Not being a supporter of either of the coalition parties, the current range of opportunities to accuse them of betraying their manifesto commitments are very tempting. It’s hard not to relish a few years of Nick Clegg having this video replayed constantly in the light of Tuesday’s budget VAT hike.

But taking the partisan hat off, the upsides for the quality of democracy are hard to avoid as well. I’d broadly agree with Lib-Dem blogger Mark Thompson in this ‘campaign in majoritarian, govern in coalition’ post that the experience of participating in – or watching – coalition government will bring a number of improvements to the way that political discourse is conducted in the UK. If it results in more equivocal value-based electioneering, it can only be a good thing.

The thing is, all political parties are coalitions anyway. They’re clusters of smaller social interests that oppose the other clusters more than the rival components of their own. Our First Past the Post electoral system usually promotes coalitions within political parties rather than between them and any significant change to that system will probably result in a re-alignment of those components.

When election campaigns – and the conversation inbetweentimes becomes more of a pluralistic struggle about values, we’ll have something that misrepresents the decisions that governments have to take a good deal less. This can only be a good thing, surely?

It’s almost self-evident that a manifesto stuffed with pledges will reduce the scope for pragmatism. Election campaigns where parties pledge to take particular decisions have always resulted in broken promises and poorer policies. They also reveal a fatally compromised approach to policy that can’t be commensurate with good governance. They represent an attempt to buy-off vocal and active pressure groups at the expense of The General Will.

In 1983, Labour fell foul of ‘The Longest Suicide Note in History’ – I posted elsewhere on how an obsession mandates damaged Labour at the time. In 1997 – and in subsequent elections – Labour also succumbed to the temptation of using pledges to counteract its problems with the media – at best, fair-weather friends – and it’s overwhelming sense that the public didn’t trust it. The relationship with the press was never addressed and one can’t really conclude that the public trust Labour (or politicians in general) more now than they used to.

The Election 2010 blog is asking ‘what election was that‘?

“The opening book in the ‘Nuffield’ election series – The British General Election of 1945 – lists a series of ‘named’ elections: 1874, when the Liberals went down in a flood of gin and beer; the Midlothian election of 1880; the Khaki election of 1900; the Chinese Slavery election of 1906; the People’s Budget election of 1910; the ‘Hang the Kaiser’ election of 1918; and the 1924 ‘Zinovieff letter’ election.”

The Internet election maybe? Well, no. I was at the Personal Democracy Forum GE 2010 event at the RSA the other night. It was a great panel, but it says a lot about the way that the blogopsphere has amplified so many voices that there wasn’t that much that was said on the stage that those of us who follow these things hadn’t heard before. But Mark Pack – a Lib-Dem blogger – stepped up from the floor and really stole the show. Wisely, Mick has signed him up for a post on Slugger – here:

“…many of those who have been asking “will the next election be the first internet election?” have been asking the wrong question. At the internal, organisational level the internet had already become essential prior to this election. What in effect many of the questioners (especially those in the style of Clay Shirky and Joe Trippi) have been hoping is that the internet will remake politics in a non-hierarchical style.

Whether politics – or other forms of human organisation – can be non-hierarchical is a very different question from what uses YouTube should be put to. It is one I am sceptical about, especially when you see how quickly structures have emerged in the communities growing up on tools such as Twitter which, at a technical level, are very egalitarian and non-hierarchical.

Where does this all leave us? In the end, the election was primarily about what politicians did and how the public voted rather than about technologies and techniques. And you know what? That doesn’t seem so bad at all.”

I think that a lot of election commentary is missing something important about how we vote. As some commenters here have said, in the past, ‘at elections, we order our preferences’.

That makes this really interesting. Nick Clegg doesn’t seem to be strongly objected to in the way that Gordon Brown and David Cameron are. Could the Lib Dems win my a landslide?

Digest these figures……

Update: What if Clegg could convince a significant number of us that he was winning.

I’ve tried to boil down the killer argument in the whole ‘blogger v journalist’ debate, and it runs something like this:

Take the best article you’ve read in a newspaper recently. The one that was well-written and argued and the one that met a particular need that you have personally. You can be almost certain that a better article was written somewhere on the blogosphere. The only problem is finding it. As social bookmarking and ‘collaborative filtering’ improves, you will increasingly be able to access a personalised stream of these articles that will partly negate your need for a newspaper.

To illustrate the point, here’s a great post by James Cridland on how you can weave your own personalised radio station together. That’s the sort of innovation I’ve been awaiting for years (more in ‘innovation’ below). And then, to add a bit of flavour to the argument, here’s something on how journalists can build their own reader-communities. And while we’re on the question of the media, here’s some breaking news; Murdoch’s paywall idea isn’t suicidal after all. Murdoch isn’t stupid and isn’t afraid to think differently and take on big beasts. Who knew?

So. Great blogging: take the last couple of days as an example. I’m interested in how far politics is about the clash of social forces rather than the public discourse around the ishoos. Here, Peter Hetherington (admittedly, writing for the evil MSM) has a post on how local v central is a cross-cutting issue. Ingrid has a very perceptive question: Hang on, isn’t there a local election happening at the moment as well? And wasn’t teh Hinterwebs supposed to create a space that allowed the local to re-emerge? My only quibble with Ingrid is buried in the notion of the availability bias.Surely well-targeted local coverage is only seen by local people? It reminds me of the popular misconception among politicians about Facebook. It looks like a mirror – after all, you only see your friends – people who wish you well. So for Labour politicians, it looks like The Guardian and for Tories, it looks like The Telegraph. But, it’s actually a two-way mirror with all of those vindictive Express and Mail readers behind it – rubbing shoulders with … well, the list that Fremania has draw up (see below).

Hugh Flouch of the verygood Harringay Online will be partially addressing this question on these very pages shortly.

The other day, Chris Dillow highlighed David ‘Two-Brains’ Willetts really fascinating-looking book on an inter-generational conflict of interests. Chris’s concluding question ….

“Isn’t there an unavoidable tension between intergenerational justice and democratic politics?”

… is, I suspect the mask for a much much bigger question. Insert ‘long termism on climate change’, ‘global social justice’ or any one of a dozen other issues to see what I mean.

Oh – and in my highly-cultivated collaboratively-filtered stream of bloggery and journalism, I’ve noticed that there is an inverse relationship between the focus on Climate Change and the nearness of the election. What does that tell us (apart from something about the failings of my own filters)?

What else? Oh yes: The Power 2010 campaign. I have no words the express my irritation at the quality of demagogic simplification that underpins this whole campaign. Think Martin Bell in his white suit tied to Esther Rantzen and times it by ten. Thankfully Sadie – a returning exile from the blogosphere – has dug into the whole question. Warning: There’s wit as well as wisdom in that one.

Not content with a brief return, Sadie is also on Left Foot Forward here writing the post that this blog should have carried about the objectively anti-democratic nature of the superficial Tory appeal to invite us all into government. Freemania goes one step further and lists the specific individuals within Cameron’s proposed new government that he specifically objects to. Again, funny and perceptive stuff. It includes…

My boss

My boss’s boss

Kerry Katona

Piers Morgan

Cab drivers

Estate agents

Bankers

Disgraced former MPs

Nick Griffin

My weird neighbour

That kid I hated at school

Those bastards who still haven’t been convicted of Stephen Lawrence’s murder

People who find the ITV early evening news too complicated to follow

People who apply for all those incomprehensibly-titled public sector jobs in the Guardian but get turned down because they’re too petty-minded

The tenor in the Gocompare ads

… and many more.

What else? Oh yes – there’s a couple of good points about the impact that social media is having on public debate – one from 21cfix and one from Hopi (again) – that last link is on the diminishing power of journalists.

Changing the subject, here’s a great report my Martin of Currybet on what people really want from the word ‘innovation’:

“People don’t actually want innovation ….. everyone thinks they want a hover board, but actually they want the same thing they had before but actually works.”

Read it all though.

Back to the MSM (just to prove that I have lingering doubts about my own arguments here) Jenni Russell has an excellent article on Ed Balls’ disgraceful treatment of Sharon Shoesmith in Haringey. This raises a massive question for me: If Balls had refused to respond to the tabloid witchhunt, would Shoesmith still be in her job? Would Balls? What are the implications for the whole ‘politics should be about ishoos and not personalities’ question?

And there’s loads more that I’ve not included, but that I have read and enjoyed. I’ve spent the last couple of days traveling without the need to buy a newspaper. You can see what I read and shared on my phone on these two feeds.

Confused? You will be! Stay tuned to the next exciting episode from the bloggers. Better than the newspapers since people started using Google Reader properly….

Here’s a reminder of how it works if you’ve not tried it:

I mentioned in a previous posting here that I thought bookmakers have more of value to say about the forthcoming election than opinion pollsters (though the Electoral Calculus site is really worth a look for its detailed predictions in individual seats) If the excellent (though troll-infested) Political Betting site isn’t enough for you, here’s Betfair’s dedicated election site that allows you to embed this widget in your site – worth it if only to enjoy the excitement of YouGov’s polling (certainly the consumer’s choice if not the psephologists):

None of the sites are able to declare very much about Northern Ireland yet. My informants on the ground tell me that there are six parliamentary constituencies that can realistically expect to be contested (the rest being ‘safe’) but none of the betting sites are saying very much yet.

Onto the more academic end of election coverage, there are some very useful slides here on the LSE blog including one by Dave Sanders that digs into the public attitude towards politics and how this will effect the outcome. Pat Dunleavy has a good set up about the future of our electoral and party system.

According to the blurb, this blog collects perspectives on the election you won’t find anywhere else, by political experts, based in the School of Politics and International Relations at The University of Nottingham. It links to Mark Pack who always has something worthwhile to say, and I’m a bit annoyed that I missed this post the first time around. I particularly like his conclusion:

“….whilst the impact of the internet on politics may be a nuanced and mixed picture, there is no doubt one winner – political scientists who have many fields of future research open to them.”

Elsewhere, there are websites dedicated to the coverage of issues related to meat, nursing and ….. watch this space (I’m sure that more of them are on the way).

I know there have been a few election-related posts here, but here’s two more:

• I’ve been keeping an eye on Mike Smithson’s ‘Political Betting‘ website. Mike’s general prejudice seems to have been that, generally the most optimistic poll from the range available for the Tories actually understates the support that they will get at the election. For a while, I slightly distrusted his site, suspecting him of being a Tory booster, but I’m reliably informed that this isn’t the case. Also, while the polls are narrowing excitingly, (Labour activists have been jumping on Twitter’s #gameon hashtag a lot recently) it seems that the spread markets are holding firm on their belief in a Tory majority – and I’d trust them a great deal more than any pollster as a forecaster for the final result. Rumour has it that Labour are actually Ladbrokes favourite now to be the largest party, but I can’t be bothered to register to confirm this – it’s the spread markets I’d trust more myself. Betfair still likes the Tories….
  

  Polling station in Cambridge 2005. Click pic for credit.

• If you have a half-hour to spare, please go and listen to the recent Radio 4 Analysis ‘Babies & Biscuits’ programme on women voters. It’s one of the most data-rich programmes that I’ve heard for a long time, and if that link no longer works, then you can subscribe to the podcast which will allow you to get at their archive of programmes. I spent many a long evening poring over electoral studies in the mid-1990s, and listening to this programe reminded me of reading one very good but-very-dense essay on the subject (and don’t tell me you didn’t prepare for exams by borrowing high-scoring essays from other students!)

Apologies again. If you’re looking for a break from election fever over the next few weeks you’ve probably come to the wrong place

There is nothing that annoys politicians more than people who just don’t get around to voting. For months, the parties are knocking doors and getting pledges. In a tight fight, every vote will be counted on, and a well-resourced team will manage to knock on doors a half-dozen times until the name is ticked off the Reading Pads [remember them?].

Click for picture credit

By 10pm on election day, politicians and their agents are often fuming at the bastards who had promised to turn out but arrived home a few minutes before the polls closed saying they can’t be bovvered to go out again. If MPs could enact one snap piece of legislation the day after a general election, it would undoubtedly be compulsory voting.

Listening to James Crabtree on last Monday’s Start the Week (Radio 4 – 35 mins in) I’m reminded of the speculation about how the election is really decided by a tiny number of votes in a tiny number of seats that are almost exclusively targeted by the parties. As James puts it …

“they ignore almost everyone in the country and spend a gigantic amount of time trying to find that small number of people who might change their minds…”

Now this can only surely be a bad thing? A phenomenon that cries out for a change in our electoral system? I’m inclined to agree, but I’ve got one major doubt:

Leaving aside the impact that this narrowcasting has on our national conversation, should we be worried by the fact that the most undecided, irresolute, shilly-shallying ideologically footloose, unprincipled, impulsive flibbertigibbets get to decide who our government is?

Surely those who spend hours discussing, arguing, campaigning, knocking on doors, and – dammit – BLOGGING – should be the ones who get a more weighted vote? We’re the ones who care! We’re the ones that might have an idea which way up the country should be?

Why are the Electoral Commission even bothering about the nudniks who can’t navigate their way onto the electoral roll in the first place? Why are they forever wondering aloud about how they can extend voting to Saturdays, get us to Tweet or txt our choice of govt in, or vote on … like … uh.. Facebook, or something? Or somehow get Ms Dynamitee-he to organise a rave in the polling booth to attract yoof?

Surely the election shouldn’t be decided by people who only turn out if there isn’t anything worth watching on the telly? Or the ones who change their mind as their pencil hovers over the ballot paper? And don’t get me started on whether people who would be better off being removed from the gene pool entirely should have a vote equal to that of a brain surgeon.

We’re not talking about sullen stay-aways here, by the way. These aren’t principled abstainers – angry ‘none-of-the-above’ voters. These are the ones who forgot it was on Fursday. The ones who don’t read the papers that have obsessed about elections for the last … eternity. The ones who’ve spent tuning out any discussion of their future during the all encompassing campaign or looking at politicians hair instead of weighing their arguments.

In every other area of our lives, we use trade-offs. We stay out of the shops that don’t sell things we’re interested in, hoarding our cash to spend in the places we care about. Shouldn’t people be offered the option to trade their vote in elections for something they care about – a heavily weighted vote in The X Factor or a lowering of their car-taxes or something like that? Why not incentivise people not to vote with small-ish bribes? Shouldn’t voting be something you positively want to do?

I’ve posted here before about how the lust for certainty could be a sin. How important diversity is in the context of the wisdom of crowds argument. I’ve argued about how light preferences and the need to make trade-offs is the magic ingredient that makes representative government work and how active citizens can be a menace to a good democracy. I’d urge you to read this funny post about how obnoxious people with the halo effect are.

“Cyclists, not content with having lanes painted everywhere to accommodate their perversion, routinely feel free to jump lights or board the pavement whenever tedious interventions like the Highway Code interfere with their path of righteousness. My own view is that the lycra-wearing freaks should either pay road tax or face being hosed off the streets.”

So, for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t think that the indecisive should be discouraged from voting – quite the opposite. I’d almost argue that their votes deserve some sort of weighting for them to count more heavily than people who read broadsheets and shout at the telly.

However, it does cut across a general metropolitan liberal prejudice that I hold: Like Brendan O’Neill, I think that politics should be a clash of ideas – a forum where big ishoos are thrashed out and decisions are not based on an appeal to the touchy-feely dumbed-down focus-grouped puddle of public sentiment. It is the ‘don’t knows’, after all, that this kind of politics is designed to appeal.

The belief that they should be banned from the ballots is implicit in a lot of the arguments that I hear favouring alternative versions of democracy where people choose policies rather than the quality of representation. I’d love to hear some lively loudmouth make the argument with a bit of passion so that it could be challenged.

Apologies for the light posting here – I’ve been a bit busy with other things lately. This post will be some way off being a detailed bit of innovative research as well – more an observation to fill the gap.

Every candidate at the next general election will be subjected to a set of rules to cover election expenses. To ensure that these rules are adhered to, candidates have to put an imprint on all of their materials and present a bill at the end to The Electoral Commission (I think?).

This is designed to stop the outright purchase of elections. But can it be stopped in future if a lot of campaigning is done by deniable outriders? And surely orchestrated print based campaigns aren’t that much use any more? My two examples come from either side of the political divide:

• On my right, there is the Tax Payers Alliance: Not officially Tory and not even endorsing a lot of Tory policies – but doing real daily low-level damage to pro-collective action politics in general and Labour in particular
• On my left, the Unions. Many of the largest Unions are not affiliated to Labour. Some are even a bit grumpy with the current flavour of the Labour Party. But they are even less keen on the Tories and can use new media tools to increasingly damage them.

In both cases, the parties will benefit from more resources without ever showing them on the balance sheet – courtesy of negative deniable ‘swiftboating‘ campaigns. So how long will the rules continue to be relevant?

I’ve just had this article published by The Telegraph. Sometimes, it’s only when you read yourself elsewhere that you see that you buried your more important point under less significant ones.

“Since the 2005 election, we have raced past the tipping point. Facebook has 23 million British users. About half of the eligible voters are social networkers, sharing and seeking recommendations among peers rather than trusting broadcast messages. The real contest is not the three-way blogs/newspapers/politicians fight, but how effectively each can cast its bait into the social networking sites, and who will have the greatest effect.”

So the creation of good viral objects may make a big difference? Apropos of that, yesterday, the people behind MyDavidCameron added a new string to their bows: MyToryTombstone.

Whatever else it does in terms of damaging the Tories (I’m sure the Tories have plans of their own on this front), this comment really sums up how difficult it will be for parties to get their narrative out this year.

If the rumours are correct, Gordon Brown is about to announce his intention to promote a new voting system for Parliamentary elections in the UK. His choice is said to be the Alternative Vote (AV) system. It looks like the Vote For A Change campaign will get their way and there will be a referendum on the matter.

The Electoral Reform society offers a summary or this voting system that offers its’ strengths and shortcomings (indeed, you can see all of the alternatives on their site). 

And while the ERS as an organisation have doubts about AV (their CEO Ken Ritchie has already been quoted saying that it’s a ‘weak’ option), I recall that a report that they published on their site last year (PDF) made two very upbeat points:

1. AV is better than it initially appears as an option in the UK, and it offers a significant improvement on current First Past the Post (FPTP) system
2. It’s also the most likely ‘do-able’ reform in the UK, and a good stepping stone to a more deeper proportional system

Otherwise known as ‘instant runoff,‘ AV can make for quite an exciting election night. 

Personally, I’ve never come to firm view on which voting system I prefer. One advantage of AV, I think, is that it reduces the number of ‘safe seats’ – the origin of a good deal of the perceived arrogance of some MPs who have come to regard their seat as a sinecure.

It is also a system that – while not proportional – will be welcomed in the short term by the Liberal Democrats as it’s likely to increase their representation. 

Voting reformer anorak section

The best summary of electoral options in the UK that I’ve found is David Beetham’s offering (MS Word Doc) on Stuart Weir’s Democratic Audit site (that has a good page with some good links including Peter Hain’s arguments in favour of AV.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on voting systems and here’s the electoral commission’s outline of the different voting systems that are currently in place in the UK. As ever, Keele University’s politics department has had a serious crack at providing a definitive index of voting systems from around the world.

What we need now, though, is a debategraph on the subject….