Are you confused about Thursday’s Alternative Vote referendum? David Ottewell sets out the arguments for and against ...

A friend told me this weekend he was going to vote against introducing the alternative vote (AV) system in tomorrow’s historic referendum. I asked why – expecting the usual ‘decisive results’, ‘not-broke-don’t-fix-it’ type of stuff. Instead he replied: "To be honest, I don’t really understand it."

This is common. Opponents of AV claim it is too complicated. It is not – it is just that it is difficult to summarise in a couple of sentences.

The easiest way of explaining it is by example. Imagine we have a constituency of 10,000 people, with five candidates: Mr A, Ms B, Mr C, Ms D, and Mr E.

Under first-past-the-post, our 10,000 voters simply put an ‘X’ next to the candidate they want to win. The person with the most votes is declared the winner. So let’s say Mr A gets 3,000 votes, Ms B 2,000, Mr C 1,000, Ms D 500 and Mr E 250. Under first-past-the-post, Mr A wins with a majority of 1,000.

Under AV, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The idea is simple: if someone’s first choice doesn’t win, that doesn’t mean their feelings about other candidates should be ignored.

Let’s say Mr A has some extreme views. While 3,000 people in our constituency agree with him – and want him to be the MP – supporters of Ms B, Mr C, Ms D and Mr E all think he would be terrible. They would prefer any of the other candidates but him. Perhaps, too, the 3,250 people who didn’t vote at all also hate Mr A, but didn’t bother voting because they were so sure he was going to win, and didn’t see the point in taking part.

This raises a question: should Mr A be elected on the say-so of 3,000 voters – less than a third of the total electorate? And should this remain the case even if far more than 3,000 people strongly object to the idea of him being their MP?

Let’s re-run our imaginary election, this time using AV. We rank as many or few of the candidates as we like. So we might write a ‘1’ next to Mr A – and not bother putting numbers next to the others, because we don’t like them, or don’t have a view as to which is better, or whatever. Or we might write a ‘1’ next to Ms B, a ‘2’ next to Mr C, a ‘3’ next to Ms D – and stop there. Or we might rank all five, from ‘1’ right down to ‘5’. All these options are legitimate, and would count.

Let’s imagine, too, that the system boosts turnout, with 8,000 people taking part.

The number ‘1’s are added up. If a candidate has an absolute majority of total votes at that stage – if Mr A, say, has 4,001 or more number ‘1’s – they are immediately declared the winner.

What if they don’t? Imagine Mr A gets 3,500 number ‘1’s, Ms B 2,500, Mr C 1,000, Ms D 750 and Mr E 250. No one has more than 50 per cent of the total valid votes.

At this point we start redistributing. We eliminate the candidate with the lowest number of ‘1’s – in this case, Mr E. We look at the papers of the people who ranked him first, and see who – if anyone – they ranked as ‘2’. And we add those ‘2’s to the ‘1’s that the candidates already have.

For simplicity’s sake, imagine everyone who put a ‘1’ next to Mr E put a ‘2’ next to Ms B. After Mr E is eliminated, the totals are: Mr A 3,500, Ms B 2,750, Mr C 1,000 and Ms D 750.

Again, no one has a majority – so we eliminate Ms D and go through the process again. If a voter’s ‘2’ has also been knocked out, their ‘3’ is counted instead.

This continues until someone has a majority, or until there is no one left to eliminate.

So that’s AV. Supporters say it would boost turnout because there would be fewer ‘wasted’ votes in safe seats. That seems likely – to some extent – but is easily exaggerated.

In nearly one third of UK seats, candidates won an absolute majority at the last general election. There is every chance they would have won the same under AV – meaning no elimination, no redistribution, and the same number of ‘wasted’ votes.

It is also claimed AV would eliminate tactical voting – because people wouldn’t need to vote for a ‘second best’ candidate just because they had a realistic chance of winning. But the evidence is unclear. In Australia, which uses AV, parties have formed pacts, encouraging followers to give their second-preferences to particular allies. Perhaps tactical voting wouldn’t disappear, but just get more complex.

The ‘yes’ campaign also says AV would marginalise extremists, which is probably true, and that it would encourage positive politics – which probably isn’t. If smear campaigns work under first-past-the-post, why wouldn’t they work under AV?

It is true AV means candidates would need to reach out to supporters of other parties – but that could be a recipe for dull consensus politics, and there’s nothing intrinsically ‘positive’ about that.

What of first-past-the-post? We can reject, out of hand, the argument it has ‘stood the test of time’ – so did slavery and hanging, until abolished. A better reason to keep it is that it is clear, easy to understand, and produces decisive results. There is an intuitive appeal to the idea that if someone is the first-choice of more voters than anyone else, they should be declared the winner.

The ‘yes’ campaign also warns AV would be more likely to lead to coalition government, by favouring the smaller parties.

The evidence is unclear – many think Labour would have had a larger majority in 1997 under AV than the landslide it actually achieved. Besides, having more coalitions might be the price of a fairer voting system. The Labour landslide gave Tony Blair years of unfettered power despite being achieved with just 43 per cent of the vote.

AV might be a little bit fairer, but would also be a little more complex. It might make politics better in some ways, but worse in others. It wouldn’t be a democratic revolution, but it would still be a significant change. It’s a difficult choice – but however you vote, ignorance is no excuse.

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