The Electoral Reform Society blog

News Blog

9th December 2011

Dec 2011

4 Comments

Getting to ‘No’ – A final look at the AV referendum

At the weekend we held an event for members and supporters to have a last look at the Yes campaign defeat and the lessons we as reformers can learn for the future.

As well as finding out more about the Society’s role in the Yes to fairer votes campaign, attendees had the chance to hear the perspective of Professor John Curtice, a leading expert in electoral systems and electoral behaviour, and to question a panel of those involved in the campaign’s leadership. A full report from the event will be available soon along with footage from the day.

While helping to provide some closure on the AV referendum the event also helped us to start setting the tone for the future.

One of our members, Helen Parke, asked the panel: “what positive lessons can we take forward. What things do we most need to change to ensure that electoral reform stays high on the agenda and no further opportunities are missed?”

This question has been at the heart of the evaluative work we have undertaken since the referendum and our findings will be encapsulated in a practical handbook for reformers which we will publish next year.

We must now turn the page on the AV referendum and look to the future by asking ourselves what kind of a democracy we want to see in the UK and what role the Society can play to achieve it.

We know that a 21st democracy can’t work if the rules were designed for 19^th and that democracy cannot function if people are cut off from institutions that should serve them. Now is the time to hone our arguments, build the relationships, forge the alliances and create the conditions for reform, ready to leap into action when the political moment is right – which as John Curtice noted at the event, may be sooner than we think.

The next election is only round the corner and if we are serious about change we need a route map that we have sketched together. We will be publishing our new strategic plan in May, one year on from the referendum, and at the event we begun this process by inviting attendees to help inform our strategy over the next decade. We will be continuing this process with members and supporters over the coming months but make sure you’ve had your say by giving us your thoughts on where the Society should be by 2020 in our online survey.

At the Electoral Reform Society we plan to be a key agent in any future reform so it is vital that we take a hard look at ourselves and reform the way that we work with you – our members and supporters. This event was the first of a programme of activity we will be launching to further engagement and consultation and we hope that you can see us learning from our past mistakes and those of the Yes campaign, and starting as we mean to go on.

This is an exciting time for reformers and as governments fail and new democracies spring up this isn’t a time for retreat – it is our time to get the issues of democratic reform on the national agenda.

Look out for our full report on the event and footage from the day, coming soon…

Comments

http://www.prsa.org.au Geoffrey Goode

The Victoria-Tasmania branch of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia donated 1,000 pounds to the Alternative Vote Campaign. Many of us were disgusted by the highly misleading and insulting references the UK Prime Minister and some of his senior colleagues made about the Alternative Vote option, which Australia has used successfully for over 90 years, after it replaced, in 1918, the first-past-the-post system inherited from the UK. It is worth remembering that it was replaced, not by a referendum, but by parties that gained government after realizing how unfair it would be for them in future elections if they did not improve the electoral system.

If Australia still had the primitive and unfair first-past-the-post system, its last federal election would have resulted in the replacement of the outgoing Labor Government with the Opposition parties. That did not happen, owing to the larger number of effective votes that a preferential system ensures will be counted, but the Opposition parties, to their credit, did not clamour for a return to first-past-the-post, as they know that would not be popular with voters, and they have benefitted electorally from the absence of that arbitrary system previously.

The poor showing for the Alternative Vote in the UK referendum suggests that the self-interest of parties might be a more fruitful avenue for persuasion of the merits of a fairer electoral system, and that might even enable a realistic future scenario of STV proportional representation for the House of Commons, rather than the far less satisfactory practice of using single-member constituencies. The Bill for STV PR for the House of Lords is a good start, as it might reveal the superior virtues of that system to both the parties and the voters.
Keith Gardner

I am of the opinion that you are deviating from the real matter in hand, getting involved in general politics is not why I am interested in this organisation.
You should be campaining for PR, I repeat PR, NOT AV, or STV and all the other variations, PR,PR PR again and again until we get it.
Millions and Millions of voters live in areas where no matter how they vote, the same party will get in decade after decade.
Untill we have proper PR with no constituency boundaries we will get no meaningful change from FPTP.
I say again PR,PR,PR,!!!!!
David Bird

We need to edge our society towards democracy.This can be done if we accept “first passed the post” but send to parliament both the 1st and 2nd passed the post adjusting constituency boundaries
accordingly.Immediately more than 60% of a constituency would feel that they are represented in the Commons. ALL MEMBERS need to involved in deciding. NO MORE opposition politics. Parties would still have their role but not in parliament.Should members elect a leader whose role is to bring about a consensus?
Parties have too much power and PMs particularly.Issues need to be rationally debated and members decide by voting. Frequent referenda are needed that are binding on parliament unless parliament feels that it needs a further referendum.
TJ17

I agree with Geoffrey. Cameron may have granted the referendum to take place, as part of the coalition compromise. However, whilst people say that this is because Cameron is open to change, I feel that Cameron has intentionally making it hard, by making statements based on his opinion, disguised by fact.

e also neglected the positives of the system and told many that it would make elections harder. For the apathetic citizens, who didn’t know how it worked, their choice was destined to be for FPTP, just because of the coverage of attacking AV’s simplicity. In a class of 30 mixed ability 15 year olds, a good 28 instantly got how AV works. There we go, then. Simple, really. About 25 were in favour of such a brilliant change. Shame that wasn’t the same for the public.

When the people are angry with the government, but people still want to vote through a system which wastes their vote, I have to dismiss their anger.