On Tue, 03 May 2011 20:57:16 +0100, Old Codger
wrote:

On 03/05/2011 14:19, Mark wrote:
On Mon, 02 May 2011 20:35:05 +0100, Old
wrote:

On 02/05/2011 16:27, Roger Mills wrote:
On 02/05/2011 15:58, dennis@home wrote:


wrote in message
...


But I might want to change my mind about my first preference having seen
the results of the first round. With AV, as with FPTP I have to guess
how everyone else may vote before voting if I want to have maximum
influence on the eventual result.

Guess what, the same is true now.
With FPTP I might well want to vote for someone and change my mind if he
can't get enough votes.
As it is I have to guess what everyone else will vote and take the
chance that I might split the vote and let the NF/labore in.

With AV I can vote for someone else and know that my vote will still
count against the people I don't like.



That's absolutely right! My perception is that, under FPTP, a very large
number of people who vote for one of the two large parties do so in
order to keep the other large party out rather than positively endorsing
their choice. Given a free choice, they would probably prefer to vote
for one of the smaller parties - but they know that that would help to
let an 'undesirable' party in, so they vote tactically.

Under AV, they can give their first preference to the candidate they
*really* want, and use their second preference to block the undesirable
one. I truly believe that voting patterns would change dramatically if
we had an AV system, with the smaller parties getting many more first
preference votes than at present. I also believe that turnout would be
higher because more people would feel that they could influence the
outcome.

The relatively invisibility and the extremely poor quality of the
campaigns so far suggest to me that the politicians are not too
concerned at the outcome. I consider they believe that in practice AV
will make little difference.

The Tories and a lot of Labour seem to be putting a fair bit of effort
into the "No" campaign. They are obviously worried that AV /will/
make a difference.

Where is all this effort visible?

I have seen the odd report in the papers in which Cameron or Clegg
claims to be campaigning hard, usually followed by some fatuous
statement that is virtually meaningless or obviously wrong. There have
been four broadcasts, two totally anonymous and two using known
politicians. All have been extremely poor, even BBC adverts have more
clout. I have seen nothing that even makes me think about the subject,
let alone persuades me to vote either way.

You haven't received the "No" campaign leaflets through the post then?
The blatent lies printed on them suggest a high degree of desperation.
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