Best case scenario for UK voting reform?

So, this is a two point post.

The first issue is something of an AH challenge: is it possible to get AV approved by the British public in the 2011 referendum? I know that No To AV will be hampered if the Conservative Party official machinery doesn't come in to save it from Matthew Elliot and his cronies, but even so, I can't imagine a team as inept as the Yes campaign winning. So, the challenge is, how does Yes either win, or manage to achieve a very close result?

The second, more broad query, is with a 21st century POD, how much voting reform can you see within the UK: or England specifically?

1.Actually campaigning might be a help! I remember lots of noise and bluster from the "No" campaign and just the odd bit of reasoned argument from the "Yes" camp.
2.Have Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband stay as far away from the campaign as possible. One had just broken most of his election promises and the other was seen as a geek who had knifed his brother in the back.
3.Get the date of the referendum changed so its not on an election day that most ignore and the messages don't get tangled up.

Have the YES campaign first of all try and be run by people who didn't think that ever voting Conservative was an act of moral failing would help a lot.

You could have them try and have Miliband, Gove (I remember him hearing that he even called up to offer support when he was bombarded with "teh ev0l Tories and Fatcha ruined this country"), Farage and Cable all on the same stage, have the campaign fight on an "Every Vote Will Count, Not Just Marginal Seat Votes" rather than a schizophrenic mixture of every vote counting and some sort of "progressive majority" locking the Conservatives out of power forever and then try and avoid accusing people of Gestapo tactics.

Making AV look like a more bi-partisan issue would definitely help both the campaign and making it look less "the LibDems are the political wing of the Electoral Reform Society and place AV and Lords Reform over signed promises", although it would be difficult to actually win by anymore than a very small margin.

True the Yes lot did look a lot like "we'll never have a Tory government again Hurrah". However no way is Michael Gove the answer

Lindseyman said:

True the Yes lot did look a lot like "we'll never have a Tory governridiculous Hurrah". However no way is Michael Gove the answer

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I don't see how having a senior Conservative on board would hurt. It might hurt Gove, but I would doubt it would hurt the Yes campaign.

Trying to confront the No campaign might help. I can't remember much being done to refute the ridiculous claim about new machines being needed, after all, and if it was it never got much traction. Perhaps saying in response to the claim that AV is too complex that the Yes campaign has more faith in the intelligence of the British people than that idea credits. All in all, a decent Yes campaign would have done a lot to improve the chance of AV coming in, especially if it can be presented as not being just about Clegg and the LibDems.

On the wider question of more reform in the 21st Century, I can't really see how it would happen in the UK as a whole unless Blair somehow found himself really in need of LibDem support. Perhaps if that were to somehow happen AV+ would be a possibility. I can't come up with a plausible PoD for that though. A local or devolved change is more possible, though still unlikely unless Blair or Brown need to throw a fig leaf to somebody who cares.

Have a different variant of electoral reform than AV.

Go for PR^2 and you would have both Conservative and LibDems plus the minor parties in support with only Labour losing out.

Though the YEStoAV campaign was epically bad - having a load of Labour luvvies promising a 1000 year Islington reich and telling Farage he wasn't wanted because he might upset some of their friends is the stuff of electoral legend.

A dodgy batch of muesli is delivered to the headquarters of the Yes2DolphinSafeTuna campaign before it can get started.

ALthough no-one is seriously hurt, all senior members of the campaign are incapacitated for the duration.

Because a set of random people off of the street, given a five minute briefing about the issues, would have done a better job ...

AndyC said:

A dodgy batch of muesli is delivered to the headquarters of the Yes2DolphinSafeTuna campaign before it can get started.

ALthough no-one is seriously hurt, all senior members of the campaign are incapacitated for the duration.

Because a set of random people off of the street, given a five minute briefing about the issues, would have done a better job ...

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Pretty much this.

You also need the papers to actually commit to unbiased and plausible arguments for Yes as pretty much all the adverts and coverage was slanted towards *rhubarb rhubarb you don't want to be like the europeans coalitions suck rhubarb*

Agree that the Yes campaign handled it badly and the No campaign managed all the right tricks, but I do feel that the freakishly hot weather, "ten day weekend" and Royal Wedding all did a lot to help the No camp.

The Yes camp would also have been stronger had Hackgate happened already, rather than a couple of months later.

Scientist Shan said:

Have a different variant of electoral reform than AV.

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Yeah, like the Jenkins Commission recommendation of AV+.

Frankly I don't know where the idea that the Yes campaign was so sensible is coming from. Both sides were as ridiculous as each other, I mean people on the Yes campaign heavily 'pointed out' that the BNP supports FPTP, therefore AV must be good.

I would argue a different system to AV being advocated would help.

A more general way, at least of getting England to have a different voting system, might be if when Scotland and Wales vote for devolution, Labour give England the same referendum, rather than just London and the North. Then when/if England says yes, the AMS voting system is used.

TheNordicBrit said:

Frankly I don't know where the idea that the Yes campaign was so sensible is coming from. Both sides were as ridiculous as each other, I mean people on the Yes campaign heavily 'pointed out' that the BNP supports FPTP, therefore AV must be good.

I would argue a different system to AV being advocated would help.

A more general way, at least of getting England to have a different voting system, might be if when Scotland and Wales vote for devolution, Labour give England the same referendum, rather than just London and the North. Then when/if England says yes, the AMS voting system is used.

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I don't think anyone is claiming Yes was sensible, just rubbish. Even the non nasty things they did were tactically awful.

I agree that AV+/AMS would have been a game changer if it was on the ballot. The trouble is you need to change the outcome of the election, because Tories who 'only just' need the Lib Dems are never in a million years going to favour any form of PR - even though these days it'd probably help them.

I've said before that AV being crap is the main reason it lost. I voted no for that reason, and I'm an iconoclastic left wing hothead who speaks before he acts. When people like me vote no to electoral reform, you know the proposed change is truly dreadful.

Forgive my ignorance, but as someone living on the far side of the Atlantic, I have no idea what AV is. Could someone please explain the issues here?

Meadow said:

I don't think anyone is claiming Yes was sensible, just rubbish. Even the non nasty things they did were tactically awful.

I agree that AV+/AMS would have been a game changer if it was on the ballot. The trouble is you need to change the outcome of the election, because Tories who 'only just' need the Lib Dems are never in a million years going to favour any form of PR - even though these days it'd probably help them.

I've said before that AV being crap is the main reason it lost. I voted no for that reason, and I'm an iconoclastic left wing hothead who speaks before he acts. When people like me vote no to electoral reform, you know the proposed change is truly dreadful.

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I agree that PR would've helped. Yes, I suspect the anti-PR team would've attacked it even harder, but I think conversely it would've been popular with people. As you say, AV is a pretty crap system, and I think if it had been genuine, big reform then it would've been more popular.

TheNordicBrit said:

I agree that PR would've helped. Yes, I suspect the anti-PR team would've attacked it even harder, but I think conversely it would've been popular with people. As you say, AV is a pretty crap system, and I think if it had been genuine, big reform then it would've been more popular.

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I disagree.

While there definitely is a reasonably large movement for voting reform, there is an equally large (if not larger) group of people who are perfectly happy with the system as it is. It's simple, effective, and extremely easy for everybody to understand. I'd argue a larger vote reform would of had even less success.

oudi14 said:

Forgive my ignorance, but as someone living on the far side of the Atlantic, I have no idea what AV is. Could someone please explain the issues here?

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First past the post (FPTP) is the same style that you use in the USA. The person with the most votes wins, even if that person obtained less then 50% of the vote.

Alternative vote (AV) in the proposed UK-style, would allow you to cast a vote for a candidate and then any other candidates you also like in a ranked order.

oudi14 said:

Forgive my ignorance, but as someone living on the far side of the Atlantic, I have no idea what AV is. Could someone please explain the issues here?

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I believe that AV is known in the US as Instant Run Off Voting. Essentially the voter ranks the candidates according to their preferences. If after one round of voting a candidate has more than 50% of the vote they are elected. If not, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are allocated to the voters' second preferences. This process then continues until a candidate has over 50% of the vote in a given round (not 50% of the original votes since voters don't have to rank all candidates, unless you are in Australia).

One of the criticisms of AV the No campaign voiced showed (at least to me) a fundamental misunderstanding (deliberate or otherwise) of how the system works. They claimed that those who originally voted for an eliminated candidate would have more votes than those who voted for a candidate that wasn't eliminated. However, this is not true as every voter has only one vote in each round of voting and those votes for candidates who haven't been eliminated still count.

Meadow said:

I agree that AV+/AMS would have been a game changer if it was on the ballot.
...
I've said before that AV being crap is the main reason it lost.

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With all due respect, but if you really believe that then I suspect you're wildly overestimating the level of engagement of the electorate with the minutiae of voting reform (are you sure you're not a Liberal Democrat?). I do consider myself fairly engaged, and had to google AV+ and only know what AMS is because I live in Wales and it's the system used for the Assembly.

In particular, I think you're being naive if you don't believe the No campaign would not have a huge amount of fun with the party list element - if people voted no because they thought AV was an undemocratic transfer of power away from the people and towards the professional political class (and I know some did, because I'm one of them) then the party list would turbo charge this sentiment - in theory at least you can always vote out a constituency MP, how the heck do you vote out someone who's wangled a place at the top of a major party's regional list? His loyalty is only ever going to be to the party, not to his voters.

The trouble is you need to change the outcome of the election, because Tories who 'only just' need the Lib Dems are never in a million years going to favour any form of PR - even though these days it'd probably help them.

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Quite. Arguably the OTL result was the worst possible one for PR in this country - a Conservative majority would just have kicked the can down the road a few years, and a Labour majority or a Lab/Lib coalition would have had a referendum with the government throwing it's weight behind the Yes campaign and not franchising it out to a bunch of Guardian readers who thought it was still 1983. Instead we got a referendum offered by a government split on the issue with the largest constituent part really rather keen on seeing it go down in flames - it's probable now that PR for Westminster is dead for a generation, and certainly can't be brought in without another referendum.

Best case scenario for UK voting reform..............some might argue that we've actually got that

oudi14 said:

Forgive my ignorance, but as someone living on the far side of the Atlantic, I have no idea what AV is. Could someone please explain the issues here?

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AV is the British terminology for what in North America is called IRV, or instant-runoff voting.

If AV or some form of it were to pass in 2011 would that mean that the Liberal Democrats then back the constituency-resizing and reduction in the number of MPs program? IIRC they backed out by stating that it and the AV issue were linked so since they didn't get what they wanted they wouldn't support the other. Have there been any studies on what the combination of the two might of meant for future general elections?