this result to stifle debate about any reform for the foreseeable future.
Posted 2 years ago # -
beau-jolly
offlineMemberThe figures I saw were 5m "Yes" and 11m "No". So about a 26% turnout and less than 10% of the country turning out to change the system.
It would appear to have cost about £4 per vote! No idea why it took so long to count so few votes though.Posted 2 years ago # -
Basil_B
offlineMemberSounded kinda crazy. If I like person 'X", why should others decide that my vote goes to person "Y" somehwere down the road.
Rikkor! Don't know what you do for a living but your obviously no politician. Straight talking common sense is something that is rarely used over here, hence the lunacy of this recent referendum.
Posted 2 years ago # -
SteveCut
offlineMemberIt would seem that many people don't understand AV. I wonder how many people voted having no idea what they were actually voting for or against? Some sort of exit poll asking people to explain how AV worked may have been enlightening.
For the record, nobody else decides where your votes go.
Posted 2 years ago # -
waylandsmithy
offlineMemberAV was basically a fudge, because the politicians knew that if PR was offered, the electorate would probably vote 'yes'.
That meant they would lose a little power to some of the crank parties (BNP, Communists, Greens, Lib Dems). As it stands, we're back to 2 party politics, albeit one party hamstrung by Milibands.
Posted 2 years ago # -
thisisall1word
offlineMemberThey are both perfectly simple to explain - although large parts of the media and many politicians created the 'good story' that AV is very complicated - most people didn't bother to really get to grips with what it was so just had a laugh about it and didn't vote or voted NO.
One system is; Within a constituency boundary, one person, one vote. Highest votes wins.
Other system is exactly the same; except that everyone gets as many votes as they like (with a maximum number set on the number of candidates that there are) and each vote must be numbered in preference of order with 1 as your highest choice, 2 as next, and so on (but you don't have to vote for all candidates, you could vote for 3 out of 10 of them or even just the one). After that all votes are counted until no-one wins and then you re-count getting rid of anyone who voted for unpopular people/parties and replace their votes with their second chose votes, or in the case of people who only voted the once, you just discount that ballot for all future rounds. This process continues in a similar fashion until one person/party gets over 50% of the vote, or doesn't, in which case it's just highest percentage of the two biggest parties.
Both systems are very easy to understand. People within the YES campaign even got to flatter the votes by telling them that they were so clever that they could easily understand it. People in the NO campaign got to tell the public that they were a bunch of thickies who wouldn't understand.
The public voted NO because no one like Nick Clegg, our Lib Dem deputy Prime Minister. He is a man so un-liked that if we had held a referendum over whether we should adopt German as our new national language, and he was against it then we'd all be speaking German by Christmas (if we were capable of learning foreign languages).
Posted 2 years ago #
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