Sometimes those of us involved in local or national politics forget that for most ‘normal’ folk, politics isn’t their waking thought! So I shouldn’t have been shocked (as I was the other day) when I asked a friend of mine what she thought about the referendum coming up in May and her response was: “what referendum…” (I almost fell off my chair!) The fairer votes referendum is on May 5th, the same day as many Council and Assembly elections up and down the country and it is the most important opportunity for a generation to actually instigate a change to the political process. At the moment, our MPs are elected by what is called the ‘First Past The Post’ system. In short, the MP with the most ‘X’s next to their name on the ballot paper wins. It could be that they only receive one more vote than the candidate who came second and that the majority of people in that constituency didn’t vote for  or want that candidate at all. Nevertheless, at the moment, it only takes ONE more vote than the next person to decide who represents you in Parliament.

I think this is wrong for a number of reasons.

1) It locks in safe seats – what happens if you’re unfortunate to live in one of the 80+% of constituencies in this country that for generations have been represented by only one political party that you don’t support…? Tough! Your vote won’t count.

2) It doesn’t take in to account voter preferences – what happens if you like more than one candidate and would like to express this at the ballot box…? Tough! You have one ‘X’ – you’re not allowed to like more than one candidate.

3) It encourages ‘tactical voting’ – what happens if you don’t like the candidate who is likely to win…? Tough! Vote for the person who is most likely to come second – even if you don’t really like them, and hope that there are enough other voters who feel and to do the same.

The referendum asks you to consider a different system called ‘The Alternative Vote‘ (or ‘AV‘ for short). AV allows voters the chance to rank the candidates in order of preference. So instead of an ‘X’, one would use 1, 2, 3, etc.

The beauty of this system is that it doesn’t do away with the old system – voters know that one of the candidates on the ballot paper will be their  MP. Also, if you only wish to vote for one candidate, you still can by putting a ‘1’ (or even an ‘X’) next to their name. If however you like more than one candidate, you can use a ‘2’ for your second choice, a ‘3’ for third and so on. The votes are then counted and after all the first preferences are counted, unless there is a clear winner (a candidate receives 50% +1% of first preferences on the first count), the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is eliminated and the second preferences are counted. Then the third, fourth, etc. until there is an outright winner.

AV therefore provides the winner with a clear mandate to represent their constituency. It also means that candidates have to work hard to win every vote  for they can no longer take the result for granted (unless they know they can win 51% of first preference votes at the first count). So called “safe seats”  become a lot more scarce and democracy is increased through the people having a far greater input in to the electoral process.

I’ve heard and read some of the scaremonger tactics being used by those from the ‘No’ campaign. They say it’s too expensive, too complicated and undemocratic. Once analysed, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny. So we shouldn’t be scared of AV. In fact most people will have already used AV without even realising it as it is widely used by businesses, colleges, charities, unions, political parties, religious institutions and many other organisations and representative bodies.

So I’ll be voting ‘Yes’ in the ‘Fairer Votes Referendum’ come May 5th 2011 and I urge you to do the same. Join me and together we can make history and give our country the much needed democratic shot in the arm it’s been missing out on for centuries.

PS, for a more in depth explanation on the mechanics of AV, check out this link: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=55