Do you want AV for the UK? Cast your vote here!

[weltweit]

Another reason to vote no, is that it will likely take a lot longer to come to a result in counting the votes, so instead of as now when we usually get the results that night or in the early morning, with AV we are likely to have to wait until late into the following day.

From a different angle, what is broken about FPTP?

 

[weltweit]

Just like in a general election. I don't vote in those either.

Why not?

Just interested.

 

[butchersapron]

We have a winner.

What does it matter what system we use to elect people when the second they get in they throw all their pre-election promises out the window and set about doing whatever the people who funded their campaign tell them to? Why even bother having elections if there is nothing requiring politicians to adhere to their mandate? Whatever the motivations of the two sides to this campaign really are all we're going to hear is an endless stream of lies from all concerned until the actual issue is lost in the fog of war. Just like in a general election. I don't vote in those either.

So if they did all those thing you'd be groovy? Not quite got the anarchist critique of representation have you?

 

[butchersapron]

Another reason to vote no, is that it will likely take a lot longer to come to a result in counting the votes, so instead of as now when we usually get the results that night or in the early morning, with AV we are likely to have to wait until late into the following day.

From a different angle, what is broken about FPTP?

The lib-dems don't win enough.

 

[ernestolynch]

Fuck the liberals. Vote no.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Another reason to vote no, is that it will likely take a lot longer to come to a result in counting the votes, so instead of as now when we usually get the results that night or in the early morning, with AV we are likely to have to wait until late into the following day.

OTOH, we might get electronic voting. Which boosts turnout - good for Labour - but makes electoral fraud trickier. In general, that's bad for Labour.

 

[SpookyFrank]

So if they did all those thing you'd be groovy? Not quite got the anarchist critique of representation have you?

I don't think in such black and white terms that I wouldn't consider a system where politicians do as they say they will to be an improvement on what we have now if that's what you mean. I do however think that imagining a society like ours except with honest politicians is a bit like imagining a society like ours except all the work is done by flying pigs.

Elections will always be a choice between two or more steaming piles of bullshit, and without even a fair means to determine which steaming pile is the most popular.

I could of course go all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and deconstruct all the arguments in favour of the willing abdication of one's moral and political will to a centralised authority, starting with how the whole idea is undermined by the fact that nobody actually voted for Leviathan in the first place so all consent is illusory, but to be honest it's getting late and I can't be arsed.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Fuck the liberals. Vote no.

Fuck ern, vote yes.

Repeat ad infinitum.

 

[frogwoman]

No.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You're right - but people on the left (from Keir Hardie through to Ralph Miliband and beyond) have argued that electoral reform and a realignment of the centre would produce space for a viable left alternative. I stand in that tradition.

Yes, you do stand in that tradition, but where Hardie and Miliband both wanted to milk the greatest possible benefit from electoral reform - to take it as far as it would go, you support AV even while acknowledging it's crappiness prepared to anything approaching real proportional representation.

So, while you "stand in that tradition", your ethics aren't theirs. You're prepared to shill for the piss-weak "alternative to FPTP", rather than having the courage of your convictions. Neither Hardie nor Miliband have a record of selling out, let alone so cheaply.

 

[weltweit]

I don't think in such black and white terms that I wouldn't consider a system where politicians do as they say they will to be an improvement on what we have now if that's what you mean. I do however think that imagining a society like ours except with honest politicians is a bit like imagining a society like ours except all the work is done by flying pigs. Elections will always be a choice between two or more steaming piles of bullshit, and without even a fair means to determine which steaming pile is the most popular. I could of course go all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and deconstruct all the arguments in favour of the willing abdication of one's moral and political will to a centralised authority, starting with how the whole idea is undermined by the fact that nobody actually voted for Leviathan in the first place so all consent is illusory, but to be honest it's getting late and I can't be arsed.

SpookyFrank what do you have against paragraphs...

I can't read your post, it just looks like a massive jumble of words to me...

 

[kained&able]

I was leaning to yes a few weeks ago, but anything the condems think is a good idea can go away

Also labour seem to think that the rebounding(is that the right word??) of the consitunacies will favour the tories.

I will check nearer the time again but if camron/clegg think its a good idea, i don't. Unless someone i trust(as in not you, especially not you) gives me a very very good reason to vote yes.

dave

 

[SpookyFrank]

SpookyFrank what do you have against paragraphs...

I can't read your post, it just looks like a massive jumble of words to me...

I usually intend to just write a sentence or two and then get carried away. I will attempt to employ more judicious spacing of my rants in future.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We have a winner.

What does it matter what system we use to elect people when the second they get in they throw all their pre-election promises out the window and set about doing whatever the people who funded their campaign tell them to? Why even bother having elections if there is nothing requiring politicians to adhere to their mandate? Whatever the motivations of the two sides to this campaign really are all we're going to hear is an endless stream of lies from all concerned until the actual issue is lost in the fog of war. Just like in a general election. I don't vote in those either.

Some of the fans of AV will tell you that their chosen electoral format will make for more "accountability", and mean what your MP does is more "representative", but basically those contentions boil down to "best case scenarios". Even if a recall element was instituted, who'd police it - the parties, of course!

 

[Maurice Picarda]

I was leaning to yes a few weeks ago, but anything the condems think is a good idea can go away

Also labour seem to think that the rebounding(is that the right word??) of the consitunacies will favour the tories.

I will check nearer the time again but if camron/clegg think its a good idea, i don't. Unless someone i trust(as in not you, especially not you) gives me a very very good reason to vote yes.

dave

The coalition isn't entirely united on this one, Dave.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't think in such black and white terms that I wouldn't consider a system where politicians do as they say they will to be an improvement on what we have now if that's what you mean. I do however think that imagining a society like ours except with honest politicians is a bit like imagining a society like ours except all the work is done by flying pigs. Elections will always be a choice between two or more steaming piles of bullshit, and without even a fair means to determine which steaming pile is the most popular. I could of course go all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and deconstruct all the arguments in favour of the willing abdication of one's moral and political will to a centralised authority, starting with how the whole idea is undermined by the fact that nobody actually voted for Leviathan in the first place so all consent is illusory, but to be honest it's getting late and I can't be arsed.

wtf is that wafflly shit?

Why are your criticisms then of their lack of honesty? That being honest would change it?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Honestly though, the bare faced cheek of the bastards, happily collaborating on endless things to fuck us over and then throwing this bollocks out as if it means anything. I'll vote in whatever way looks like fucking them over as much as possible, which looks like "no" at the moment.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Another reason to vote no, is that it will likely take a lot longer to come to a result in counting the votes, so instead of as now when we usually get the results that night or in the early morning, with AV we are likely to have to wait until late into the following day.

So?

From a different angle, what is broken about FPTP?

It's an ancient system that wasn't even suitable as used before the Reform Act, let alone subsequently, despite constant re-jigging.

 

[kained&able]

The coalition isn't entirely united on this one, Dave.

From what i've read more are leaning to yes though, so im leaning to no. Yeah fridgemagent just summed it up.

I'm voting against them.

dave

 

[ernestolynch]

AV means shit it's a vote of confidence in Cameron and his hole.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Why are your criticisms then of their lack of honesty? That being honest would change it?

No, simply that given that they are not honest there is no point voting for any of them.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Honestly though, the bare faced cheek of the bastards, happily collaborating on endless things to fuck us over and then throwing this bollocks out as if it means anything. I'll vote in whatever way looks like fucking them over as much as possible, which looks like "no" at the moment.

I do understand that, yet I also genuinely think that AV is marginally less bad as a system than FPTP without AV (as was pointed out on the other thread, we will still have a fptp system with AV).

I will probably do what I usually do and not vote, but I will not rejoice at a no vote.

 

[weltweit]

re fptp

It's an ancient system that wasn't even suitable as used before the Reform Act, let alone subsequently, despite constant re-jigging.

What do other people use?

And I don't care what what Belgium use

 

[butchersapron]

AV is marginally less bad as a system than FPTP

Vs

fuck up the lib-dems, fuck up the coalition, fuck up the cuts

 

[butchersapron]

I do understand that, yet I also genuinely think that AV is marginally less bad as a system than FPTP without AV (as was pointed out on the other thread, we will still have a fptp system with AV).

I will probably do what I usually do and not vote, but I will not rejoice at a no vote.

Get some politics rather than those principles.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The politics is ambiguous at best to me though.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I don't think in such black and white terms that I wouldn't consider a system where politicians do as they say they will to be an improvement on what we have now if that's what you mean.

If you look to history, and analyse our current system in light of that history as well as in the light of the mythology of democracy in the present-day UK, you inevitably reach the conclusion that such a system as you mention has never existed and very likely cannot exist within our "parliamentary democracy". Not only are there no mechanisms, there's no will by the governors to listen to the governed. There may be sops offered, such as "right of recall", but that'll only ever be as effective as the will of the parties to give it a wide enough remit to be meaningful.

I do however think that imagining a society like ours except with honest politicians is a bit like imagining a society like ours except all the work is done by flying pigs.

Probably because party politics, like diplomacy, is a craft reliant on the infinite ways truth and falsehood can be made to appear to be each other.

Elections will always be a choice between two or more steaming piles of bullshit, and without even a fair means to determine which steaming pile is the most popular.

Elections within our current democratic system, anyway. We can only speculate on whether other systems would reproduce the steaming piles of cack.

I could of course go all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and deconstruct all the arguments in favour of the willing abdication of one's moral and political will to a centralised authority, starting with how the whole idea is undermined by the fact that nobody actually voted for Leviathan in the first place so all consent is illusory, but to be honest it's getting late and I can't be arsed.

I've said before that consent is taken as implicit. The ConDems have been finding out (and long may it continue) that kicking the dog and taking it's consent to the act as implicit purely because it doesn't bite you straight away is a dangerous game.

 

[butchersapron]

The politics is ambiguous at best to me though.

Then fuck up the lib-dems and stop making a banner of your principles.

 

[ViolentPanda]

re fptp



What do other people use?

AV
AV+
STV are the three most popular systems in the modern era.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Then fuck up the lib-dems and stop making a banner of your principles.

I'm not sure this would fuck up the libdems. It would hurt the 'left' wing of the party far more than the right, and since the right wing is in complete control of the leadership, what damage would be done to them?