John Cox says AV for Westminster elections would have devastating consequences in Wales
Next May’s referendum on a new voting system for Westminster elections will package three proposals into a single yes or no decision: fewer MPs, more equal electorates, and AV, the Alternative Vote described in the panel (see below). Although elements of this package have some merit, taken as a whole it will diminish democracy and have devastating consequences in Wales.
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Whatever its merits, AV is not proportional – as was shown in Australia in August 2010, when both the leading parties won far more seats in the House of Representatives than justified by their share of the vote (see Table, below).
On the same day, the elections to the Australian Senate elections, which used a version of STV, did give the three leading parties a reasonably fair share of seats. If the UK government wanted to introduce a fairer voting system, it would have proposed STV, not AV.
Moreover, unlike STV, AV fails to reduce voter alienation and actually increases the power of party elites and the hegemony of the leading parties. Despite these well attested defects of AV, a few supporters of STV (notably the Electoral Reform Society) propose to campaign for a Yes vote in the referendum, apparently in the vain hope that AV will be a first step towards genuine reform.
To the contrary, however, AV will entrench the present two party dominance and will put a stop on further change. Certainly this is what has happened in Australia. The politicians elected by AV to the House of Representatives since 1919 naturally prefer it to the more proportional STV system used for the Senate elections.
All forecasts agree that AV will exclude minority parties with less than 20 per cent of the popular vote, and prevent newcomers gaining a foothold at Westminster. So the in-built unfairness of the current system would remain.
The precise outcomes of each constituency election under AV is hard to predict as each is, ultimately, determined by second, third and even lower preference votes. Although a right-wing voter may cast right-wing preference votes and a left-wing voter left-wing preference, many voters are as much influenced by style as by substance. In practice, attitudes of mind also influence voter preferences:
- Those whose first choice is Conservative or LibDem might well give their preference vote to the other. In this situation Labour could be reduced to a rump at Westminster even it won the most first preference votes. This would be bad for democracy.
- Those opposed to an incumbent may give their preference votes to ‘anyone but…’ to keep a leading candidate out. This attitude favours the ‘least-disliked’ candidates over the ‘most-liked” – and is equally bad for democracy.
Although pundits often assume that preference votes follow a similar pattern to first choices, there is no hard evidence to support this assumption. Consequently, it is very difficult to predict outcomes.
The package is to include unspecified but systematic changes to constituency boundaries to ensure that all MPs elected by similar numbers of voters. While there is much to be said for parity, there are better and simpler ways of achieving this end.
In Wales the current 40 constituencies will be reduced to 30 with only Cardiff South and Penarth likely to survive unaltered. Everywhere else, the historic community and administrative boundaries will have to be redrawn. Whereas the Boundary Commission normally may take a decade to consult, put forward changes and consult again before finalising its proposals, the new boundaries will have to be ready in time for the next Westminster election expected in 2015.
If voter to MP parity is really vital, we could use the five existing Welsh electoral regions as 5-7 member STV constituencies. The merit of multi-member constituencies with STV is that it ensures all major parties in Wales will be represented in proportion to their votes. In contrast, using AV for new 75,000+ constituencies, it is possible that neither Plaid Cymru nor the LibDems will win a single seat.
The Alternative Vote system
| Rather than simply marking one solitary ‘X’ on the ballot paper, the voter ranks the candidates on offer by preference. Voters thus puts a ‘1’ by their first-preference candidate, and can continue, if they wish, to put a ‘2’ by their second-preference, and so on, In some AV elections, such as most Australian elections, electors are required to rank all candidates.
If a candidate receives a majority of first-preference votes (more people put them as number one than all the rest combined), then they are elected.
If no candidate gains a majority on first preferences, then the second-preference votes of the candidate who finished last on the first count are redistributed. This process is repeated until someone gets over 50 per cent. |
Australian August 2010 election results
House of Representatives(elected by AV) |
Senate(elected by STV) |
|||
Parties |
% vote |
% seats |
% vote |
% seats |
Liberal/National parties |
44.2 |
48.7 |
43.4 |
45 |
Australian Labor |
37.9 |
48 |
38.3 |
37.5 |
Australian Greens |
11.5 |
0.7 |
11.4 |
15 |
Others |
6.4 |
2.7 |
6.9 |
2.5 |
It could be argued that these regions would be rather large. The option that I prefer would be to group the current parliamentary constituencies into ten 3-member STV constituencies. This very simple change would deliver the desired voter to MP parity without the hassle of hasty boundary changes.
Whilst there is merit in equalising voter to MP ratios and reducing the number of MPs, it could be achieved without destroying historic community boundaries. Sadly, STV is not an option for the referendum. Whether we vote Yes or No we still will have the unfairness of a winner-takes-all system: We are not to be allowed to voice an opinion in favour of a genuinely fair proportional system.
The proposed legislation ‘freezes’ all existing constituency boundaries for the elections to the National Assembly. Unless the timetables are altered this means that the May 2015 elections could descend into farce. May 2015 is when the Westminster and the National Assembly elections next coincide. It could mean that Welsh voters will have the challenge of grappling with three distinct voting systems and constituencies on the same day.
In this scenario, Welsh voters will have to choose 30 MPs by AV from new hastily created constituencies. Meanwhile, on the same day, they will have to vote for 40 AMs by first-past-the-post from the old constituencies, and simultaneously, 20 regional AMs from party lists in the obsolete regions created over a decade ago for Euro elections.
But pare a thought for Scotland though. Their local elections employ STV so they could be using four different election systems on the same day.
Mention of Scotland reminds me that Wales has relatively fewer AMs in our National Assembly than Scotland has MSPs. Parity would have given us 15 more than the 60 currently elected. If, as the government claims, Wales needs to have 10 fewer MPs to achieve parity with the rest of Britain, at the very least they might let us have 10 additional AMs – 15 extra were recommended by the Richard Commission.
AV will ensure that every MP has to win at least half the votes. In May 2010 only 12 Welsh MPs polled 50 per cent of the votes, while 14 obtained less than 40 per cent. At first glance it may seem that this will enhance MP’s legitimacy. However, even a cursory glance at Australia’s post-election traumas shows that election by AV is not the same as winning the support of half the voters. The most common gripe is that many who were elected secured very few first choice votes but were promoted by the preference votes of minor parties, some with racist or other dubious policies.
Suppose, in the UK context, an AV winner depended on the preference votes of those whose first choice was, say, the BNP. Would the winner be comfortable about this? Would the loser, if he or she might otherwise have been the winner, accept the legitimacy of such a result?
Far from bestowing legitimacy on those elected, AV creates even more post-election angst than does first-past-the-post. This is an inevitable consequence of the elimination of other political parties, even those with 20-30 per cent of the first choice votes, to bestow a false legitimacy to the eventual ‘winner’.
As became evident after the election of Ed Milliband as leader of the Labour Party by AV – and whiuch occurs after every Australian election – the transparency of AV leads to endless post-election recriminations if the leading candidate in the first round is defeated by the transference of votes from the least popular candidates.
Currently five political parties represent Wales in Westminster and Europe. All should be represented in proportion to their voting support. The use of AV in significantly larger constituencies will reduce the limited plurality that currently does exist (even with first-past-the-post) and could re-establish a two-party hegemony.
The proposition in the AV referendum is an ill-considered outcome of early morning horse-trading to establish the UK coalition government. It is not the product of an in depth discussion and debate, merely an excuse for Liberal Democrats to support a minority Conservative government. As we are not to be allowed the option of voting for a fairer voting system, the best way to keep genuine electoral reform alive will be to bury the AV distraction with a resounding No vote .
“Next May’s referendum on a new voting system for Westminster elections will package three proposals into a single yes or no decision: fewer MPs, more equal electorates, and AV, the Alternative Vote described in the panel”
Are you saying that the proposal to reduce the number of MPs is contingent upon a YES vote in the AV referendum? I thought that was not the case. I hope I am wrong, because in that case I will definitely be voting NO!
The premise of this article is that because AV isn’t as good as STV, then it’s no good at all. That’s a false contrast.
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AV and STV are very similar, in fact identical except for the number of representatives elected in each constituency. AV is STV in single member constituencies; STV is AV in multimember constituencies. Because of this, AV has many of the benefits of STV, namely:
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1. It does away with the need for tactical voting (i.e. choosing your second best candidate because they have a chance of winning, as opposed to the candidate you really want).
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2. This in turn means that more candidates are likely to stand, because they will not “split the vote”.
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3. This in turn means that people who currently don’t vote because they think none of the current mainstream parties represent their viewpoint are more likely to get involved in politics and vote.
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4. Additionally, because the vote will not be split, it opens the possibility of two candidates from the same party (or very similar parties) standing. This weakens the control of political parties, putting more power into the hands of voters to decide which person with broadly similar political views they prefer.
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(Because of points 3 and 4, John is completely wrong to assert that “AV fails to reduce voter alienation and actually increases the power of party elites.” The opposite is true.)
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5. It reduces the possibility of candidates who polarize public opinion being elected. Some people will make a party like the BNP their first choice, but very few will put them second or third. The majority will put them right at the bottom of their list.
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6. It maintains the link between elected representatives and their constituencies.
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All these are good things that both AV and STV share. John spends a lot of the article arguing the merits of STV, and I agree with most of what he says, probably only disagreeing with him on the size of the multimember constituencies. But STV is simply not being offered to us as a choice in this referendum, and I think it is pointless to do down AV because STV is better. And, quite frankly, I don’t care that this referendum is the result of a shabby deal that came about because the LibDems swept their principles under the carpet.
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As I see it, the crucial thing is that making no change to the current FPTP system is only likely to make the FPTP system even more firmly entrenched, and therefore even harder to get rid of in the future. On the other hand, once people have become accustomed to the idea of ranking candidates in order of preference (though of course if they only want to vote for one, they still can) they will not need to change that way of thinking if we do move on to STV. For the individual voter, the way of voting is exactly the same for AV and STV.
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If we imagine that the AV referendum is won (and I hope it is, even though I’m not very confident it will be) we will then get a very good idea of how STV would work in practice, because we could group three, four, five or six single member constituencies and see the result it would produce. If the consensus was that it was fairer (which I’m sure it will be) then it would be a relatively small step to move from AV to STV because, as I said, the way an individual votes will not need to change again.
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So I will vote Yes to AV, and urge others to vote Yes, because it is a step in the right direction. It’s not proportional, and it doesn’t pretend to be proportional. But it’s very much better than FPTP and opens the door to STV being introduced in future.
Perhaps it’s the nature of the referendum as a political tool that people can read into them whatever they want. Wales will only have 30 MPs by the time of the next UK election no matter what the result of the May referendum. The Conservatives in particular are not going to lose any sleep if the electorate reject AV. If the electorate reject AV then no one should imagine that they will ever be given the opportunity to vote in a referendum for elections using STV. Even MPs who support STV know that a bill proposing this has virtaully no chance of ever getting throught both Houses of Parliament. No one should also believe that the rejection of AV will lead to the collapse of the UK Coalition. The last thing that Liberal Democrat MPs will want after the hammering the party will probably take in the Council and devolved adminstrations election is a UK election. By voting no in May John Cox and others are effectively killing any form of PR for a generation at least. What did someone once say about ‘politics being the art of the possible.’ ?
Regardless of the supposed theoretic merits of AV which MH outlines, the thrust of the argument is that it would be detrimental to democracy in Wales (and Scotland) – due in no small part to the huge differences in political climate between England and the rest of the UK. I am all for proportional representation; but as AV does not seem to be particularly representative and its proponents seem not to give a damn about Wales, I will certainly vote NO.
I don’t think that was the trust of the argument at all, CG.
The point is surely that any system other than STV is not in the best interests of democracy. But it would be wrong to claim that AV is worse than FPTP. Yes, it’s perfectly true that small parties are not well served by it … but they’re not well served by FPTP either. That’s why I called it a false contrast.
My advice is to take one step in the right direction while we can. We only got this chance because the quirks of electoral maths produced a hung parliament at Westminster; and I agree with Jeff that if we miss this opportunity to change things even a bit, it might be a very long time before we get another.
My article was written before the final version of the AV Referendum Bill was published and accepted the then premise that the three components of the Bill would stand or fall together with a “Yes” or “No” vote. I have tried and failed to get official confirmation that this is so but readily concede that the final version of the Bill may have de-linked the package.
Not being a head-banger, I readily concede that MH makes several valid points. But MH has made one major assumption that is demonstrably false – that people once they have experienced AV will go on to prefer STV as a “step in the right direction”. In two Canadian provinces, which tried AV, the backlash was so great that they quickly reverted to FPTP and killed genuine reform.
In reality, the defects of AV that I have mentioned in the article are so great that there is NO INSTANCE of it ever being a first step towards a proportional system.
The question we are being asked is “Should AV be used instead of FPTP?” My answer is “No – it should be replaced by STV” – and I believe from the arguments used, MH agrees with me. So you should vote “No”.
I didn’t assume that people would move on to STV, John. I said that AV would give us a very good idea of how STV would work, and that if the consensus was that it was fairer, it would be a relatively easy step to move to STV because the way an individual votes (i.e. ranking candidates, rather than making a single choice) will not need to change again.
I agree with you that we don’t know what people’s subsequent preferences would be; but moving to AV would give us a very good idea of that. It would enable us to project how various groupings of single member AV constituencies into multimember STV constituencies would work (certainly on a party level). In other words, we would make (or not make) the step to STV with much more hard information, and therefore much less speculation, than is currently available to us.
As for the practical realities, you simply will not get a chance to give the answer, “No – it should be replaced by STV” … we will only get the chance to vote Yes or No, and those in favour of the status quo will portray (rightly or wrongly) a No as an endorsement of FPTP.
Let me give you a parallel. There were some people who argued that we should have voted No to the devolution settlement on offer to Wales in 1997, on the grounds that it didn’t give us the same proper parliament as was on offer to Scotland. But if we had voted No, do you really think Westminster would have come back and offered us the same as Scotland? Of course not. They would have interpreted the No as an endorsement of the status quo. For me, it was better to vote for the half-baked Assembly that was on offer, but then to press to make that Assembly more effective. That approach has worked. I see electoral reform in the same way.
I think MH is whilstling in the dark. We have absolutely not a shred of evidence that people have warmed to STV having experienced AV and totally hard evidence that it has turned people away from the very idea of electoral reform.
Apart from the look of the ballot paper, AV has nothing in common with AV – and its effect is the opposite because it concentrates support on the two leading parties.
Furthermore, it encourages leading parties to deal with minor parties with even 2-3% of the votes as this can make the difference in the final count.
The analogy with the 1997 Assembly referendum is false because clearly the National Assembly we then voted for was a step in a process. AV is not. It’s a dead end intended to prevent genuine electoral reform.
MH says: “This in turn means that people who currently don’t vote because they think none of the current mainstream parties represent their viewpoint are more likely to get involved in politics and vote.” The evidence from western Canada is that the introduction of AV did NOT alter turnout. The evidence from Queensland suggests that AV will not increase the number of parties and can actually reduce it.
MH says: “Additionally, because the vote will not be split, it opens the possibility of two candidates from the same party (or very similar parties) standing. This weakens the control of political parties, putting more power into the hands of voters to decide which person with broadly similar political views they prefer.” A party is very unlikey to put up two candidates in a system of OPTIONAL preferences. The mere RISK of plumping (voters opting for one candidate and no other) means that two candidates from one party may spill votes; a disaster in closely fought constituencies.
MH says: “It reduces the possibility of candidates who polarize public opinion being elected. Some people will make a party like the BNP their first choice, but very few will put them second or third. The majority will put them right at the bottom of their list.” But if you support PR, MH, it is entirely inconsistent for you to make this point because under PR a party (polarizing or not) gets its just share of seats. Anyone who believes PR is the best form of democracy cannot consistently argue for a system that actually depresses proportionality for some parties, however much we disagree with them, only then to advocate a system that is proportional where they do gain the just number of seats.
One personal point: After witnessing the 1983 landslide election I became convinced that PR was the only justifiable electoral system for a modern democracy. The landslide, I believe, is the worst breach of electoral justice, giving almost supreme power to one party and its leadership. I want a system that only gives majority government based on a majority vote (whether by a single party or as a result of a coalition). Given it is well accepted that AV has a tendency to exaggerate landslides, why should I vote for it? On this count alone, it is a step in the wrong direction.
Siôn Jones asked: “Are you saying that the proposal to reduce the number of MPs is contingent upon a YES vote in the AV referendum? I thought that was not the case. I hope I am wrong, because in that case I will definitely be voting NO!”
You are not wrong. The Bill has now been given Royal Assent and will cut the number of Welsh MPs by a quarter, whether there is a “YES” or a “NO” vote in May. So the Conservatives get what they wanted even if the Lib Dems fail to win the AV vote that (some of them) want.
My arguments against AV as such (in the original article and this subsequent discussion) did not rely on the number of Welsh MPs and are unaffected by this specific feature of the Act..
Isn’t the proposed Senate (to replace the House of Lords) to be elected by STV, Wouldn’t that work as well as an educational tool as AV? I could see the latter virtually wiping out significant Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties at Westminister, let alone the impact it might have in Northern Ireland.