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British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today

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Re: British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today

#3

Post by MikeTaylor »

udp wrote: post #2

I still don't understand why the referendum is on AV and not PR. Most votes get thrown away because of this silly county-based system. If you live in a county which is heavily weighted towards a particular party, you do not have a meaningful vote .

udp, some people prefer PR over AV (for the record, I prefer AV because it keeps the one-representative-per-constituency link), but since PR is not on the table, voting for AV is the way to go. (Or voting to keep British politics the way it is, of course.)

Re: British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today

#5

Post by dazzawazza »

udp wrote: post #2

I still don't understand why the referendum is on AV and not PR. Most votes get thrown away because of this silly county-based system. If you live in a county which is heavily weighted towards a particular party, you do not have a meaningful vote .

The Liberal Democrats want (for the most part) PR. There was no way the Conservatives would agree to that in the coalition agreement so this was as good as you they could get.

As the press would say "it's a dirty coalition compromise" which you can read as "it's a pragmatic decision based on the political landscape of the day taking in to account the moral perspective of all involved acting as elected officials"

Re: British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today

#6

Post by josephShmoe »

AV, or IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), is arguably the worst form of preferential voting in existence. Take this example of IRV totals for four candidates ordered by preference:

30% a; b; c; d

35% c; b; d; a

20% d; b; a; c

15% b; d; c; a

Given the voting breakdown, most people would agree that candidate b should win, because no candidate got a majority of first preference votes and b got a sweeping majority of second preference votes. However, under IRV, b is eliminated immediately, because b received the fewest first preference votes.

tr;dr: IRV is terrible, and has a history of being adopted in states and cities in the US only to be abolished not long after, because of the bad electoral outcomes it produces. If you're going to pick a preferential voting system, it ought to be one that at the very least preserves the Condorcet winner; IRV is not that system.

Re: British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today

#7

Post by ugh »

MikeTaylor wrote: post #3
udp wrote: post #2

I still don't understand why the referendum is on AV and not PR. Most votes get thrown away because of this silly county-based system. If you live in a county which is heavily weighted towards a particular party, you do not have a meaningful vote .

udp, some people prefer PR over AV (for the record, I prefer AV because it keeps the one-representative-per-constituency link), but since PR is not on the table, voting for AV is the way to go. (Or voting to keep British politics the way it is, of course.)

Just for the record, it is possible to force one-or-more-representatives-per-constituency on PR.

Germany, for example, has a (pretty complicated) voting system that insures that every constituency has one representative (that's half of the parliament, the other half has, technically speaking, no constituency but they are obviously still from somewhere).

Everyone gets two votes, one for a representative from the constituency (whoever gets the most votes wins and will definitely be in parliament), and, more importantly, a second vote which determines the proportions of the parties in parliament. (Seats that parties cannot fill with directly elected representatives are filled from the party list.)

That second vote decides about the government (proportionally!), the first makes sure that every constituency has someone in parliament they can write letters.

This voting system is called mixed member proportional representation and here is the link to its Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_member_proportional_repre...

Re: British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today

#8

Post by danparsonson »

josephShmoe wrote: post #6

AV, or IRV (Instant Runoff Voting), is arguably the worst form of preferential voting in existence. Take this example of IRV totals for four candidates ordered by preference: 30% a; b; c; d 35% c; b; d; a 20% d; b; a; c 15% b; d; c; a Given the voting breakdown, most people would agree that candidate b should win, because no candidate got a majority of first preference votes and b got a sweeping majority of second pr…

Unfortunately we haven't been offered a suggestion box, just a choice between AV and FPTP - personally, AV seems like an improvement on FPTP, even if it's not the best possible system overall.
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