Yes To Fairer Votes photo in Cambridge

[chess]

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...

Comments

AV can mean voting against your party

[passage.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big fan of AV because it doesn't have monotonicity - sometimes the only way to get your party to win is to vote against them. At least in FPTP the tactics were simple enough you didn't need a mathematician to explain them.

e.g.
You and a friend want the Labour party to win
Labour: 100 first preference
Lib Dem: 100 first preference, 2nd pref Labour
Conservative: 99 first preference, 2nd pref Lib Dem

If you both vote for Labour the Conservatives will be eliminated leading to a Lib Dem win. If you vote Conservative Lib Dem will be eliminated leading to your desired outcome.

In fact you cannot avoiding tactical voting in an election with more than 2 candidates (see Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Systems like PR circumvent this problem by not making a decision. Unfortunately this only delays the problem - at some point your government has to make a decision about something, and the tactical voting merely happens then).

Ironically this proves that the only way to achieve 'fair' voting is to eliminate the Liberal Democrats.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[chess]

As far as I understand it, you can only actually achieve tactical voting if you have very good information about the voting intentions of everyone in the area, which is rarely achieved by anyone - and if you get it wrong you lose big-time...

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[1st-law.livejournal.com]

In addition the vote has to be very very close for these distortions to occur.

You and your friend want Labour to win and you do this by voting Lib Dem in this case however this only works because the majority of Conservatives would also like Labour to win. If they are happy to have them as second choice this allows them this chance.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[passage.livejournal.com]

The vote has to be very close for one or two votes to make the difference in any reasonable system. Larger blocks can successfully follow this strategy in less close races - obviously the less close it gets the larger the block required!

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[1st-law.livejournal.com]

I think the size of the block needs to be vote difference between the 2nd and 3rd party plus one. Obviously plus chess's requirement that you have to broadly know the 2nd choices of the people in the 2nd and 3rd parties.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[passage.livejournal.com]

I agree. The comparison point in FPTP is a block the size of the difference between the 1st and 2nd parties + 1 and knowledge of which the top 2 parties will be.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[passage.livejournal.com]

Tactical voting always relies on having information about how others are going to vote - hence the bar charts with the dodgy axis.

In this case the information you need is what voters for one party are likely to list as their second choice preference. If AV becomes our voting system I expect a rash of surveys to give us that information. In fact if it does starting a polling company would be a smart move!

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[ilanin.livejournal.com]

Ironically this proves that the only way to achieve 'fair' voting is to eliminate the Liberal Democrats.

You have to admit that Nick Clegg is doing his best on that score.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[1st-law.livejournal.com]

He certainly is.

I think he's getting some concessions behind the scenes (otherwise why is the Tory backbench so grumpy?) but they are too few and not public enough to keep the party's supporters on board.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[passage.livejournal.com]

• Pupil Premium


• Capital Gains Tax


• AV referendum


• School Budget increased


• Inheritance Tax Threshold frozen


• Student loan payback threshold high and index-linked


• Pro-Europe foreign policy

Clegg's list of victories is impressive and public. I suspect the problem is that people didn't vote Lib Dem because they wanted the manifesto implemented, but as a protest vote against the Tories.

Re: AV can mean voting against your party

[1st-law.livejournal.com]

Clearly I should read the news more as I was only vaguely aware of half of these. Good job Cleggy boy!