My Second Preference Is Yes

I am voting 'No' to AV, simply because I cannot understand why we would adopt a system like the alternative vote.

Given all the options of voting system where would you rank the Alternative Vote? For me it would be 7, above out-right dictatorship, below a system where the winner of Britain's Got Talent automatically inherits the empire. The difficulty is both those who want a more proportional system and people who want to keep the status quo don't want AV. Yet the idea of AV is gaining traction amongst the former group due to this myth that the voting system needs to be changed and any change is good change.

Any change is not good change.

There seems to be this myth that the current voting system is 'outdated' or inherently wrong, but I cannot see how this is the case. Quite simply had the most recent election been held under AV instead of FPTP I would have voted for the same candidate as my first choice...and that is it. This is known as a bullet vote, where a voter only votes for one candidate.

I would bullet vote, as I think would most people who have a strong political conviction. But what would happen to this conviction?

There is one thing and one thing only I want to change about the current political situation in the UK, and that is the Labour party. I wish they where more left wing. Under Ed Miliband I think Labour are taking a slight turn to the left, but under AV they would take another leap to the middle. They would have to. Instead of Labour going for their core voters they would go out of their way to prove to non-traditional Labour voters that they are an electable party, they would do this by becoming more middle-way. As would the Tories.

Views of conviction would disappear and we will be left with groups of parties clamouring towards the middle ground with the middle ground party picking up the secondary support of those of us who actually have the balls to have a political conviction. Having a political system where we have the choice of a centrist party, a centrist party with a slight left-leaning tradition or a centrist party with a slight right-wing ideology is not a better system than we currently have.

No wonder the Liberal Democrats love the idea so much.