Grab and change it, it's yours

[venta]

Does anyone know what the actual text which is actually going to appear on the actual ballot papers on May 5th is? A bit of googling hasn't turned up any results for me, but the pages I was finding suggest to me that I may have been going about my searching in the wrong way.

I'm kind of assuming that the ballot paper will look broadly like this:

[Poll #1729575]

Now, lots of campaigners would have you believe that this is analogous to:

[Poll #1729576]

And lots of other campaigners would have you believe it's analogous to:

[Poll #1729577]

You'll notice that the second two polls allow the results to be interpreted as pol(l)ar opposites.

So, does anyone know exactly what the question is? More to the point, has the government made any commitment at all about what they're going to do with the results, how they'll be interpreted, or whether Cameron will (in fact) go "oh, that's nice" and carry on regardless with the existing system?

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, that last sentence should at the very least end with '...of the remaining votes'. It's something I try to be careful about when I'm debating it with ordinary voters, but as I said in my own post, there is a real tension between giving a strictly accurate account of AV, and actually getting across its real benefits in a way that most voters can understand. The No campaign, of course, are ready to jump all over us whenever we lean too far in either direction - but it's pretty clear to me that they are far worse offenders when it comes to misleading over-simplifications.

[venta.livejournal.com]

As already waffled at you elsewhere, I think that the system would be unworkable with the requriement that one candidate has at least 50%. So, bascially, misreporting from a number of sources (BBC to Guido Fawkes) nearly had me automatically voting 'no'. It bugs me, rather, that the BBC can (in my view) totally mis-describe the system like that and not be pulled up for it.

In fact: Someone is wrong on the internet! (http://xkcd.com/386/)

Otherly, thank you for coming along and being informed at me :)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Heh, no worries. There's no point in me having boned up on it all if I don't then pass that knowledge on to other people - especially where doing so also helps to encourage votes for the Yes camp! I genuinely believe that a cool-headed examination of the actual facts should lead logically to a Yes vote for most people, unless they are MPs sitting in a currently-safe seat which would become less safe as a result. But it's just getting those facts across in the right way to the right people that's the problem... :-/

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

May I ask one question? It seems very odd to me that, in the process of transferring the lower-preference votes, that those votes are not somehow reduced in 'importance'.

Initially, I'd have said 'halve the vote' of any transfers, so by the time your vote has been transferred 4 times, it's worth 6.25% of a first preference.

I understand that this might mean that no candidate reached 50% of all votes, but it would still boil down to a choice between 2, and then it could be a simple numeric thing.
[deleted and edited for maths]

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

No problem. The best articulation I have seen of why the value of votes does not change between rounds is here. It may also help to think of it as equivalent to a multi-round knock-off vote of the type used on The X-Factor, except with voters expressing all their preferences from the start, rather than being asked to vote again each time a candidate is eliminated. Basically, what's happening is that at each round, all voters are effectively voting again from scratch - it's just that those whose first preference is still in the race are assumed still to back that candidate, whereas those whose favourite candidate has been eliminated have to make a new choice.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Maybe all the Yes! campaign needs to do to win over Joe Public is to say "hey, this'll make it more like the X Factor!"

<ducks and runs>

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Hey, we'll try anything. And we have. ;-)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Indeed; which is why AV is sometimes known as "instant run-off voting".

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Of course, the difference in the X factor is that the voting process is iterative, with the results of each round being known prior to recasting ballots - so not equivalent to AV at all.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I'm reading your emphasis of "at all" correctly - are you just emphasising that it isn't exactly the same as runoff voting (which is indeed true), or do you mean that it isn't anything like the X Factor voting at all?

I think it's close enough for the explanation - I mean, do you think that people's votes in X Factor should be reduced? Or if not, what is the important difference between the two systems?

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

I think it's the difference of information. On X-Factor people can quickly see the real states of the voting (based on last week's poll) so can make informed choices about the next poll, including tactical voting if they so choose.

If everyone on the X-factor got one chance to vote, then yes I would say that they should adopt a ranking system rather than STV.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I think it's the difference of information. On X-Factor people can
quickly see the real states of the voting (based on last week's poll) so
can make informed choices about the next poll, including tactical voting
if they so choose.

Can you give me an example where knowing the previous results would mean you might want to change your preferences?

But either way - yes I know that runoff voting isn't identical to instant runoff voting, but I don't see how that affects the point about why people's votes aren't reduced in value? Why should people's votes be reduced in value in IRV/AV if their most preferred candidate drops out in a round, but not in runoff voting?

The other reason why votes aren't reduced is because it would make the change pointless - you'd be going back to the tactical voting decisions of whether to vote for a minor party or not, just that it'll be a "reduced" vote you get instead of a "wasted" one.

If everyone on the X-factor got one chance to vote, then yes I would say
that they should adopt a ranking system rather than STV.

What if the choice is between IRV and FPTP?

[condign.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And that "known prior to recasting ballots" is huge.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

It seems very odd to me that, in the process of transferring the lower-preference votes, that those votes are not somehow reduced in 'importance'.

Because you can't really make assumptions about how strongly people favour candidates. If I prefer A to B, I'll vote A. If C comes along who I like even better, that doesn't mean how much I like A has been reduced, just that C is in preference.

If C is my first preference, but gets knocked out in round 1, my intent is that my vote should be for A, which gets counted in round 2. (And people who voted for A as first choice still get their votes counted again in round 2, so no ones getting more votes that others, as the No2AV campaign claim.)

I agree with strange_complex's point about X Factor - if in the first week the person you vote for is the one knocked out, should your vote for later rounds be halved (or even, not count at all)?

There are systems that allow people to express weightings, but that has to be done with a scoring system rather than preferences, e.g., range voting.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to know what the voting trend is in X-Factor (having never watched it, I've no idea)... do people usually pick their candidate and consistently vote for him/her through all rounds? I suspect they don't, so comparing AV to X-Factor has a risk that people will take it too literally and want to be able to vote Labour in early rounds, then Lib Dem later after that awful face Ed Milliband pulled on Newsnight...

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

This is true - but I'd argue that's mainly done for entertainment; I don't think changing one's vote because the campaign is still in progress is a good feature. Plus in X Factor, in the first week you know hardly anything about the candidates, where as we know a reasonable amount about the parties from the start of the campaign (although it does seem interesting how undecided until the last minute many voters in elections seem to be, if polls are anything to go by).

If one had a hypothetical really quick series of rounds of runoff voting, where there was no chance for people to be changing their minds due to new campaigning, I would hope that would give the idea of a reasonably good system, that doesn't give anyone more votes that anyone else. And then IRV/AV can just be seen as the instant version of it.

I don't know if there's any tactical situation where knowing the results of the earlier rounds means you might change your vote?

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

There are, but they fall under the heading of "things that are bad about AV anyway".

For example, consider the French presidential election of 2002, in which Chirac faced le Pen in the final round. He took 82% of the vote, which I think we can safely say he wouldn't have achieved in an instant runoff. The Socialists endorsed Chirac in the second round, but I suspect that it's politically very difficult for the party that "should" be in second place to say, "look, we really think we can win this election, but just in case we come third you should vote for our main opponents second. Really. We're very confident".

Pretty much any electoral system would have delivered Chirac as the winner of that election. And it's not as if those people who voted "against le Pen" rather than "for Chirac" actually changed their opinions or their preferences between the rounds, but the exact count was surely affected, since knowing the result of the first round motivated them to *express* that preference. A rational electorate and campaign, capable of coldly considering hypotheticals, would have fewer reasons for runoffs to differ from AV, but still not none.

For example both runoffs and AV still have some perversities, it's not just FPTP. In that same election, suppose that le Pen's support was slightly weaker. Chirac, while looking good to win the election, might have thought to himself that he'd much rather face le Pen in the final than Jospin. In which case, he could ask a small proportion of his own supporters to vote for le Pen in the first round, just to be sure of eliminating Jospin. AV is also weak to this tactic, although not as weak as a real runoff, since in a real runoff Chirac's fifth columnists can switch back to him in the final round, whereas in AV they can't.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

There are voting systems where candidates receive variable points according to how high you've ranked them, eg.

"In Nauru, a distinctive formula is used based on increasingly small fractions of points. Under the system a candidate receives 1 point for a first preference, ½ a point for a second preference, ⅓ for third preference, and so on."

Which is not quite what you were asking (there is no elimination, just a one-off count) but going in the same sort of direction.

The real answer I suspect is that it's felt the principle of (vote = 1) is too important to let go of.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

We've had preferential voting in Australia since 1918.

My own argument for not reducing the value of the transfers is that it's all about allowing you to say what you mean without having to resort to strategic voting and second guessing the rest of your electoral division; when I was living Oop North I'd vote Labour instead of Lib Dem because I knew that the latter wouldn't have been an effective vote against the Conservative party. (apologies if I've misremembered the names or spellings of the parties - I de-emigrated in '04).

AV means I could vote Lib Dem first to express my preferred result, without wasting my vote if I'm in a seat where they've very little chance of being one of the two frontrunners.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

This would have been my argument too.

[mister-jack.livejournal.com]

In the Australian system it does require 50%, but you are required to rank all candidates.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes - it makes sense in that context. But without a requirement to express a second preference, you'd end up with (potentially) a lot of elections with no results. Which (up til now) has been my objection to AV - as it's described on the BBC/electoral-reform.org/various other reputable places. Finding out that objection isn't valid because it's based on something that isn't true is rather worrying.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Though, of course, not as worrying as finding out after voting ;)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Or for the senate where you've got a zillion candidates you've also got the option of just saying "vote how Party X would have liked me to" - though I only do that personally if there's a party whose published voting card matches my own preferences closely enough.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I think the best way to describe it is 50% of all votes cast *after transfers*. If your ballot becomes exhausted because all your listed preferences are eliminated, then you are not transferred, you don't cast a vote in subsequent rounds, and you aren't part of the group of which the winner needs half.

AV supporters have IMO misled on this point - in particular exaggerating the importance that it would have even if it were true. OK, so an AV winner does have over 50% of the vote, after discounting all the people who didn't vote at all, and all the people who didn't express an opinion between the winner and the second-placed candidate.

Of course we think, "so what?". At the point where I'm expressing a preference for the BNP over the National Front (or vice-versa) on the basis that I think that one of them is very slightly less a bunch of racists and criminals than the other, I don't in any sense *support* the winner, and if pro-AV people are going to interpret that preference as "support", then I'm hardly going to want to express a preference. I suppose I'll just take whatever racists I'm served.

Anyway, it's actually expected that under an AV system, many or most voters don't need to express a second preference, because elections are reasonably predictable. Once you've listed either of the candidates who (eventually) makes the final round, there's no point listing anyone below them, because there is no possibility that your ballot will go any further than that candidate. I expect that in many constituencies it will be pretty clear who the last two candidates will be. If you don't know who the last two will be (and after all elections are only *reasonably* predictable, not entirely predictable), or if you want to give an ultimately futile show of support to someone else, then you list two or more preferences.

Consider the London mayoral election. Conducted with a special dumbed-down AV system three times, but fundamentally if you wanted to have any influence on who won, literally all that mattered on the day was how you relatively ranked Boris and Ken. Most of the first-choice votes went to one of the two of them, suggesting that most London voters don't need AV on their own account. They might want in future want to express a first choice for a candidate expected to come third or worse, of course.

Last time out, 83% of voters used their second preference. I can't predict whether the ability to express a third preference, or general antipathy toward AV, would depress this. Or whether it was inflated in the first place by things like the Lab-Green second preference pact, a perception unique that the supplementary preference (uniquely) is an important "show of support" for someone you don't really want to win, or perhaps even by Londoners not really understanding the system.