Old & Sad, AV and the view from the ERS
I sent the same question to the Electoral Reform Society and got this reply:
Dear Graham,
Thanks for your email.
The Phil Woolas case was rather unusual, and seems to me to be more a legal matter than a voting systems issue. I can't see that the choice of voting system affects the way we deal legally with political campaigning. The scenario you envisage certainly hasn't materialised in Australia, where the alternative vote has been used for over a century.
If it were the case that a third-placed candidate was found to have campaigned illegally, then I expect the judge would make a decision about the extent to which this invalidated the result of the count. If it did, then of course a re-run of the election would be the obvious solution, but this could equally happen under the present system - the prevalence of tactical voting and 'vote splitting' in FPTP elections means that third- and fourth- place candidates already have 'spoiler' effects as it is. The US Presidential election of 2000, where Ralph Nader split the left-leaning vote is a perfect example of the phenomenon.
Overall, then, I very much doubt that the introduction of AV would bring with it such a blatantly underhand style of campaigning - and decent campaign legislation ought to prevent it from emerging.
Kind regards,
Andy White
Senior Research Analyst
Electoral Reform Society
I'm 大象传媒 Radio Devon鈥檚 Graham Smith, blogging on news, views and some fresh insights into West Country life, particularly the way government works locally and nationally.
Comment number 1.
At 10th Nov 2010, Graham Smith wrote:I've just received a rather different reply from Camborne & Redruth MP George Eustice:
Dear Graham
I think you raise an important point and the question you highlight underlines the general confusion and lack of certainty that we could expect if we replaced our 鈥渙ne person, one vote鈥 system with a multiple voting system where some people get more votes counted than others. The truth is that, under AV, people do not really know what the consequence of their votes will be. A vote for the least favoured candidate can end up counting for just as much as the vote for the candidate they actually want to win. And if there were a dispute among minority candidates, as you say this could have a knock on effect on the whole election result. In countries like Australia, the political parties stand at polling stations and hand out 鈥渉ow to vote cards鈥 which tell people exactly what numbers they should write next to each candidate in order to elect the one and only candidate they actually want to see win. Eighty percent of people copy out these cards suggesting that they have no interest in AV and would be far happier just putting a cross in the box by the candidate they actually want. No wonder that of just three countries worldwide which use AV, one of those (The Fiji Islands) is trying to get rid of it. At least we will have the chance to put a cross in the box next to 鈥渘o鈥!
George Eustice MP
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