Let's dissect the No to Av campaign

AV is costly
The change to AV will cost up to an additional £250 million. Local councils would have to waste money on costly electronic vote counting machines and expensive voter education campaigns. With ordinary families facing tough times can we really afford to spend a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money bringing in a new voting system? Schools and hospitals, or the Alternative Vote – that’s the choice in this referendum.

First off, this isn’t a choice between changing our electoral system or anything else. It’s a about reform and unfortunately, any kind of reform is going to be costly. But if not now, when? Should a genuine reason to NOT vote for reform be because it is too expensive? If it is, then nothing would ever change and nothing new would ever be done. Furthermore, Australia doesn’t use expensive counting machines. Where is this coming from? Finally, a costly voter education campaign? Well, that’s just insulting.

AV is complex and unfair
The winner should be the candidate that comes first, but under AV the candidate who comes second or third can actually be elected. That’s why it is used by just three countries in the world – Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Voters should decide who the best candidate is, not the voting system. We can’t afford to let the politicians off the hook by introducing a loser’s charter.

As Ian Hislop said on Have I Got News for You last week, just because only 3 countries use it, isn’t an automatic reason for us not to. The statement, ‘under AV the candidate who comes second or third can actually be elected’ is redundant because they won’t be 2nd or 3rd, they will be first because they will have won. What they mean to say it that a voter’s 2nd or 3rd preference could potentially win the seat. I don’t personally have a problem with this, as right now my vote counts for nothing as do all non-Labour votes in my constituency. I would rather see my second choice elected than someone I didn’t vote for at all. Plus, keep in mind that you don’t have to vote for more than one candidate if you don’t want to. This is no ‘loser’s charter, it is a way of making sure that a larger percentage of the voters are able to make their voice heard. The fact that is ‘too complex’ is frankly insulting.

AV is a politician’s fix
AV leads to more hung parliaments, backroom deals and broken promises like the Lib Dem tuition fees U-turn. Instead of the voters choosing the government, politicians would hold power. Under AV, the only vote that really counts is Nick Clegg’s. We can’t afford to let the politicians decide who runs our country.

My only real argument against this is that I don’t have a problem with coalitions and hung parliaments. I think things work better with some co-operation. It’s very skeptical to assume that AV would lead to ‘backroom deals’, maybe i’m naive, but I like the idea of making them squirm a bit.