I don’t know about you, but I find the outcome of the AV referendum less interesting than the fact that we’re being asked about voting systems at all.

Like everyone else, I’ve got my own prejudices here – I particularly dislike the fact that it’s a question that is subject to a referendum in the first place – a strong enough reason to resist the change itself, perhaps?

I don’t know whether to vote Yes, No or just say ‘meh‘ and stay indoors. But I think that there are some bigger important questions lurking in a squabble over a minor change, and I’d like to help pull together a catalogue of the various arguments to see if that will help the undecideds to make their mind up.I’d like your feedback on what these questions are. I’m less interested in the answers to the questions below for now. Please tell me if I’ve got the structure right (and whether my structure is over-weighted towards my own prejudices).

These are the questions that I think we should be asking: have I got them right, have I conflated some or left others out? I’ll moderate the comments on this post fairly tightly and will delete anything that doesn’t simply address the taxonomy of the debate this time because I think that there are subsequent posts that would be worth reading about each of these questions.

Proportionality: Is AV a more proportional system of voting and is proportional government necessarily a good thing in itself?

Legitimacy: Will the AV system make governments more legitimate in the eyes of the voters and capable of taking big decisions on our behalf?

Quality of government: Will a parliament elected by AV make for better government or not? Will the policies be better (not just in terms of popularity, but in promoting long-termism)?

Coalition government: Will AV result in more coalition government than First Past the Post (FPTP) and is this a good thing?

The cost of voting: The ‘no’ camp are placing a lot of emphasis on the cost of the referendum and the cost of counting AV results in future – especially at a time of public spending cuts. Is this an important consideration?

Framing and referendums: Is a referendum the right way to decide this issue, and are we being offered two options that we don’t really like when a better one could be on the table? Should supporters of other options hold their noses and vote for AV as it will then legitimise other systems and make a future change easier? Should our attitude to these questions effect the way we vote or should we simply vote for the option on the ballot that we prefer?

Political context: Different parties have different views on how this will effect the outcome of elections. Supporters of AV may be swayed by the possibility that this system will result in governments more to their personal liking. Presumably, opponents will do the same. Is this a debate about the ethics of voting or is it really crude political gamesmanship? Should we simply vote for the option that will return the most MPs for our preferred political party?

There you go. Are these the right questions? Is anything missing? In debates involving trade-offs, the priority of questions matters – so are they in the right order of importance?

Let me know what you think?

(This has been cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole).

Apologies again for the light posting.

I’ve written an extensive round-up of the main arguments (that I can think of) against referendums.

The full post is over on Slugger O’Toole and a slightly edited (shorter) version is on Liberal Conspiracy. Both were published yesterday.

Apologies for the light posting here lately – I’ve been busy with the Political Innovation project. There’s a series of posts I’ve added there on ‘What Politicians need to know about social public information.’

I’ll be reviving this blog shortly. In the meantime, here’s something on electronic voting that I found via O’Conall Street.

“Well isn’t this an exciting moment?”

I got ‘the fisheye’ when I said this earlier today to a bleary-eyed crowd of people who had been canvassing for different parties in Northern Ireland.

Some of them were into their thirtieth hour without sleep. There’s a time and a place for train-spottery musings about constitutional permutations.

Electoral reform looks like it’s on the cards though. Whatever the Lib-Dems say, I doubt that they will exit a moment where they can exert leverage without firstly securing a commitment to PR – probably of the STV variety.I’ve tried to stick to observations on this blog that I’ve not heard widely elsewhere, and my two points for today are…

• Everyone seems to be saying that the Lib-Dems will do a deal with the Tories. They are obliged to run this by their membership (remember the ‘Cyberlock‘?) and I’m not sure that they will stomach a deal with the Tories that readily. Also, the electorate seemed to be quite keen on a Lib-Lab deal
• On the other hand Labour has a minority of MPs with a visceral hatred of PR and they may struggle to honour any deal they offer the Lib-Dems

We’ll see. On the issue in question, I’m undecided whether PR is a good thing. OK – it may secure a more proportionate representation from the available political parties, but does it give us a government that more accurately represents the General Will? Political parties are, after all, largely coalitions of people who come together to game the voting system.

Can more people tick of more comparison points within the government that match their own views? And more importantly, can the government be said to be hitting any kind of sweet spot in representing the material interests of the nation? Carrying out the wishes of the public – expressed and implicit – are surely what democracies claim to do?

So PR? Not sure. But voting reform? That’s a different matter. There are two obvious benefits, I think?

Firstly, I think that STV elections will be more frank and less groupthinky – less of a scrabble for the middle ground. In ordering our preferences there seem to me to be two advantages: The discourse will be more flexible and inclusive. If someone who has views outside of the hotly-contested centre ground is going to have their votes re-allocated, more of the parties will court their vote and seek to compromise with them.

That calculation in which I asked how far governments reflect the expressed wishes of the public would seem to work out OK under STV. More people will vote and politicians will be sent clearer messages and engage in more debate (which is good, right?). And remember – after the last few weeks – other forms of gauging opinion are not very reliable. Remember Cleggmania? Where did that go?

Secondly, politicians will know what they’re being told. Today, Nick Clegg – despite a fairly poor showing – will decide who will form the next government. He can’t reliably ask those who voted for him (remember, opinion-polling sucks!). Lots of his voters were Labour tactical voters, and some were Tories gaming the system to keep Labour out. Some were bona-fide Lib-Dems. And with all of that scepticism about polling, a new version of a poll like this one (!) would be interesting.

OK, we’re still left with the fundamental problem with elections in that they don’t allow us to weight preferences in the way that we do when we tell bookies what we think will happen. But you can’t have everything.

So I’m quite keen on STV. It only leaves me with one question on which I don’t know the answer: Will it foreground the representative and diminish the powers of political parties relative to MPs?

Anyone know the answer to this one?

Stephen Fry (pic: Wikimedia sharealike)

The US-based Fair Vote site makes the very valid point that some attempt at civic education needs to be done in advance of any proposals for electoral reform. It particularly concerns the actor Richard Dreyfuss who makes one or two pithy points on the subject:

“Don’t call it ‘civics’ because ‘civics’ is easily the most boring word in America,” Dreyfuss says. “Call it what it is: political power.”

If Gordon Brown is serious about a public debate on this matter, perhaps this is another role for celebrity? A creative way of visualising an issue is one thing, but nothing can get issues accross as effectively as … well … Stephen Fry (let’s be specific, shall we?).

He may be coming almost ubiquitous now (he’s even stepping into Humphrey Littleton’s shoes on ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue‘ – a step too far perhaps?) but I suppose that it’s yet another job for him?

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….

Reboot Britain

We can learn things from the way they elect Popes – and the way they used to.

Chris Dillow reprises his ‘extremist not a fanatic’ theme – that it is rational not to care too much about politics – and that politics benefits from our indifference.

And finally ‘Reboot Britain’ will be worth keeping an eye on – it will have a significant strand covering democratic renewal.

I’m hoping that it will provide another run-out for the PICamp project that started very successfully in Belfast last month.

According to the Municipal Journal, the UK Government has abandoned plans to introduce a Community Empowerment Bill, which would have implemented some parts of the Communities in Control White Paper.

According to the Commons authorities, the Bill would have enabled remote voting in Council meetings, reduced the barriers to introducing an elected mayor, change the definition of politically restricted posts, reform the office of alderman, and modernise the law relating to parish councils.

It is not known whether these provisions will be taken forward in any other way.

Wonk-blogger Will Davies has an excellent post up here. Quoting the Communities in Control White Paper as follows…

We believe that the causes of political disengagement, while complex, can be distilled to a dominant factor: a sense of powerlessness on the part of most citizens that their voices are not being heard, their views not listened to, their participation unwelcomed or their activity unrewarded.

Will comments: 

Ah, a sense of powerlessness. Not a fact of powerlessness, perhaps induced by the fact that only a small minority of voters actually count – and are courted politically – under the British voting system.

That’s not the strongest argument either in a very hard-hitting piece that finds the weaknesses in New Labour’s approach to empowerment – both a reluctance to address the actual problem, and a hubristic faith in the power of management.

It brings this post that I saw on the 37Signals blog (makers of BasecampHQ among other things) about what you get when you read a mission statement saying how committed to excellence you are – when it’s been pinned up in a shabby waiting room.

“And you’re sitting there reading this crap and wondering, “What kind of idiot do they take me for?” It’s just words on paper that are clearly disconnected from the reality of the experience.

It’s like when you’re on hold and a recorded voice comes on telling you how much the company values you as a customer. Really? Then maybe you should hire some more support people or offer email support so I don’t have to wait 30 minutes to get help. Or just say nothing. But don’t give me an automated voice that’s telling me how much you care about me. It’s a robot. I know the difference between genuine affection and a robot that’s programmed to say nice things.

Standing for something isn’t just about writing it down. It’s about believing it and living it.”

There’s a very good article over at Westminster Wisdom about the longevity of the US two-party system – a dominance of only two largely unchanged political parties since 1860 – “a record unmatched by any other Democracy.”

A comparison with the UK, in which the period from 1945 until the late 1960s marked a fairly rigid period of allignment along party and class lines, and the subsequent fragmentation of voting paterns is interesting. There’s an entertaining gap-fill exercise here where you can test your knowledge of this, but it’s often hard to recognise just how much things have changed since 1966.

If you look at the general election results, you see only two very major parties, a very marginal Liberal Party, nothing that could be called a Green Party, tiny Nationalist parties and a miniscule far-right (Union Movement). 

Of the 630 MPs, all but 13 were Labour or Conservative. And of the remainder, 12 were Liberal and one was Republican Labour – the late Gerry Fitt in West Belfast.

The expectation among politicians that they should advance particular policies – as opposed to a general approach – in order to attract votes is a fairly new one in the UK. When Labour lost power to the Conservatives in 1970, a relatively small number of voters switched allegiance. In addition, it is often argued that this reflected a demographic shift (people leaving the Labour-voting class and joining the strata that vote Conservative) more than any reflection on the actual polcies of the political parties.

In 1970, Labour went into the General Election with a fair degree of optimism – their defeat was an unpleasant surprise to them. All of this following a period that included the devaluation of Sterling and Harold Wilson’s famous ‘Pound in your pocket‘ sophistry. 

All of this raises the question: Do we have an electoral system that reflects voters’ expectations of representation? If the main system of voting did so in 1970, by definition, it can no longer do so in 2009 because those expectations have changed so dramatically.