Thu, 28 Apr 2011
Making Politics Matter - The Canterbury AV meeting
I have just returned from an interesting meeting about the AV referendum. The meeting was hosted by Canterbury Christchurch University and featured two speakers: John Ault (North West Director "Yes to fairer votes") and Daniel Hamilton (Director of Big Brother watch).
The format of the meeting gave each speaker 15 minutes to present their argument, followed by a questions & answers session.
I will provide some analysis of some of the more interesting questions and answers that I heard. This is by no means a complete account of the meeting, as I didn't get a chance to write everything down.
The first question was put forward by myself:
Do you honestly think that we will get another chance at voting reform in our lifetime if the no compaign win?
The response from Yes was a simple "I do not believe we will have another chance". The response from No was not really an answer to the question, but rather a most eloquent evasion of the issue, in true politician style. Unfortunately I was not given an opportunity to challenge this.
The next subject that came up was cost, where No argued AV would require expensive voting machines, and Yes pointed out that this was not the case. At some point someone asked the simple and beautiful question
How much should an election cost?
Both sides agreed on an answer along the lines of "as little as possible but let's not be cheap".
The No camp then brought up the issue that AV would encourage fringe parties and coalition governments. This was presented as if these were bad things. I disagree.
It is worth pointing out that the UK appears to have great trouble understanding the concept of coalition government. This is perhaps no surprise given that our FPTP voting system encourages strong single party governments, and thus we have little experience with coalition governments.
When done right, a coalition government provides stability of government by moderating all sides. Where a strong single party government can bulldozer over the opposition with whatever extreme policy they feel like, a coalition government would be forced to find a common ground for any policy they wish to implement, thus avoiding any extreme swings in government policy. The current coalition government is by no means a perfect example, given that neither party had any practical experience with conducting coalition negotiations, but still, there are some examples of the kind of moderation that results, for example with the £9000 limit on tuition fees, where the original proposal suggested no limits at all.
The argument that AV, and by inference any form of proportional representation, will give more of a voice to supporters of fringe parties such as the BNP was put forth by No. This was presented as if this were a bad thing. I disagree. When there are enough people voting for these parties, who are we to disenfranchise them of a voice in parliament, just because we disagree with them? What would be the problem if, say, BNP got a couple of seats? Let them voice their propaganda in the commons. Let there be a debate on it, and see who wins the argument. Voltaire understood.
The final argument put forth by No was that there are only 3 countries that use AV. This is, however, asking the wrong question. AV is just one of many forms of proportional representation voting systems. The real question is, how many countries use a non-proportional voting system such as FPTP? When asked after the meeting, No answered "The UK and Malta", so that's just 2 countries in Europe.
All in all, this meeting didn't present anything new. The same arguments were being recycled by both sides. It is unfortunate that the meeting was not a real debate, where both sides could challenge the other's arguments to weed out the half-truths and even blatant lies, but hopefully this article serves to put some things in a clear perspective.
Edit: @DBirkin has written an article with his views of the meeting from the No side of things.
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