Mark wrote:
On Tue, 3 May 2011 00:19:27 +0100, "Thumper"
wrote:

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
On 02/05/2011 13:05, Thumper wrote:
I'll be voting No because it is actually the fairer system. Each voter
gets 1 vote, votes are added up, candidate with most votes is the
winner. Can't get more fairer than that.

Excpet that:
* Most of the MPs it returns have more people voting *against* than *for*
them, and
You can only vote for someone, not against. And under the AV system it's
possible that a candidate with even less votes that a FPTP winner, will be
elected

Extremely unlikely. Under AV the winner will almost always have 50%
of the vote. This does not happen very often under FPTP.

As that's the definition of the way AV works, then yes the wiiner will
have to have more than half the votes cast. But that's over half the
people who listed the winner *anywhere* on their list of preferences,
not over half the voters wanting that candidate to win.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

John Williamson gurgled happily, sounding
much like they were saying:

Extremely unlikely. Under AV the winner will almost always have 50% of
the vote. This does not happen very often under FPTP.

As that's the definition of the way AV works, then yes the wiiner will
have to have more than half the votes cast. But that's over half the
people who listed the winner *anywhere* on their list of preferences,
not over half the voters wanting that candidate to win.

There's only a difference between the two if people vote for candidates
they don't want.

Sure, somebody might win with less than 50% of the total votes cast. But
only because some voters have exhausted all their possible preferences,
so their ballot papers have been discarded.

On Tue, 03 May 2011 15:14:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 3 May 2011 00:19:27 +0100, "Thumper"
wrote:

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
On 02/05/2011 13:05, Thumper wrote:
I'll be voting No because it is actually the fairer system. Each voter
gets 1 vote, votes are added up, candidate with most votes is the
winner. Can't get more fairer than that.

Excpet that:
* Most of the MPs it returns have more people voting *against* than *for*
them, and
You can only vote for someone, not against. And under the AV system it's
possible that a candidate with even less votes that a FPTP winner, will be
elected

Extremely unlikely. Under AV the winner will almost always have 50%
of the vote. This does not happen very often under FPTP.

As that's the definition of the way AV works, then yes the wiiner will
have to have more than half the votes cast.
But that's over half the
people who listed the winner *anywhere* on their list of preferences,
not over half the voters wanting that candidate to win.

Why would they vote for someone at all if they don't want them to win?
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 03 May 2011 15:14:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 3 May 2011 00:19:27 +0100, "Thumper"
wrote:

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
On 02/05/2011 13:05, Thumper wrote:
I'll be voting No because it is actually the fairer system. Each voter
gets 1 vote, votes are added up, candidate with most votes is the
winner. Can't get more fairer than that.

Excpet that:
* Most of the MPs it returns have more people voting *against* than *for*
them, and
You can only vote for someone, not against. And under the AV system it's
possible that a candidate with even less votes that a FPTP winner, will be
elected
Extremely unlikely. Under AV the winner will almost always have 50%
of the vote. This does not happen very often under FPTP.

As that's the definition of the way AV works, then yes the wiiner will
have to have more than half the votes cast.
But that's over half the
people who listed the winner *anywhere* on their list of preferences,
not over half the voters wanting that candidate to win.

Why would they vote for someone at all if they don't want them to win?

Because that's the way it's going to be set up. The propoganda says list
the candidates in your order of preference. So candidate B might be
first, candidate C second, and so on. Depending on the actual votes
cast, it's possible that the one that finally gets elected is the last
(Or, at best the second) choice of almost everybody, but the first
choice of very few.

The plans don't make it compulsory to put a number against each
candidate, but most people probably will. It's difficult to say what
will actually happen, because this exact system has never (AFAIK, but
ICBW) been used anywhere on a larger scale than the equivalent of County
Council elections.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

In message , John Williamson
writes



The plans don't make it compulsory to put a number against each
candidate, but most people probably will.

That's what worries me. This is one of the two* red herrings in the Auf
Wiedersehen Pet clip. The 'Yes' propaganda should have made it very
clear that you should only vote for those you would find acceptable.
Maybe there will be instructions at the voting stations?
*The first is the weighting of the votes for 1st and 2nd choice. AV
doesn't do this.
--
Ian

On Wed, 04 May 2011 11:30:34 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 03 May 2011 15:14:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 3 May 2011 00:19:27 +0100, "Thumper"
wrote:

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
On 02/05/2011 13:05, Thumper wrote:
I'll be voting No because it is actually the fairer system. Each voter
gets 1 vote, votes are added up, candidate with most votes is the
winner. Can't get more fairer than that.

Excpet that:
* Most of the MPs it returns have more people voting *against* than *for*
them, and
You can only vote for someone, not against. And under the AV system it's
possible that a candidate with even less votes that a FPTP winner, will be
elected
Extremely unlikely. Under AV the winner will almost always have 50%
of the vote. This does not happen very often under FPTP.

As that's the definition of the way AV works, then yes the wiiner will
have to have more than half the votes cast.
But that's over half the
people who listed the winner *anywhere* on their list of preferences,
not over half the voters wanting that candidate to win.

Why would they vote for someone at all if they don't want them to win?

Because that's the way it's going to be set up. The propoganda says list
the candidates in your order of preference. So candidate B might be
first, candidate C second, and so on. Depending on the actual votes
cast, it's possible that the one that finally gets elected is the last
(Or, at best the second) choice of almost everybody, but the first
choice of very few.

So what? A candidate can only win if they get over 50% of the vote.
If you don't want someone to win then don't vote for them at all.
In practise I suspect that most winners will be the candidate that got
most 1st preference votes, otherwise we would be having a completely
different result from now, which noone is predicting.

The plans don't make it compulsory to put a number against each
candidate, but most people probably will.

It's up to them whether they do or not. I'm sure this would be
explained ad-infinitum before any actual election.

It's difficult to say what
will actually happen, because this exact system has never (AFAIK, but
ICBW) been used anywhere on a larger scale than the equivalent of County
Council elections.

Apart from in other countries' elections.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

Mark wrote:
On Wed, 04 May 2011 11:30:34 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 03 May 2011 15:14:21 +0100, John Williamson
wrote:

Mark wrote:
On Tue, 3 May 2011 00:19:27 +0100, "Thumper"
wrote:

"Roger Mills" wrote in message
...
On 02/05/2011 13:05, Thumper wrote:
I'll be voting No because it is actually the fairer system. Each voter
gets 1 vote, votes are added up, candidate with most votes is the
winner. Can't get more fairer than that.

Excpet that:
* Most of the MPs it returns have more people voting *against* than *for*
them, and
You can only vote for someone, not against. And under the AV system it's
possible that a candidate with even less votes that a FPTP winner, will be
elected
Extremely unlikely. Under AV the winner will almost always have 50%
of the vote. This does not happen very often under FPTP.

As that's the definition of the way AV works, then yes the wiiner will
have to have more than half the votes cast.
But that's over half the
people who listed the winner *anywhere* on their list of preferences,
not over half the voters wanting that candidate to win.
Why would they vote for someone at all if they don't want them to win?
Because that's the way it's going to be set up. The propoganda says list
the candidates in your order of preference. So candidate B might be
first, candidate C second, and so on. Depending on the actual votes
cast, it's possible that the one that finally gets elected is the last
(Or, at best the second) choice of almost everybody, but the first
choice of very few.

So what? A candidate can only win if they get over 50% of the vote.
If you don't want someone to win then don't vote for them at all.
In practise I suspect that most winners will be the candidate that got
most 1st preference votes, otherwise we would be having a completely
different result from now, which noone is predicting.

A candidate can win by being, effectively, the FPTP winner with 25% of
the votes or less, topped up by enough second preferences. Or the winner
might have been in second place with 15% of the votes, but with a
significant number of second and third preferences.

The plans don't make it compulsory to put a number against each
candidate, but most people probably will.

It's up to them whether they do or not. I'm sure this would be
explained ad-infinitum before any actual election.

What all the minority parties will be pushing like mad is that you need
to put them somewhere in your vote, so please rank all candidates. So
the Sheeple will.

It's difficult to say what
will actually happen, because this exact system has never (AFAIK, but
ICBW) been used anywhere on a larger scale than the equivalent of County
Council elections.

Apart from in other countries' elections.

The closest to the system proposed is Australia, and they make it
compulsory to vote, and any vote which does not rank all candidates is
ignored. The there are Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, which use a similar,
but different system.

Do you know of any others? Wikipedia doesn't.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 04/05/11 15:33, John Williamson wrote:


What all the minority parties will be pushing like mad is that you need
to put them somewhere in your vote, so please rank all candidates. So
the Sheeple will.

There are two big advantages to that. The first is that people will be
more likely to take time to evaluate the policies of the minor parties.
The other advantage is that it will give the winners more information
about what policies the people actually want. That's going to be a shock
to some politicians.


It's difficult to say what will actually happen, because this exact
system has never (AFAIK, but ICBW) been used anywhere on a larger
scale than the equivalent of County Council elections.

Apart from in other countries' elections.

The closest to the system proposed is Australia, and they make it
compulsory to vote, and any vote which does not rank all candidates is
ignored. The there are Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, which use a similar,
but different system.

Do you know of any others? Wikipedia doesn't.

I don't know of any other countries that use it for their elections.
It's becoming more popular with organisations that have recently taken
time to study variant voting systems and deliberately chosen what they
see as the best. I include both Labour and Tory parties in that. As I've
already said, I've used it for years in the Hugo award ballots and
Worldcon site-selection ballots. I doubt that any balloting systems have
had the as much informed debate as those. There's a reason why the
Worldcon has a "Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee."


--
Bernard Peek

What all the minority parties will be pushing like mad is that you
need to put them somewhere in your vote, so please rank all
candidates. So the Sheeple will.

Which may increase pressure to change the current practice of listing
candidates alphabetically*. There is already concern that this favours
those listed first. With AV, there be a tendency among some to go down
the page after (or indeed without) voting for their top pick - sometimes
called "donkey voting". Australia uses a system which shuffles names so
candidate's names appear a certain proportion of times at every position
on the paper to even this out. Now that must add to the costs of
running elections so the "Yes" campaign have lied too.


* although that alone is not enough to explain the alphabetism in
British politics that we gave us Cameron (in coalition with Clegg)
following Brown and Blair
--
Robin
PM may be sent to rbw0{at}hotmail{dot}com

Bernard Peek wrote:

On 04/05/11 15:33, John Williamson wrote:

The closest to the system proposed is Australia, and they make it
compulsory to vote, and any vote which does not rank all candidates is
ignored. The there are Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, which use a similar,
but different system.

It's becoming more popular with organisations that have recently taken
time to study variant voting systems and deliberately chosen what they
see as the best.

I can see that if the referendum result is "NO" we won't be asked again
for generations, as the politicians will have the ability so twist the
result from "No, we don't want AV" to "we're perfectly happy with FPTP"

But there's no way of knowing whether AV might act as a stepping stone
to further reform ...

From a cached copy of the ERS website ...

"Electoral Reform Society campaigns for proportional representation and
the Single Transferable Vote system in parliaments, assemblies and councils"

So why exactly are they supporting AV? it provides neither ...

In message , Andy
Burns writes
Bernard Peek wrote:

On 04/05/11 15:33, John Williamson wrote:

The closest to the system proposed is Australia, and they make it
compulsory to vote, and any vote which does not rank all candidates is
ignored. The there are Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, which use a similar,
but different system.

It's becoming more popular with organisations that have recently taken
time to study variant voting systems and deliberately chosen what they
see as the best.

I can see that if the referendum result is "NO" we won't be asked again
for generations, as the politicians will have the ability so twist the
result from "No, we don't want AV" to "we're perfectly happy with FPTP"

But there's no way of knowing whether AV might act as a stepping stone
to further reform ...

From a cached copy of the ERS website ...

"Electoral Reform Society campaigns for proportional representation and
the Single Transferable Vote system in parliaments, assemblies and councils"

So why exactly are they supporting AV? it provides neither ...

Vested interest?
--
hugh
"Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, Or who said it, Even if
I have said it, Unless it agrees with your own reason And your own
common sense." Buddha

On Wed, 04 May 2011 17:35:43 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote:

Bernard Peek wrote:

On 04/05/11 15:33, John Williamson wrote:

The closest to the system proposed is Australia, and they make it
compulsory to vote, and any vote which does not rank all candidates is
ignored. The there are Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, which use a similar,
but different system.

It's becoming more popular with organisations that have recently taken
time to study variant voting systems and deliberately chosen what they
see as the best.

I can see that if the referendum result is "NO" we won't be asked again
for generations, as the politicians will have the ability so twist the
result from "No, we don't want AV" to "we're perfectly happy with FPTP"

But there's no way of knowing whether AV might act as a stepping stone
to further reform ...

From a cached copy of the ERS website ...

"Electoral Reform Society campaigns for proportional representation and
the Single Transferable Vote system in parliaments, assemblies and councils"

So why exactly are they supporting AV? it provides neither ...

They're probably supporting it for the same reason that I am. It's
fairer than FPTP.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.

On Wed, 4 May 2011 17:26:24 +0100, "Robin" wrote:

What all the minority parties will be pushing like mad is that you
need to put them somewhere in your vote, so please rank all
candidates. So the Sheeple will.

Which may increase pressure to change the current practice of listing
candidates alphabetically*. There is already concern that this favours
those listed first. With AV, there be a tendency among some to go down
the page after (or indeed without) voting for their top pick - sometimes
called "donkey voting". Australia uses a system which shuffles names so
candidate's names appear a certain proportion of times at every position
on the paper to even this out. Now that must add to the costs of
running elections so the "Yes" campaign have lied too.

I don't think we should be fixated on the costs of the election.
Democracy is more important that a few pounds saved.

Scrapping elections would save even more money.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking some articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.