To me it was very important. A post by Guido Fawkes (http://order-order.com/2011/03/30/av-too-much-for-bbc/) reporting on a BBC mock-election, which was done using AV, claimed that:
(a) most people didn't want to put a second preference (b) the result of the election was therefore "no result", because no one candidate got 50%.
It seems quite likely to be that (at least initially) many people won't put second preferences ("I'm a Tory, I'm not voting Labour! And the Lib Dems are clearly idiots. And I don't want the BNP, because they're mental. And the Greens are a waste of space.") The requirement for 50% would then result in a lot of undecided elections (messy, annoying, and expensive).
Anecdotal evidence from a couple of posters (on another LJ elsewhere this morning) suggested that, while campaigning, they've come across plenty of people who don't want to express a second preference.
So the 50% requirement - which has been and still is being extensively reported, but isn't actually correct - changes the system from "a bit of an improvement over FPTP" to "unworkable" in my estimation.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 12:44 pm (UTC)(a) most people didn't want to put a second preference
(b) the result of the election was therefore "no result", because no one candidate got 50%.
It seems quite likely to be that (at least initially) many people won't put second preferences ("I'm a Tory, I'm not voting Labour! And the Lib Dems are clearly idiots. And I don't want the BNP, because they're mental. And the Greens are a waste of space.") The requirement for 50% would then result in a lot of undecided elections (messy, annoying, and expensive).
Anecdotal evidence from a couple of posters (on another LJ elsewhere this morning) suggested that, while campaigning, they've come across plenty of people who don't want to express a second preference.
So the 50% requirement - which has been and still is being extensively reported, but isn't actually correct - changes the system from "a bit of an improvement over FPTP" to "unworkable" in my estimation.