I was thinking in terms of party A saying "because so many put B down as third preference, we're now in a coalition with them rather than a majority government, so it's all gone wrong but hey, that's what the electorate wanted, so *shrug*", possibly with some kind of exaggerated hand-wringing motion or nonchalant whistling.
Well sure, if there's a Hung Parliament and a coalition, you get influence from the minor parties, but that happens now in a coalition, under FPTP.
But the fact that under AV, the choice of coalition could be decided by looking at the voter preferences seems to me a good thing, not a bad thing. Consider, with the most recent election, on the one hand people claimed the coalition should be with the Tories as they got most votes and seats; on the other hand is the claim that Lib Dems would mostly prefer Labour to Tories, so overall there's more support for a Lab/Lib coalition - under AV, we'd have a much better idea who was right.
That Governments in a coalition can blame the other party seems to me a criticism against coalitions, not AV.
Personally, I would rather that BNP supporters felt lonely and isolated, rather than having delusions of grandeur.
Isn't it better for that then, if, despite a small increase in 1st preferences, they find everyone else has ranked them last?
An electoral system that lets the BNP gain power is a wrong electoral system, even if that's the clearly-expressed will of an outright majority of the population. (-8 )
I feel that FPTP will make it more likely for the BNP to ever get a seat than AV (in a constituency where the BNP have significant support, the problem is that the vote of everyone else is split between several parties, even though all those people might agree on hating the BNP most).
Also your argument only happens to apply against the BNP now; if heaven forbid a fascist party grew enough that it had a chance of forming Government, the reverse would be true: under AV, they'd have less 1st choice votes. Whilst I think it's reasonable to design systems that do things like protecting certain rights and so on (I don't believe in a "true" direct democracy, after all), this needs to be done in a way that does so consistently, rather than picking one that just happens to be bad in some way for one particular party we don't like at the moment. And if we're designing systems to keep the BNP out, we might as well have a system of "The BNP automatically get 0 votes".
While right now the average person isn't aware that tactical voting is possible in AV, and it's a fickle business at the best of times. Unfortunately, given the number of people who will believe that there are systems to beat casinos or win the lottery, there will inevitably be people who would believe hogwash articles in the Daily Mail about how to do tactical voting.
The method of tactical voting that I've seen are also dependent on only a certain number of people voting that way. Under FPTP, you tactically vote for a candidate that you've decided you're happy with. Under AV, you may be tactically voting for a party you don't want to win (the idea is to not let them drop out too soon) - yet too many people do that, and that party does end up winning. So it's unclear to me how you'd get tactical voting to work like that - and if widespread tactical voting ends up with it going disasterously wrong, that in itself will surely put an end to it in future elections.
On top of that, it seems to me that the strategy for tactical voting would be very much dependent on a particular constituency, so it wouldn't work for the Daily Mail to simply tell people who to vote for (well, I suppose they could publish a list of every constituency...)
(And people voting based on what the tabloids tell them happens under FPTP, whether it's allegedly for tactical reasons or not...)
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emarkienna.livejournal.com at 10:49pm on 18/04/2011![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well sure, if there's a Hung Parliament and a coalition, you get influence from the minor parties, but that happens now in a coalition, under FPTP.
But the fact that under AV, the choice of coalition could be decided by looking at the voter preferences seems to me a good thing, not a bad thing. Consider, with the most recent election, on the one hand people claimed the coalition should be with the Tories as they got most votes and seats; on the other hand is the claim that Lib Dems would mostly prefer Labour to Tories, so overall there's more support for a Lab/Lib coalition - under AV, we'd have a much better idea who was right.
That Governments in a coalition can blame the other party seems to me a criticism against coalitions, not AV.
Personally, I would rather that BNP supporters felt lonely and isolated, rather than having delusions of grandeur.
Isn't it better for that then, if, despite a small increase in 1st preferences, they find everyone else has ranked them last?
An electoral system that lets the BNP gain power is a wrong electoral system, even if that's the clearly-expressed will of an outright majority of the population. (-8 )
I feel that FPTP will make it more likely for the BNP to ever get a seat than AV (in a constituency where the BNP have significant support, the problem is that the vote of everyone else is split between several parties, even though all those people might agree on hating the BNP most).
Also your argument only happens to apply against the BNP now; if heaven forbid a fascist party grew enough that it had a chance of forming Government, the reverse would be true: under AV, they'd have less 1st choice votes. Whilst I think it's reasonable to design systems that do things like protecting certain rights and so on (I don't believe in a "true" direct democracy, after all), this needs to be done in a way that does so consistently, rather than picking one that just happens to be bad in some way for one particular party we don't like at the moment. And if we're designing systems to keep the BNP out, we might as well have a system of "The BNP automatically get 0 votes".
While right now the average person isn't aware that tactical voting is possible in AV, and it's a fickle business at the best of times. Unfortunately, given the number of people who will believe that there are systems to beat casinos or win the lottery, there will inevitably be people who would believe hogwash articles in the Daily Mail about how to do tactical voting.
The method of tactical voting that I've seen are also dependent on only a certain number of people voting that way. Under FPTP, you tactically vote for a candidate that you've decided you're happy with. Under AV, you may be tactically voting for a party you don't want to win (the idea is to not let them drop out too soon) - yet too many people do that, and that party does end up winning. So it's unclear to me how you'd get tactical voting to work like that - and if widespread tactical voting ends up with it going disasterously wrong, that in itself will surely put an end to it in future elections.
On top of that, it seems to me that the strategy for tactical voting would be very much dependent on a particular constituency, so it wouldn't work for the Daily Mail to simply tell people who to vote for (well, I suppose they could publish a list of every constituency...)
(And people voting based on what the tabloids tell them happens under FPTP, whether it's allegedly for tactical reasons or not...)