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Alternative vote referendum

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  • 07-04-2011 9:00am
    #1
    r3nu4l
    Registered Users Posts: 17,399 ✭✭✭✭


    So has everyone got their Electoral commission guide to the Alternative vote?

    I got mine on Tuesday. Interestingly if you look at the examples they give of the 'First past the post' and 'Alternative Vote' systems Candidate A wins in each case.

    I think that's a bit of a mistake as I'm sure there will be some people who read it and won't realise that AV will actually completely change how candidates win. They should have provided an example were candidate B, C or D won instead imo.


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    #2
    Count Duckula
    Closed Accounts Posts: 570 ✭✭✭Count Duckula


    Canvassing opinion of my friends and co-workers, they are all in favour of keeping the current system. We've had only one piece of non-neutral government literature through the door where I live, and that's a leaflet by the "No2AV" campaign, which means that these people - who don't know much about the referendum; hell, who didn't even know it was happening - have only been exposed to a leaflet telling them what a waste of time it is. So they'll believe that, and decide accordingly.

    It doesn't matter that most of what was said in that leaflet was lies; most people take on board and believe the first information supplied to them, particularly as in this case it's the only information that's been supplied to them, and decide based on that.

    The only way I can see AV winning is that if the majority of the population (who would side with the current FPTP system when pressed) were simply too apathetic to bother going down to the polls, which would mean that only the staunch supporters of AV and FPTP bothered to vote. That would even up the counts, I reckon.

    Also, I noticed in the leaflet it says that even if AV wins, its introduction is dependent on the new constituency borders being ratified by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. That seems very dodgy to me - we already know that the Lords and the Tories don't want AV, so it seems very handy they've included this "unrelated" getout that if AV wins they can simply scupper its introduction by rejecting the new constituency borders without having to outright reject AV.


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