Poll: Yes or No?
Yes33.33%
No44.44%
I Don't Understand22.22%
You do not have the required permissions to vote in this poll
Votes: 18
The referendum on the UK voting system is tomorrow, and a fair number of CFUK members are UK residents that are old enough to vote, so;
Are you voting, and which way?
Firstly, if you're NOT voting, that's fine, each to their own. But be aware that, even though we all dislike/hate the government at time, you can't really complain about them if you forgo your right to effect them.
Onto the vote itself!
In AV, rather than putting a single "X" next the party you'd prefer, and if, like in the last election, the numbers are close, we could end up with a government that, while having the majority of votes, was
not voted for by half of the nation!
A lot of people I've asked have said that they don't really know what AV is, so, in case there's any on CFUK who are unsure, here's an scenario;
Imagine you want to vote for Lib Dems, but you don't think they have a chance of winning, and if it came down to Labour or Conservative, you'd prefer Labour. In the old system, the Lib Dems would miss out on millions of votes because people in this situation would just vote Labour.
With AV, you would
rank the parties you're OK with in order of preference. So, in the above scenario, you would put Lib Dems at #1, Labour at #2, any other parties in whatever order afterwards, and presumably not rank Conservatives at all.
During counting, only #1 ranked parties are counted. If, at the end of the count, there is no majority, the lowest voted for party is scrapped, and, for the people who put that party as their #1, their #2 party is given the vote.
This process is repeated until one party has a majority.
The main argument against AV seems to be "it's too complex," which is a ridiculous reason to write off changes to something so important. Another argument I've heard is that it could allow some of the smaller "idiot" parties to get into power which, while I agree would be a bad thing, those "idiot" parties would have been put into power by
us and I believe we should still have the right to make mistakes.
So, there you have a question, an explanation, and an opinion. I'm interested to know what opinions (if any) you all have on this, and if anyone has an alternative argument in favour of keeping the current system that isn't oppressive or retarded, as those listed above are.