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

[condign.livejournal.com]

I just think, in my opinion, that the level of misinformation is not equal. I admit that maybe this is just me being biased.

Yes, I think you're biased.

The mismatch in "misinformation" is rather what I'm finding hard to believe. Not that you haven't found a list--your evidence of having looked very hard is somewhat thin--but that you think such a list wouldn't be trivially easy to produce. Someone of reasonable intelligence should be able to produce a list of "misinformation" that meets the standards you set for the "no" vote very easily.

First, a factual point: not all states have primaries. (Iowans, for example, would be fairly surprised to find out that they've been having primaries all these years.) Second, a primary is simply a nominating election, and many primaries are uncontested. It's not like the Mike Castle/Christine O'Donnell situation was typical.

So for instance:

(a) Tories use AV to choose their leader? No, they do not. The have multiple rounds of elections, yes, but this is not the same as AV (at least as relevant here), because a voter in the second round knows the result of the first round vote. See al_fruitbat's comments above for why this is important. The endless repetition of this ridiculous claim, which actually ignores the importance of interim knowledge in voting,

(b) Take a look at the first three claims here: http://www.yestofairervotes.org/pages/av-myths. That is to say, the first three bullet points of the first paragraph. Please note that all of the failings of the FPTP system also apply to AV so long as what they list as "Myth 9" is not true. The only condition under which AV eliminates the three problems mentioned is where a voter is required to vote for multiple candidates. Otherwise, AV as a system may result in candidates winning with only 1 in 3 votes cast for them, candidates retaining seats without a majority, etc. This is just basic math.

I could go on, but here's the point: I'm not actually that strongly against AV, and I recognize that these claims are BS. Or rather, they're the same thing as the claim about the cost of voting machines: a statement which is not necessarily true, but true inasmuch as it relies upon certain assumptions, those assumptions not shared by opponents on the other side. Either that or "shading" the truth by leaving out facts necessary to be coherent (such as the Tory election not being AV, at least as contemplated here).

This happens all the time in politics, and it's no big surprise. I don't think there's an "imbalance" in misinformation. I do think, however, that there is a serious imbalance in the sanctimony about it. I'm not saying that two isolated points on a website are equivalent to your "list"--though one has to point out that you've cited no sources and quoted no statements, merely paraphrased arguments--but that you're not looking critically at the arguments that you favor, certainly not with the same standards you apply to the No campaign.