It may not be complicated to you or me and others on this forum, but to some of the general public it is.

There is no hope then really.

Because they've been told it's complicated. It really isn't.

This is what I mean! Almost every other kind of election the voters get to play with in this country uses AV. We don't find it complicated then, do we? Why is it suddenly some bogeyman form of voting that only elites can understand? It's hogwash.

Go read this Independent article. I don't need a comment. Just read it and tell me it's okay for the No2AV campaign to treat us all as imbeciles.

Read it, The Noto AV campaign may be treating people like imbeciles but if the yes campaign cant address that problem and show why its better. Then whos to blame?

I know this issue is stirring strong opinions, I just happed to have a differing opinion to the majority (who have posted) in this forum.

The problem with democracy is it allows everyone to have a voice, even if they're telling lies. There's no way for the other side to stop the NoToAV campaign saying things that they know to be wrong. All they can do is point it out and hope people listen. If you (or indeed other people) prefer to listen to people you know are lying to you, what can anyone else do to help you?

Jon

The problem is that ranking your candidate from 1 to, say, 3 is no the issue. I think we get that. The issue is that people don’t fully get how the counting works. It’s explained by the Yes and No campaigns in various ways which emphasise their agenda - muddying the water. The BBC and other news outlets have been explaining it using natty graphics and as much neutrality as possible. However, when this all kicked off a while back, a Newsnight special on the subject tried to explain the potential consequences of AV by retrofitting the results to previous elections - something that I would thing would be hard to do. Further to this, the programme’s Yes panel failed to be convincing enough that it was the best choice. I suspect that they would have preferred PR and were effectively given the job of polishing a turd on live TV.

I am, even today, undecided. I don’t think that the facts have been presented very well by either side. Both campaigns have been wheeling out celebrities to push their cause, both have somehow managed to step off the path into the mire. I think it’s been an ugly campaign, and will sadly boil down to a vote of confidence in Nick Clegg.

People who push for AV are really hoping that they’ll get PR eventually. I am not so hopeful. I don’t think we’ll see another referendum on this matter for 50 years if the yes campaign wins. If the “noes” have it, then the matter will be closed. Right now, we’re driving a Lada. We want an Audi, but we’ll be lucky if we get a Skoda.

The counting isn't my problem.

I don't think it's going to help to try and explain it all over again. The Noes have won.

Now with added poll to see how we correspond to the rest of the populace.

The problem with FPTP is that with 7 (or however many parties there are) there is the possibility of a party winning the election with only a 15% "majority".

e.g. 5 different parties 10 voters.

Party - No of Votes
A - 2
B - 2
C - 1
D - 2
E - 3

In this example using FPTP party E would win even though 70% of the elctorate voted against them in the election. Therefore the majority of the elctorate are now disappointed.

Even without an example for AV it is clear already that FPTP allows situations like this to occur (and in fact it actually does occur for a lot of elections). The person who wins most of the time is the person who most of the electorate voted against.

I'm the 'Will not vote' at the moment , put it this way, if I could tick 'None of the above' I'd do just that...

Pie as I cant vote and dont live there anyway

Your votes are selected by AV anyway.

None of the above = no. The proposal is whether we adopt AV, not whether AV is better or worse than FPTP.

Just been thinking about this and I think today could turn out to surprise people.

From what I have seen (and OK I may only keep company with people who are like minded) from following Twitter, FB, various articles etc...

The people who are the most passionate about this referedum tend to be the people who have said they will vote "Yes" to AV.

Given that a lot of people probably won't turn up to vote at all as they don't care either way and that, of the people that do care, only the more passionate will bother/remember/be registered to vote then I think we could get a surprise "Yes" result.

It's a bit of a long shot but I have a feeling it could happen.

There are council and by-elections to consider also. Only the AV referendum here in Brent though.