AV Referendum - 25th April 2011

What I have found disconcerting whilst out canvassing is the number of apparently well informed voters, who claim to have no idea at all that there is a referendum on changing the voting system to AV for parliamentary elections on the same day as the local elections, May 5th. This is in spite of the prominence given in recent news reports to clashes between the parties and politicians. I know that people have busy lives, but some of us appear to have been sealed up in a bubble. 

Those voters that I have engaged on the issue have been quite confused about the proposed change and what AV actually is. I confess that the independent Electoral Commission’s description doesn’t help:  where our current voting system can be summed up in just one sentence of only 14 words- each voter has one vote and the candidate who gains the most votes wins; the description of AV takes fully 320 words. I know I am prejudiced but I am sure I could have described it much more succinctly. Winston Churchill did so in 1931 when he described AV as “the most worthless votes for the most worthless candidates”, 9 words -even if to correct his grammar would require a couple more.

It is difficult to be confident about the impact that AV might have given that so few countries in the world use it –Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Australia. It is rather worrying though that polls show 6 out of 10 Australians want to return to the simplicity of one vote one person / one vote.

Actually, I think that voting under AV is simple enough: instead of putting a cross next to your chosen candidate, you rank them numerically in order of preference: ‘as simple as one, two three’ as the pro AV campaign says. It is during the counting process that the complexity and -I believe, the fundamental unfairness emerges: whilst some voters have their vote counted only once, others may have their votes counted several times.  The candidate who gained most first preference votes may end up losing as the votes for the less successful candidates get redistributed and counted again twice, thrice, or even more times. The argument comes down fundamentally to what you consider to be fair.

For my own part I accept that our current one person / one vote system has limitations and imperfections, but I think it is fundamentally fair. In the last election 27,980 of the voters voted for me.  The advocates of electoral reform, begin from the questionable premise that 19,592 of the voters -the ones who voted for the other candidates, cast wasted votes, that in effect their votes counted for nothing. I reject this utterly, their votes did count, they just didn’t win. There is no disguising the fact that an election requires a winner if we are to be effectively governed. The key is to elect the winner fairly. I am yet to be persuaded that there is a better way than giving each of us only one vote.