A problem with the Alternative Vote

You —

I read the other day that the yes campaign for the alternative vote in the upcoming referendum had falled behind the No campaign.

I am not sure which is better, but I have a few issues with the Alternative Vote (AV).

A Major one is that the voters of the least popular opponents will be "double counted" first.

An Example:

Party A: 40%
Party B: 30%
Party C: 20%
Fringe Party: 10%

Since neither party has reached the required vote, the BNP candiate will be knocked off the list and his voters second choices used. The voters who voted for the Fringe Party will in essence have two votes.

(in the above scenario, the voters for Party C will also have 2 votes as with the redistribution of the Fringe Party vote, it will still be unlikely for anyone to have reached 50%.)

Do we really want fringe parties to be double counted? That is giving the BNP twice the voting power than they should have in most places and they may even get many more votes as those votes will rarely hurt the main candidate as their voters will get to go around the merry-go-round twice.

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lollywood — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 - 21:44

the voters of the least popular opponents will be "double counted" first

Does this mean parties like the BNP can get in :?: 🙁 I hope not

TPOS — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 - 22:00

[quote=stopincest]

the voters of the least popular opponents will be "double counted" first

Does this mean parties like the BNP can get in :?: 🙁 I hope not[/quote]
Nope. People who vote for extreme parties like the BNP are those people with very strong views and beliefs about such things, therefore the BNP will be put as 1st choice. But anyone who puts Labour/Lib Dem/Tories as their first choice are high unlikely to then put such an extreme party as their 2nd choice - if they believed in their cause so much, they'd put them first.

lollywood — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 - 22:13

[quote=ThE pOwEr Of SiLeNcE][quote=stopincest]

the voters of the least popular opponents will be "double counted" first

Does this mean parties like the BNP can get in :?: 🙁 I hope not[/quote]
Nope. People who vote for extreme parties like the BNP are those people with very strong views and beliefs about such things, therefore the BNP will be put as 1st choice. But anyone who puts Labour/Lib Dem/Tories as their first choice are high unlikely to then put such an extreme party as their 2nd choice - if they believed in their cause so much, they'd put them first.[/quote]

I hope what you have said is the case we can't be sure

Maybe they (the govt.) want small parties like the BNP to have more say in certain things

TPOS — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 - 22:18

It is true.
[quote=stopincest]

Maybe they (the govt.) want small parties like the BNP to have more say in certain things[/quote]
What do you mean? Why would the govt want them to have more say?

Edit: Sorry, I never bothered to read the blog :oops: Like I said you don't need to worry about BNP gaining more votes - they know they vote get more votes like this (for the reason mention above) which is why they are actually *against* AV.

You — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 - 14:28

its just a question of "how do we count votes"? and "what do the voters mean?"

There are different ways of having elections and each have their downsides and their upsides.

in AV you ask people to rank all the candidates in order of preference. and one candidate MUST get past 50% or you knock the last person off the list and add in the last choices preferences of his voters to see who crosses the line (and repeat until one does cross the line).

In the current system called first past the post, its more straight forward - one vote to one candidate, but here the "winning" candidate may have only like 25% people backing him (imagine 2nd and 3rd to have 20% each, 4th and 5th to have 15% each and the rest 5%).

There is a question of which is better and its not a straight forward answer.