I haven't followed the story very closely, but I'm surprised with the result of the referendum on the alternative vote system in Britain. It appears it was not only rejected, but overwhelmingly so. While perhaps not perfect, my understanding is that an AVS at least more closely approximates the wishes of voters and reduces the advantage of the two most powerful parties. Are there any Brits here on GOG who can provide insight on this result to a (relatively) clueless American?

People find it too much hassle, that and the mp's have all been fighting dirty etc

Look on the BBC, it will show you what's been going on.

Basically, AV is an abortion of an election system half-way between First-Past-The-Post (most votes wins, whatever the turnout), which DOES work, and Proportional Representation (True will of the nation), which *may* work - I'd have to read up on that more, though, to be fully sure, and whether I'd vote for it.

It's a shoddy system where fringe parties *could* receive far more votes than normal because of secondary/tertiary/etc vote allocations. (Candidates are ranked by preference in AV, rather than pick one in FPtP).

Glad it got shot down.

Most British laws these days are merely implementing directives from Brussels, so who cares which people are in Parliament pretending to be politicians? The only way Britons can take back control of their country is to leave the EU, and no political party that can be elected under either system will allow that; they all want fat jobs in the EU bureaucracy after they're kicked out of power.

I put it down to 2 things: Most people underestimate just how undemocratic FPtP is and they don't understand the mathematics of the AV system. The burden of proof was on the shoulders of the 'Yes' campaigners while the 'No' campaigners could play on people's fear and confusion.

People just didn't get it, simple as.

A girl in my class was talking to me about it, and believe me she's top of the class, I had to explain it 2 or three times for her to understand how it was actually a vote that represented the whole of the votes instead of just the main 3 parties.

I still think while it wasn't as bad as the system we have now it still needed improvements to be made.

But hey, with the conservatives push for the big society soon our vote will mean shit all anyway.

AV sucks. FPTP sucks more. I would have (I'm not eligible to vote) voted yes because AV is the best of a bad bunch.

AV was a stupid, stupid compromise. Nick Clegg is a complete moron for going with AV for his part of the deal. Absolutely moronic.

However, I cannot understand why the result was a landslide no. Despite the fact that AV is a terrible compromise, there is no reason to choose FPTP over it. FPTP is a system which absolutely does not work whereas AV has, at least, something going for it.

The voting system that we need here is Single Transferable Vote. We are the only EU country without it, and that, to me, means we are several centuries behind the rest of the EU.

Watch this for the best explanation of STV you'll ever get.

The landslide surprised most people, however I think they underestimated the power of the press. The british press has become embarrassingly partisan, so now when a party wants a particular opinion to be held by the sheep, they set their PR guys on it.

In the case of AV, one party was resolutely against it, the Conservative Party (the major party of the coalition government). The Liberal Democrats (who wanted electoral change) have no cosy ties to the media, those ties are held by Labour and Tory alone. Labour was divided, and so didn't exploit its media ties. This mean't there was a strong bias in the press towards voting against AV. A lot of people like to feel informed by parroting the opinion the press tell them to have. They then believe it and vote for it. I believe this was the primary reason for such a strong result. The Daily Mail went with headlines suggesting it would be "The Death of Democracy".

There was also the prevailing opinion at the moment that the Lib Dems (who want the change) have let down their support base. So previously Lib Dem voters (such as myself) voted against them (actually I voted for AV, but against them). They were campaigning for a system that would definitely put them in a more powerful position, at the very point they were least popular.

The actual mechanics of the system, whether it was too complicated, whether it was more democratic or less, didn't matter. It was PR, spin, and bad luck. The actual issue was never put to vote, SilverSpoon Cameron saw to that.

I'm not really sure what the problem with FPTP is, but then again, the US has a very different political set up and I doubt the pros and cons are the same under a parliamentary system.

What we've got locally tends to work really well. We've got FPTP with a top two primary in a state where we have a bipartisan districting committee that forms and dissolves whenever we get or possibly lose representatives.

For us, both AV and PR would be a step in the wrong direction.

I do think it's kind of funny that the folks in the EU are making the same sorts of complaints that we in the US have had for about as long as we've been a country. Basically the arguing between the Federalists (Now supported by the Democrats) and the Republicans trying to keep the federal government from gaining any power at all.

I often times wonder how many folks in Europe are aware that they're basically copying the US' government just with a parliament rather than our bicameral legislature.

FPtP works fine if there are only two parties/candidates. Any more than that and it can (and does) result in the least popular candidate winning.

Uh. But we don't copy your system. Taking countries like Germany that by now, essentially, have five different major parties - coalitions do change and shift from election to election. That is the huge difference, really. More political flavours offer at least slightly more choice to find a party and manifesto that suits your own perception of what direction the country should take. Whether they realize the manifesto is a different matter; but it makes for a more diverse political landscape rather than a bi-partisan system where both parties go for exactly the same demographics [whoever catches most of swing voters wins.] Germany actually uses a mixture of voting systems (partially PR) in elections.

Re: AV campaign loss in UK. Yeah. Loads of reasons.

The major aspect for me is that media [and with that I mean Murdoch type sources] did push the whole thing as a chance to "stick it to the LibDems". Other important aspects are that no-one really wanted AV. It wasn't the reform that LibDems originally campaigned for and it wasn't the alternative (PR) that most opposed to FPTP wanted: it was a cheap compromise - and because of that just never had a chance against those that were absolutely opposed to change. The "No" campaign started early and had loads of funds. The yes campaign didn't. Neither really had much of an impact as they didn't register with most. The austerity measures is what concerned people more than any other political topic this last year. Turnout for a referendum of that importance was low.

Actually a turnout of 41% was surprisingly high for a British referendum. and there was heavy playing down in the media as to its importance.

We really don't place value on our democracy, on the same day that 6 protesters gave their lives in Syria campaigning for the chance to elect a govenment, 59% of britain couldn't be bothered to even take part.

That depends how you define 'most popular'. The candidate with more votes than any other single candidate can still be the least popular candidate.

Say there are 5 candidates: A, B, C, D & E. Candidate A gets 25% of the vote, and the others get around 19% each. Under FPtP, A would win, even though 75% of the voters voted against them. It could easily be the case that everyone who voted B, C, D or E would rather have anyone other than A, in which case A would win despite being the least popular candidate.

The disproportional representation at a national level is a side-effect of this (and other things).

I'm not sure if I am right but it seems the LibDems want a system like Ireland currently use. You get a sheet with a picture of all the candidates and you put a number next to them from 1 to whatever. When it's then polled all the votes that didn't have their first candidates are recounted and their second choice is then given their votes and so on.

It's fine in practice but in reality it ends up with no overall majority which has been the case in Ireland for the last god-knows how many years. In the last Fianna Fáil / Green coalition the Green party capitulated to everything FF demanded even going so far as to giving away all Ireland's natural gas reserves to Shell. In the last election the Green party ceased to exist. It looks like the same is going to happen to the Lib Dems. At the end of the day principles are nothing compared to 4 years of power.