Forum Topic

Vote YES to changing our voting system

Vote YES to changing our voting system.The AV system may not be full proportional representation but it will move us in the right direction and keep the debate active.So, do something very important on May 5th and vote YES to AV.

Ian Silver ● 5220d46 Comments

Mr Boucher?Is the clue dependent on your generation? In your 1945 hours posting do you refer to a lyric?

George Knox ● 5207d

Boo

Ian Silver ● 5207d

Get over what? Why can't you answer a simple question ie why did you feel the need to ask me if I was gay when this thread was about AV which you started! So come on answer the question.

Christopher Boucher ● 5207d

get over it

Ian Silver ● 5207d

No, not "oh deary me"  please answer the question. Why did you feel the need to ask me if I was gay? Pretty simple really!

Christopher Boucher ● 5207d

Oh deary me.........

Ian Silver ● 5207d

Just interested as to why you needed to ask the question. Perhaps you could explain!

Christopher Boucher ● 5207d

Sorry mate, just asked a question.

Ian Silver ● 5207d

Sorry folks reading this thread, what I should have asked is "Ian, why is this important to you, are you homophobic?"

Christopher Boucher ● 5207d

Ian, does my sexual orientation have any bearing on our discussions so far on this thread? I was starting to like you but I find this question intrusive and incredibly personal. Perhaps I should counter this with "are you black?"

Christopher Boucher ● 5207d

Are you gay Christopher?

Ian Silver ● 5207d

And I thought we were at the start of a new and beautiful relationship! Never mind,we can and probably will always agree to disagree. Tomato, Potato who cares?! HaHa!

Christopher Boucher ● 5207d

What's been posted? Just seems like your rants to me. If you want to refer me to specific postings on another website, feel free, but I simply cannot be arsed to search a forum with no idea what I'm looking for.It is wonderful that we can agree to disagree because I do and you do, so let's call the whole thing off. Haha

Ian Silver ● 5208d

Fine, don't check on what's been posted. Your choice. I've chosen to object to it, thankfully, regardless of the AV referendum we all live in a Democracy where we are able to agree or disagree with others.

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

Nah....can't be bothered.I do understand the comment about Osama though; tongue in cheek I would say but likely true - haha.

Ian Silver ● 5208d

Thank you Ian for explaining your position and comments. Thank goodness for Freedom of Speach and Democracy.Regardless of how I chose to vote, my vote is not irrelevent, it has simply been removed. My comments regarding Mr. Andrews were indeed of a personal nature, simply because he suggested that Labour Party supporters or members would vote for Osama Bin Laden if he were a member of the Labour Party. I find this grossly offensive, as it suggests that the Labour Party would support a global terrorist regardless. Maybe you should look at Mr. Andrews' post on the Chiswick TW4 website.

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

Certainly. With an apparent 70/30 split on the AV vote your vote is pretty much irrelevant; and with a 35% turnout in London, sadly even more so.I appreciate your inalienable democratic rights but also the total inefficiency of Hounslow council but sadly ne'er the twain shall meet.Regarding your comments to Phil Andrews, I found them personal and unedifying (and pointless), hence my post of "get over it".I trust this clarifies to your satisfaction.Regards,Ian.

Ian Silver ● 5208d

Well, that is a really informative and positive reply. Are you able to elaborate a little?

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

IT

Ian Silver ● 5208d

Get over what Ian?

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

Thanks Phil, although I didn't quite get the sense of humour you purport to have displayed. My vote on Av is none of your business. Please feel free not to engage with me, if you see fit, but do not call my colleagues "your people"! I respond to posts on this and other sites in a personal capacity, not having received nor being instructed as to how to should respond. Are you therefore able to apologise and retract your comments re the Labour Party and its' supporters voting for Osama bin Laden if he was the local Labour Party candidate? I presume not unless I hear otherwise.Honesty of course is the best policy.

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

Oh ffs Chris my post was light hearted, intended in good humour and completely in jest. I neither know nor care which way you voted, my reference to your "side" was precisely because I didn't know which way you had cast your vote.  As I understand it members of your party agreed to differ on AV.From now on I shall avoid trying to engage in any attempt at humour or light-hearted banter with you and your people, I had honestly forgotten quite how seriously you take yourselves.

Phil Andrews ● 5208d

Get over it

Ian Silver ● 5208d

How patronising is this Phil! The fact of the matter is that someone has given me duff info which meant that I was unable to vote, thus my democratic right has effectively been removed. Yes, Angela is a very good Officer.I am not sure who you think my "side" would be, as you of all people should understand, my vote is a private matter between me and the ballot box. Equally, and perhaps even more importantly you would care to retract and apologise for your statement on Chiswick W4 suggesting that if Osama Bin Laden were a member of the Labour Party then Labour Party members and supporters would have voted for him regardless. This is disingenous and insulting. I am quite happy, and have been for a long time, to leave your "racist" past in the past but now wonder if the leopard has really changed its spots!

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

Angela is a very good officer but it would seem somebody in her department has given you some duff info.It is to your credit that you take your vote seriously, as indeed I do, but unless your "side" loses by one vote I would put it down to experience and move on.If there does turn out to be one vote in it, we now know who to thank/blame.

Phil Andrews ● 5208d

Interesting thread!I have a postal vote, and having duly completed it, sealed it in all the envelopes provided realised I had made a mistake, not however in where I placed my "X" I contacted Electoral Services and was given the advice that I should write on the envelope "Please re-issue Ballot Paper" This I did in capital letters and red ink, surely enough for people to see. I hadn't received a new ballot paper by last Tuesday so rang Hounslow Council again, only to be informed that my vote had been rejected. Allegedly, the advice which I should have been given in the first instance was to return my postal vote in a plain brown/white envelope to Angela Holding (who I must say was very apologetic) I was thus barred from voting at all, a duty which I take very seriously. Not happy!

Christopher Boucher ● 5208d

I have organised debate on the Alternative Vote. It will be Chaired by the Associate Editor of The Guardian Michael White, who is also a resident of Chiswick. It will begin at 8pm on Tuesday, 3rd May. And will be held at the Chiswick Memorial Club, Afton House, Bourne Place in Chiswick, W4 2EL.It will be interesting to hear what local residents think and take part in the debate by asking questions of our speakers.They will be Mary Macleod MP and Councillor Adrian Lee who will make the case against the Alternative Vote. Speaking for AV will be Mike Tuffrey AM who is a Liberal Democrat member of the London Assembly. And Serge Lourie, who was Leader of Richmond upon Thames Council until 2010. He was a councillor for Kew for 28 years and is coordinating the YES campaign in Richmond.All are welcome. I look forward to seeing you this evening.Best wishes,Cllr Robert Oulds

Cllr Robert Oulds ● 5211d

I don't hold with all this postal voting. I enjoy the mile-long walk to the polling station through the cemetery. Reminds me that it's all futile in the long term.

Susan Kelly ● 5217d

Tony, even with AV you don't have to list your vote in order of preference if you don't want to  - you can do as you do now and just vote for one candidate. I am totally against AV anyway just in case you misunderstood. What I do think is that everyone eligible should have to vote by law, at least that way we'd know how a true majority of the electorate was feeling. It is amazing that people are still dying for the right to vote and yet here we can be so apathetic about it. As I understand it in Australia where they have AV it is law  - first to vote, and also to use all your votes in order of preference, but no-one here is suggesting we should have to use all our preferences, thank God.

Vanessa Smith ● 5218d

I'm postal voting..and thankfully there are only two choices YES or NO!I made up my mind yesterday and put the paperwork in the return envelope. The sealed envelope has been waiting in the Hall for hours and hours ready to be placed in the pillar box outside my house.For some reason..I'm hesitating..perhaps still thinking it through!

Jim Lawes ● 5218d

Me thinks Guy has a point.With FPTP you end up with 3 main different types of voter. The dye-in-the-wool party voter (I've always voted 'x' and always will). The tactical/negative voter (if I vote for 'x' then 'y' might not get in). The protest voter (I'll vote for 'x' even though they have no chance of winning but will do this to make a point).Note - all but the first voter type are informed by the 'chance of winning' - and this is informed from historic FPTP split of votes in that constituency. It also seems that only the protest voter is actively supporting the policies of their party of choice - others are either blindly following what they voted for before, or voting against something, rather than for something.This is sad and wrong - surely we should vote for policies we actually believe in?A change from FPTP is likely to lead to many people considering more carefully which party and even individual they want to see represent them. Especially in the first application as the old tactical views will be thrown into doubt - in the absence of reliable data, vote for who you want, not against who you don't want. Now there's an empowering notion.And on its own makes it worth the effort of changing from the current stale, stagnated and demonstrably unfair FPTP system.

Alan Clark ● 5218d

True, Jim - though of course they are not 'rounds' in the sense of repeated voting - but what we don't know is what effect AV would have had on first preferences.There was a degree of uncertainty in B&I as to who was the strongest challenger to the Conservatives, given AK's unpopularity. Certainly I toyed with voting LD (I didn't in the end) on the basis they were arguing that AK couldn't win and that a vote for her was a vote for the Tories.For me that is one of the major drawbacks of FPTP - many people not voting for who they want, on the basis of tactics.

Guy Lambert ● 5218d

"Conservative Mary Macleod 20,022 37.2 +6.5Labour Ann Keen 18,064 33.6 −5.4Liberal Democrat Andrew Dakers 12,718 23.7 +0.7UKIP Jason Hargreaves 863 1.6 N/AGreen John Hunt 787 1.5 −2.1BNP Paul Winnett 704 1.3 N/AEnglish Democrats David Cunningham 230 0.4 N/AChristian Aamir Bhatti 210 0.4 N/AChristian Peoples Evangeline Pillai 99 0.2 N/AIndependent Teresa Vanneck-Surplice 68 0.1 N/AMajority 1,958 3.6Turnout 53,765 64.4"0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000So under AV, with 53,765 votes cast, the winner would need to achieve 26,883 (50%).Mary Macleod,with 20,022, would need to gain an extra 6861 votes from the redistribution process.  With 10 candidates in that list, if the bottom seven all gave their "next preference vote" to the LibDems, the latter would still remain third.So, that looks like 9 rounds..and would include reallocating the LibDem vote too..for 50% to be achieved by anyone.

Jim Lawes ● 5218d

Sorry pressed send when trying to improve the format.20000 people voted for MM34000 voted for other candidates

Guy Lambert ● 5218d

Conservative Mary Macleod 20,022 37.2 +6.5Labour Ann Keen 18,064 33.6 −5.4Liberal Democrat Andrew Dakers 12,718 23.7 +0.7UKIP Jason Hargreaves 863 1.6 N/AGreen John Hunt 787 1.5 −2.1BNP Paul Winnett 704 1.3 N/AEnglish Democrats David Cunningham 230 0.4 N/AChristian Aamir Bhatti 210 0.4 N/AChristian Peoples Evangeline Pillai 99 0.2 N/AIndependent Teresa Vanneck-Surplice 68 0.1 N/AMajority 1,958 3.6 Turnout 53,765 64.4

Guy Lambert ● 5218d

'nearly 2 out of 3 people voted 'against' our elected MP.'How?

John Todd ● 5218d

Which explanation would that be John?Not sure I explained very much.FPTP means people are elected on 37% of the vote. nearly 2 out of 3 people voted against our elected MP.What's democratic about that?Or was it something else you disagreed with?

Guy Lambert ● 5218d

GuySorry but your explantion defies logic.

John Todd ● 5219d

Sorry Vanessa that was a misstatement: I should have said only 37% of THOSE WHO VOTED voted for M.McLeod, so compulsory voting wouldn't make any difference.Though of course there's an argument that the ones who don't vote would be more likely to be Lab than Con voters.Yes the referendum will cost money - whichever way you vote. The 'setup costs' would be small but I agree there would be some. Then again elections always cost money so perhaps we should stop holding them.

Guy Lambert ● 5219d

"As it is if AV is accepted I'll just vote for the one candidate I want like I do now, there's absolutely nothing to stop me."Let me get this right,you want to force people like me to vote for representatives of parties that I don't like! But at the same time it's OK for you to just vote for the one of several under some sort of AV...Perfick.

Tony Wood ● 5219d

See my point about complusory voting....... Sorry I will not vote for AV - a referendum WILL cost money plus there will be the set up costs, there's no way out of that, I thought the country was skint??????

Vanessa Smith ● 5219d

Vanessa please don't say you have swallowed all the garbage about costs made up by the NO campaign!Yes, only 3 countries use AV but what about FPTP? Almost entirely confined to the former British Empire and only Canada  and (in a very different from) the USA of developed countries use FPTP. Of course Burma, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast use it, but that's not much of an advertisement.Whatever the drawbacks of AV, it is certainly more democratic than FPTP where (let me remind you) only 37% of the electorate voted for our local MP. (34% voted Labour and 24% voted LD)

Guy Lambert ● 5219d

No - let's not have it, let's not forget that Cleggy didn't want this to start off with but as he has to accept what crumbs Dave is prepared to throw him we get offered a half baked shambles that only 3 countries use. So if it's so wonderful why doesn't everyone want it? What would be a better proposal is to make voting compulsory - so all those people who moan about the result being decided by the majority of the minority who bother to turn out to vote carrying the day you would get a truer picture of people's real intentions. As it is if AV is accepted I'll just vote for the one candidate I want like I do now, there's absolutely nothing to stop me. I do so object to the money that is being wasted on this to feed Clegg's ego, disgraceful.

Vanessa Smith ● 5219d

I suspect most people would place it second, so that on an AV system it would claim victory!

Guy Lambert ● 5220d

It is nothing like that at all. The problem is that if the current system is maintained it will be a long long time before the issue is broached again. We really ought to have a more intelligent and progressive attitude to our voting system; the current system is inherently unfair.

Ian Silver ● 5220d

"The AV system may not be full proportional representation but it will move us in the right direction"That's a bit like saying that if you want to go from London to Bristol, going to Aberdeen is heading in the right direction. AV is absolutely nothing like PR, and I suspect that if the referendum gave all three choices using an AV system, most people would rank AV 3rd.

Ian Fillingham ● 5220d