sci_starborne | May. 4th, 2011

It seems to me that the Yes campaign has had a bit of trouble with promoting the Alternate Vote. Either it’s presumed we’re way too smart or way too dumb. The official arguments too often have seemed to be either pure math or “just do it, it’s good for you”.
Personal arguments of course are rather more instructive.

I’m skipping most of that for a simple doodle-comic I feel gets the main thrust of it across. I had hoped to do it as a printable flyer, but left it a bit too late.
(click for larger)

Okay, that doesn’t touch on a few things;
It doesn’t mention the expectation that in order for MPs to be sure of election they’re going to have to try a lot harder to get a majority from the get-go.
Or that in doing so tactical voting and appealing only to core-supporters will have to go out of the window.
Or even that the reason the BNP is so against AV is because the extreme political parties tend to only get votes from very set core of supporters and they know that anyone who doesn’t give them their first vote is unlikely to give them any secondary ones. So they’ll be out in most first-rounds.
I suppose it also doesn’t clear up some of the other mistakes that have been circulated, like the bill for it being hundreds of millions, which assumed £110m+ for electronic voting machines no-one’s planning for.
It at no point reminds us that if for some reason it doesn’t work.. we can go back to the old system.

I think the saddest thing I’ve heard from the No campaign though is that it’s too complicated. Of course they understand it, they could do it. It’s purely concern for everyone else out there. Because it seems the entire No campaign are assuming everyone in the country aside from themselves is a blithering idiot, unable to count to 3 or 4.
They also appear to hate Australia with a passion. (Though I giggle at the idea of a group who one of the loudest portions of which has been the BNP, saying we shouldn’t do something like Australia because they’re “too racist”.)

Actually no, I think the saddest thing about the whole vote is that I know for a certainty that even though a Yes vote will improve matters greatly, it still won’t stop politicians bickering and mud-slinging in Parliament like 5-year-olds as they have in this campaign.

If the Yes vote goes through though, we have a much better chance of further reforms later on, so a better chance of them actually growing up.

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

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May 4th, 2011

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Why I’ll be voting YES to the Alternate Vote