chess | Yes To Fairer Votes photo in Cambridge

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The AV Yes Campaign are doing a photo shoot on Saturday. I can't get to it because I'm at a player event, so I thought I would post about it. Event details and signup at http://tinyurl.com/purplephoto

I suspect if I actually made any commentary on AV I would mostly be preaching to the converted here, but I'm always happy to host a political argument on this or basically any subject if you like :).

The very short version is: I want the AV Yes Campaign to win because it would mean that I never, ever have to deliver any propaganda with the phrase 'two-horse race' or a stupid bar graph showing how Foo Can't Win Here ever again...

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They are annoying. but surely you'd need some kind of actual PR system rather than just AV to eliminate tactical voting (and thus the stupid graphs)?

As I understand it, you don't need PR at all to eliminate tactical voting - you just need a preferential voting system, which AV is. Once you have one of those, people don't need to vote for X to keep out Y (when they'd prefer to vote for Z) - they just list them '1st: Z, 2nd: X, 3rd: Y'.

You still need to encourage them to remember to put X as their second preference to keep out Y, but that's much less skeevy and unpleasant than telling them not to express their actual preference at all.

Mm. But the tricky case is when X and Y are the parties actually likely to win, Z is third and there are significantly many votes going to minority parties. Then the deferral from Z is less likely ever to happen, and it's more of a priority (for X's publicist) to persuade the Z voter to put X first.

Of course there's also more need for X to avoid offending the dyed-in-the-wool Z voter so much as to lose the second-choice vote, so maybe it works out.

That's how I understand it too.

Also that if Z want X *and* Y voters to 2nd-pref Z then they HAVE TO BE NICE (or at least NICER) about X and Y.

Unfortunately tactical voting exists in PR. It's the same as in the local election but at the national scale.

E.g. If you want to keep the Tories from forming a government you're still better off voting for Labour than the Green party in PR. Admittedly, however, it is less bad. The vote for Green does dilute the Tory vote a little rather than being wasted.

Arguably the same applies in AV but in AV you effectively always end up casting a vote either for the winner or the first placed loser in your area (if you keep redistributing past the point where the winner has been decided) so it's much better just to honestly list your preferences. Just put the BNP at the bottom of your list and you will always vote for whoever isn't them.

One reason I don't like PR is that you don't have a single person who you elect you instead contribute to a list. It means there isn't an individual who is responsible to a set of voters and it formalises party politics when in theory FPTP and AV both allow independents to be significant.

My personal wish would be to make the House of Lords PR but it doesn't seem like PR in any form is going to be offered as a choice any time soon.