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

[venta.livejournal.com]

Really? FPTP is discredited? The many countries, including the U.S., which use it are engaging not in a political choice system with which one can honestly disagree, but one that is absolutely without credit?

I wouldn't describe FPTP as discredited (and it seems rather foolish to do so), but I do wonder that the US isn't a very good example of why it works.

My understanding of US politics (which may be wrong, or at least naive) is that it's basically a two-horse race. You've got your Republicans and your Democrats, and realistically pretty much no one else. So FPTP works fine (and is basically equivalent to AV anyway). One of the reasons I feel the UK is floundering a bit is that at the last election there were three horses of (very) approximately equal likelihood which makes the whole business much more complicated.