Despite the crushing referendum result last week, there is one place AV will never be displaced – when politicians choose one of their own. It’s not just Labour – even the Tories do it. Sure – it’s often done differently, round by round, to allow some very sophisticated game-playing (although that doesn’t work when the membership get a say). When the Tories chose between IDS, Ken Clarke and Michael Portillo, the IDS crowd lent their first round votes to Clarke because they knew a) that their guy would make the next round and b) Ken Clarke couldn’t win.
And you can see why they use it. Candidates with a narrow support base (like Clarke in 2001) would come through the middle, especially if two similar candidates stand. You get to express all your preferences. You can vote sincerely throughout (although as above, spreading it out over several separate ballots allows a bit more gaming to come in).
Today Holyrood will use the same system to elect a Presiding Officer. We have three candidates who could almost have been designed to demonstrate this principle. Two fierce SNP women, Christine Grahame and Tricia Marwick, plus Hugh Henry, a dry but impressive former Labour minister. Christine declared first, and without iterated run-offs, that would surely have kept Tricia out. Instead she’s surely going to win.
Assuming for the sake of argument a degree of voting by party, which is unfortunately pretty likely even for a notionally non-partisan role, and assuming the rest of the tattered Yoonyonisht Conshpirashy back Hugh, it’s easy to see how he could win. Yet there can be few in the Chamber with a first preference for either of the SNP candidates and a second preference for Hugh.
The fact remains, as the AV campaign should have said, preferential voting remains the only sensible way to indicate opinion and count votes when electing a single candidate (fans of various obscure Condorcet mechanisms please take it up in the comments). And as should be obvious, there’s no good way to elect single candidates and achieve proportionality.
#1 by setindarkness on May 11, 2011 - 11:30 am
If I had a preference it wouldn’t be to read articles by David Cameron (yes, really this is just a test of your registration system)
#2 by James on May 11, 2011 - 11:34 am
Ha ha. Silly us. Still can’t work out how to do that.
#3 by Ally on May 11, 2011 - 12:28 pm
“And as should be obvious, there’s no good way to elect single candidates and achieve proportionality”
Wasn’t the “Alex Salmond for first meenester” an attempt to take advantage of this, the second vote for the SNP was the same vote – it just seemed different.
The complexities of the various proportional election systems really champ ma tumshie – whats wrong with dispensing with constituency voting and simply having a percentage? Although how that would that work with the selection of the Presiding Officer I dinnae ken – some kind of chimera comprising part Hugh, Christine and Tricia doesn’t bear thinking about…
(stands back and awaits a guid heid kickin’ for her stupidity)
#4 by Hamish on May 11, 2011 - 12:52 pm
Schulze FTW. Only next time we mustn’t be so daft as to ask the people.
#5 by James on May 11, 2011 - 3:25 pm
And as predicted – Hugh Henry (the Dog from the popular AV video) won the first round, then Christine Grahame (the less popular Cat for the same purpose) was eliminated and almost all her votes went to Tricia Marwick.
Who is now Top Cat.
#6 by setindarkness on May 11, 2011 - 3:42 pm
If this was FPTP there would have been some discussions behind the bike sheds and Tricia would have come first in the first vote (tactical voting). Maybe
#7 by Danny95 on May 11, 2011 - 10:30 pm
I don’t understand why constituency MSPs can be PO. Surely it would make more sense if a list member took the role.