#YesnotoAV

Pretty much everyone is bored with AV coverage by now.  Everyone apart from some hacks, amongst my facebook friends at least.  But I have clipped their facebook cyber wings as far as I am concerned and so that makes at least my on-line life easier.  Though that is little compensation when one tussles with that slight feeling of isolation that comes with wondering what the bollocks other people are talking about.  Ever had that?  I do not mean where you do not understand it—we have all had that, pissed or not—but where it is not really possible to work out how they got there or why they are talking about it. 

            This started for me with hearing about proportional representation, PR.  It is probably one of those things like socialism or Christianity.  They are obviously crap ideas but they picked their moments and had supporters belligerent enough not to let it go so we retain at least bits of them, years later.  Add to that, that there is probably nothing better—and some that are worse—so some remnants stand the test of time.  This of course goes for more or less everything else in current affairs: fiscal economic theory and the royal family, to name but two.  You have probably also heard that PR means that tiny minorities are ‘fairly represented’—whatever that means, it is in all likelihood another vague and utopian-sounding fantastic half-truth, and a gain made at the expense of any localisation of central government politics.  But it has been decried by many as a silver bullet that will solve everything that is wrong in politics. 

            Wondering why people bang on about yes-or-no-to-AV is another debate that has a similarly discombobulating effect.  It has been covered less-than-brilliantly by the media and is complicated, creating peculiar bedfellows.  Who expected the reversement d’alliance that mean PR supports voting to keep first-past-the-post? 

I decided quite early on what I wanted in the referendum.  It turns out that this is both different to that of most of my friends, though entirely in line with the expected result.  I suppose my view stems from my not being able to see the point of AV, not least because any increase in fairness is cancelled out by an increase in complication.  ‘But AV is simple’ I hear the yes campaign cry.  Of course Imperial students can understand it, but the percentage of secondary-level pupils who will be old enough to vote at the expected time of the next general election, but that cannot write a coherent sentence on what they did today would suggest that this depth of understanding is not shared by everyone.  Arguments from those purporting No to AV suggesting that the third-placed candidate would win have failed to gain momentum, though it remains unclear as to whether coalition governments would be commonplace under AV and whether or not this is desirable. 

However it is hard not to liken this to two bald men fighting over a comb.  Naturally, I have a fiver on the one with fewer teeth and a flick-knife in his back pocket as he does my garden (British politics analogised with fighting and gardens there, hope you liked it) but there it ends.  The probability reached after reflection now seems to be that changing to AV would not make that much difference, and so we will not really notice it in the long term.  Perhaps they would if other aspects of the electoral system were investigated more publically.  What about voter turnout?  In the 1960s it was >65%.  At the last election it was barely 45%.  European elections held in the UK routinely have turnouts in the mid-30s%.  Is this representative or fair, AV debators?  So while the merits of clarity and simplicity against a fantasy of representation and a dystopia of fairness go on, probably whatever the result, only 40-odd-percent of the electorate are deciding the fate of 100%.  Who voted for that?