Alternative Vote Referendum Explained

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Alternative Vote Referendum Explained

The Telegraph

A picture-book style piece on the recent history of the Alternative Vote: why we’re having it, who’s supporting it, how it works (or doesn’t).

The reason you should say no to AV

Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, 2 Mar 2011

It is assumed that anyone who says ‘no to AV’ must be aligned with the official, rather drab NO2AV movement. According to John Kampfner, those who support the Yes campaign tend to be ‘young and optimistic’, while the No campaign is ‘comprised mainly of Conservative right-wingers who hate any form of change’. Really? spiked is young and optimistic, and in favour of change, yet we’re against AV. For us, the issue at stake is what kind of electoral system provides the greatest opportunity for the democratic expression of people’s aspirations? What system best encourages the creation of popular, properly representative assemblies? It categorically is not AV.

Adopting the Alternative Vote would be a very British revolution

Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer, 3 Apr 2011

The referendum is only just beginning to impinge on the consciousness of the nation, but between the politicians the struggle is already intense. Good. With the caveat that it would be more dignified for both sides to eschew comparing each other with the Nazis, a hot debate on this question is exactly what we need. The case for AV is that it will make MPs think a bit harder before they do bad things such as fiddle their expenses, and make them more representative of, responsive to, and effective on behalf of their constituents. AV offers an incremental, moderate improvement and that is a terribly British way of reforming our constitution.

An ice-cream eater's guide to the ingredients of AV voting

Melissa Kite, The Telegraph, 4 Apr 2011

As tall orders go, this was a biggie. A friend asked me to come to a dinner party at her house and explain the Alternative Vote to her friends. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked, not wanting to send everyone to sleep over their lasagne. She assured me that it was, that people desperately wanted to understand AV and the issues at stake in the forthcoming referendum on voting reform, so she was organising an AV dinner party and I was the star turn.

Leading article: The referendum campaign on voting reform has begun. Does it matter?

The Independent, 30 Mar 2011

AV is not the reform that we would have chosen. It is not a proportional system. And under certain circumstances it might mean even bigger landslides. AV would erode, but not eliminate, the problem of "safe" seats. Yet it would mean a more representative House of Commons and a much less restrictive voting system.

Electorial reform: vote for an alternative?

Interview by Joanna Moorhead, The Guardian, 19 Feb 2011

Labour MP Margaret Beckett is against AV voting, while Tory John Strafford supports it – both disagree with their party leaders. And soon the British people will decide.

The anti-vote: a vote for revulsion

Gilbert Adair, The Guardian, April 201026

"The mass of men," Henry Thoreau famously wrote, "lead lives of quiet desperation." And, at least where politics is concerned, most British men and women lead lives of quiet rage, a rage intensified by the fact that, in the electoral process, they have always been denied representation. We may find ourselves misty-eyed at images of third world citizens queueing for hours to cast the first votes of their lives, but, for better or worse, that isn't where Britain is at present

Voting Rights in the Southern states: would you have passed the tests required in order to vote?

This article sets out the history of the ‘disenfranchising’ literacy tests that made it impossible for many African Americans to vote in US elections before 1965, when the tests were finally outlawed. Illiterate whites didn’t have to take the test, but African Americans were all forced to.

The article here includes links to sample tests, which, in the case of the Alabama test, included questions like: ‘In what year did the Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the United States?’