British hackers: stop voting for lizards; start voting for people today • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by corin_ » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:24 PM UTC

bhickey wrote: post #19

corin_ wrote: post #16

(I voted "Yes" at 8am.) If I didn't have any views on which system is better, I would have been pursuaded to vote Yes by the "Vote No" adverts, such as http://i.imgur.com/yCyLv.jpg Admitedly, the campaign for "Vote Yes" has frankly been terrible as well, but in a way that makes you think they don't have a clue about marketing, rather than a way that makes you want to strangle whoever came up with the adverts.

This morning I ran into a No campaigner leafleting at Camden Tube station. When he tried handing me a leaflet, I informed him that I had just voted Yes. As I walked away, he shouted that I must be "LibDem scum".

To give him at least some credit, that's a pretty good insult now days!

That actually comes as a bit of a suprise to me, in my head (and in my limited experiences), the kind of person who volunteers to promote a political campaign in the UK isn't normally the type of person who would get particularly aggressive. Admitedly my personal experiences are based in a fairly middle class area of Oxford, so perhaps not representative.

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

#22

Post by jamii » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:24 PM UTC

MikeTaylor wrote: post #13

ugh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 const…

The German system sounds good. But the UK Conservative Party's argument against simple AV has been "it's too complicated for people to understand". Trying to get people to vote for something that genuinely IS a bit complicated would be a complete non-starter at this point. Anyway, right now it's AV or Continue As You Were. That's the choice we Brits have to make TODAY, and I do hope that any of you reading this will…

The German system can be presented more simply. First, here are your local candidates. Which one do you want? Second, here are the global parties. Which one do you want? That's pretty simple.

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

#23

Post by corin_ » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:26 PM UTC

MikeTaylor wrote: post #14

cturner wrote: post #9

Hi Mike. For once some politics on hacker news that has some relevance to me. I'm still flagging. Voting systems are interesting algorithms to discuss, but politics is not. Please keep political stuff off hn.

Hi, cturner. The HD guidelines say "Off-Topic: MOST stories about politics" (emphasis added). Votes say that this is one of the ones that is not MOST. Anyway, it'll all be over in less than nine hours, and I'll go back to reviewing programming books from the 1970s and 80s.

Actually the AV result isn't due until 8pm tomorrow, so more than thirty hours away. Even the first results from AV aren't expected until after 5pm tomorrow.

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

#24

Post by nfg » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:28 PM UTC

MikeTaylor wrote: post #13

ugh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 const…

The German system sounds good. But the UK Conservative Party's argument against simple AV has been "it's too complicated for people to understand". Trying to get people to vote for something that genuinely IS a bit complicated would be a complete non-starter at this point. Anyway, right now it's AV or Continue As You Were. That's the choice we Brits have to make TODAY, and I do hope that any of you reading this will…

The Tory stance seems ridiculous to me (as an outsider) considering that the UK's devolved assembly elections use PR-STV or other similarly "complicated" systems. FWIW we use PR-STV in Ireland and are currently going through a debate about conceivably switching to a "list" system, or possibly a hybrid list system tempered as they do in Germany.

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

#25

Post by gjm11 » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:30 PM UTC

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

#26

Post by GeneralWaste » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:31 PM UTC

dazzawazza wrote: post #5

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"

Some in the UK hold the opinion that the Liberal Democrats capitulated too easily to the Conservatives during the negotiation process that led to the formation of our current government. Whilst they only have a relatively small number of MPs they still hold the balance of power and could perhaps have held out for PR. Their apparent willingness to compromise this and other principles of their party in exchange for a share of power has led to a plummet in their popularity. Their leader has been spat at in the street and had dog poo through his letterbox.

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

#27

Post by anonymoushn » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:34 PM UTC

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…

Condorcet is also an undesirable property: http://rangevoting.org/FishburnAntiC.html

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

#28

Post by rossriley » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:34 PM UTC

corin_ wrote: post #16

(I voted "Yes" at 8am.) If I didn't have any views on which system is better, I would have been pursuaded to vote Yes by the "Vote No" adverts, such as http://i.imgur.com/yCyLv.jpg Admitedly, the campaign for "Vote Yes" has frankly been terrible as well, but in a way that makes you think they don't have a clue about marketing, rather than a way that makes you want to strangle whoever came up with the adverts.

I think the yes campaign must go down as one of the worst I've ever seen. The big budget media campaign was based around the 'Make Your MP Work Harder' campaign.

That's such a vague idea to base a campaign around, especially in light of the attack tactics the No campaign were using.

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

#29

Post by arethuza » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:36 PM UTC

MikeTaylor wrote: post #13

ugh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 const…

The German system sounds good. But the UK Conservative Party's argument against simple AV has been "it's too complicated for people to understand". Trying to get people to vote for something that genuinely IS a bit complicated would be a complete non-starter at this point. Anyway, right now it's AV or Continue As You Were. That's the choice we Brits have to make TODAY, and I do hope that any of you reading this will…

We have two elections in Scotland today - the referendum and the elections to the Scottish Parliament. There are two ballot papers for the latter - one for a constituency and another for a region. As far as I could tell (I lost count) the regional ballot paper we had here had an amazing number of parties/candidates - what looked like 4 different breeds of socialists (excluding Labour, of course) and a similar number of liberals of varying types with a group of independents making up the tail end (literally).

If that epic ballot paper isn't confusing then I don't know what is!

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

#30

Post by mseebach » Thu, May 05, 2011, 12:40 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #10

The local office of the Yes campaign is just across the corridor from us. Bigup. Vote, people. Doesn't matter who/what it's for. Spoil your ballot if you have to. Just make your voice heard.

No. To paraphrase Dijkstra, voting is to democracy as telescopes are to astronomy.

It DOES matter who/what you vote for. And if you don't believe that, why would you believe that doing anything at all with your ballot counts as making your voice heard?

Democracy is about participation. Not campaigning, participation. You need to make your voice heard at all times, not just at elections (frankly, elections are probably the least effective time to make your voice heard). Be informed about the issues, challenge your assumptions and debate your opinions (preferably with people you disagree with). If you can't or won't do those things, you don't live in a democracy, you live in an oligarchy that happens to mutate roughly every decade.