The Conservative Party are actively campaigning for a ‘No’ vote in the May 5th referendum on the Alternative Voting System. Here’s why:

• AV is unfair.  With First Past the Post, everybody gets one vote.  But under AV, supporters of extreme parties like the BNP would get their vote counted many times, while other people’s vote would only be counted once.
• AV doesn’t work.  Rather than the candidate with the most votes winning, the person who finishes third could be declared the winner.
• AV is expensive.  Calculating the results is a long, complicated process, which would cost the taxpayer millions.
• No-one wants AV.  Even the ‘Yes’ campaigners don’t actually want AV – they see it as a convenient stepping stone to yet more changes to how we vote.

What is AV?
Under the Alternative Vote the voters rank candidates in order of preference and anyone getting more than fifty per cent in the first round is elected.  If that doesn't happen, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second choices are allocated to the remaining candidates.  If no candidate at the second stage has a majority of votes, the next lowest candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed.  This process keeps on occurring until a winner emerges.  This can mean that as more and more candidates are eliminated some people’s fourth or fifth votes count while for others only their first choice is counted.  

About the Referendum
The Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government has agreed legislation to hold a referendum on May 5th 2011 on a change of the voting system for Westminster Parliamentary elections.  This was one of the things demanded by the Liberal Democrats during the coalition negotiations.  The Conservatives are campaigning for a “NO” vote to AV and to continue with the current system. 

Here’s why our current system is better than AV 

It creates strong governments
Our current system tends to create strong, accountable governments and means that coalitions are uncommon, with no horse-trading by politicians behind the scenes.  No one got what they voted for at the last general election.  AV isn’t proportional and it leads to more backroom political deals, the worst of both worlds.

 It's fair
It sticks to the principle of 'one person, one vote' – unlike AV, where supporters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted several times, while mainstream voters only get one say.

 It's simple to understand and easy to implement
Each person votes for the candidate they support and the one with the most votes is declared the winner.  Staying with our current system also means we will not need to spend £26 million telling people how the complicated system works, or £130 million on expensive vote-counting machines.

 It excludes extremist parties
Parties such as the BNP have never been able to get enough support in a single constituency to have one of their candidates elected as an MP. Under AV in Australia, however, the far-right One Nation Party won 11 seats in the Queensland state legislature which they would not have done under First Past the Post.

 It's the most widely used system in the world
People the world over have copied our tried and tested system.  It's used by 2.4 billion people – more than any other system – in 50 countries, including Canada, India and the USA.  AV, on the other hand, is only used by Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea.  And in Australia, 6 out of 10 voters want to get rid of it.

 How do I vote?
To register to vote in the referendum, or to find out if you are registered, go to http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/

Remember

 AV won’t fix our broken politics. It won’t get rid of safe seats or negative campaigning, and it won’t make MPs more accountable.

 AV means a voting system that is unfair, processes that are unclear, and politics that is unaccountable. It is the precise opposite of what we need and the country should reject it on 5 May.

A change to AV is not the answer.  

 The cost of AV has been estimated to be £250 million by the NO to AV campaign.  This includes the cost of holding the AV referendum itself, which was demanded by the Liberal Democrats as part of the Coalition Agreement.

 AV is not a proportional system.  The independent commission chaired by the senior Liberal Democrat Roy Jenkins in 1998 concluded that AV was “even less proportional” than our existing system, and warned that it was “disturbingly unpredictable”.

 AV would have given Labour an even bigger majority in 1997, 2001 and 2005.  Because it tends to exaggerate the effect of decisive elections, under AV, in 1997, the Conservatives would have fallen to 96 seats (vs. 165) and Labour would have been boosted to 452 (vs. 419).

 AV is a slippery slope to PR. Most of the supporters of the AV only want it as a stepping stone to proportional representation system, which the Liberal Democrats pushed for in their manifesto.  Once people are using AV, it will easier to abolish constituency boundaries and introduce PR.

 AV meant that Labour didn’t get the leader they wanted.  Ed Miliband only won the leadership election because of redistributed votes from failed candidates.  In the first round Ed Miliband gained 34.33 per cent of the vote in comparison to his brother David who gained 37.78 per cent.  Following the redistribution of votes, over 4 rounds the final result – Ed Miliband had gained 50.65 per cent of the vote to David’s 49.35 per cent (statistics taken from Labour Party Website).

 Under AV, Australia has a rate of ballot spoilage five times higher than the UK. 5.6 per cent of votes in Australia were spoiled in 2010, compared to less than 1 per cent in the UK’s last general election (and only 1 per cent of Australia’s ballots are thought to be deliberately spoiled; the rest is accidental).

 Despite claims that AV ends negative campaigning, spending ‘heavily on extensive and overwhelmingly negative television advertising’ is a trademark of Australian elections (Plasser & Plasser, Global political campaigning 2002).  Since 1993, over 60 per cent of Australian political ads, both newspaper and TV, have been negative (Dr. Sally Young, Scare campaigns: Negative Political Advertising in Australia, 1 October 2003).  And in the 1993 and 1998 elections, 100 per cent of the Australian Labor Party’s newspaper ads were negative (ibid.).

 Even the ‘Yes’ campaigners don’t really want AV.  Many pro-AV campaigners have previously criticised the system and are only now supporting it as a “small step” to more radical reform – full-blown, party list, constituency-free proportional representation – which could let the BNP and other fringe groups into the House of Commons.

 Ben Bradshaw, Director of Labour’s Yes to AV: “If one of the reasons that we want reform is to rebuild public trust and confidence in politics, make MPs more accountable, give more power to people and establish a political and parliamentary system that more reflects the will of the public, then AV doesn't deliver that” (New Statesman, 5 November 2009)

 Neal Lawson, Yes to AV campaign board member: “I’m sorry but I am not a fan of AV. It can lead to even less fair outcomes than first-past-the-post and that to me is the critical point” (The Guardian, 4 December 2009).

 The Electoral Reform Society, which is bankrolling the Yes to AV campaign, has called AV a “very modest reform” and said it would not be “suitable for the election of a representative body, e.g. a Parliament” (Electoral Reform Society Press Release, 10 May 2010; internet archive of Electoral Reform Society website page on AV).

 Wayne David MP, Spokesman for Labour’s Yes to AV: “I am convinced that first past the post is the most appropriate method of election in this country for all tiers of government” (Hansard, 9 February 2010, Col. 844).

 Ed Miliband supports AV since it is the system that won him the Leadership of the Labour Party (despite his brother getting more first preference votes), but he cannot take his party with him.  Over a hundred Labour MPs signed up to the NO to AV campaign (The Independent, 30 December 2010).

 AV will make no difference in current safe seats, such as the 225 seats where the winner got more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2010.  Another 74 seats where the winner had a majority of more than 20 per cent would almost certainly also be safe under AV, making a total of at least 291 seats that would be unaffected (Dr. Robert McIlveen, AV – The system no one wants, Policy Exchange, October 2010).  AV can only really affect seats that are already competitive, because these are the seats where second and third preferences can potentially make a difference. 

 AV risks creating new safe seats. There’s no reason to believe that the order of voters’ second preferences will be any less consistent than their first preference; therefore an MP who wins by receiving 40 per cent of first preferences and 20 per cent of second preferences could be in a new “AV safe seat”.