Mary Ann Sieghart, in today’s Independent, urges us to “Vote Yes for evolution, not revolution”.
The article, in truth, adds little to the debate as to the rival merits of the Alternative Vote and First Past the Post electoral systems. Sieghart’s principal argument is the perennial one of the pro-AV lobby, that FPP is “unfair”:
For much of my life, I’ve been doomed to live in places where my vote doesn’t count. Voting for my preferred party has been as useful as tearing up my ballot paper and scattering it like confetti over the canvassers.
The speciousness of the argument is immediately obvious. Ms Sieghart’s vote counts precisely as much as anyone else’s. Her problem is that, in the areas in which she has chosen to live, her party hasn’t been sufficiently popular. That is unfortunate for Ms Sieghart and a good reason for her to work hard to help increase its local popularity, not for changing the electoral system.
Sieghart goes on to explain how AV would improve “fairness”:
Most annoyingly for the voter, it often forces us to vote dishonestly. We can’t cast a ballot for the party we want, but instead have to vote tactically for the party that has the best chance of beating the party we like least. This in itself relies on making assumptions about which party is currently in second place and how other voters in the constituency are likely to act on those assumptions.
Under AV, no vote is a wasted vote. If you want to vote Green or Lib Dem or Monster Raving Loony Party, that’s fine. You can happily put a ’1′ by the party you like best, in the knowledge that your ’2′ and ’3′ will also help to influence the result. The tellers count your votes and – at last – your vote counts.
That argument, too, is well-rehearsed and is also specious. What Sieghart is saying, in effect, is that, rather than casting your single vote in a way that is, in her terms, “dishonest” under FPP, you should do precisely that with your second vote under AV. And then do it again with your third vote.
That, of course, would make sense to someone such as Sieghart, who is a self-confessed third party supporter, because AV is a system weighted in favour of third parties. But it is an argument for skewed third party political advantage, not for anything that might reasonably be called fairness.
So nothing really new from Ms Sieghart and, ordinarily, I wouldn’t have commented on her article, had it not been for her display of ignorance of the way politics works in Wales:
Then the Conservatives on the right point to the “danger” of the referendum being carried by Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish votes. Because the devolved assemblies and parliament are up for election next week, voters there are more likely to turn out. They are also more likely to vote “yes” to AV because they have seen different voting systems in action and have experienced their perfectly sensible results.
Actually, most Conservatives I know welcome the fact that the referendum is being held on the same day as the Assembly election. Since devolution was instituted, voters in Wales have shown a distinct lack of engagement with Assembly elections, a matter of concern to all political parties. In 2007, turnout was only 43.3 per cent and in no election has it reached 50 per cent.
Having canvassed for Conservative candidates across North Wales over the last few days, I can say that there is considerable interest in the referendum and I am pretty sure that voters will turn out to express their opinion on AV. That should, in turn, boost turnout in the Assembly election, which can only be a good thing.
But for Ms Sieghart to suggest that the Welsh will embrace AV because of their unqualified enthusiasm for the exquisite intricacies of the D’Hondt system of proportional representation is to take speciousness to a wholly new level.
