Comments on: Pushing PR forward (or, “Fuck You, Crawley”)

By: Neil

Neil — Sat, 14 May 2005 01:48:59 +0000

What do people think of the idea for a mass burning of voting cards outside polling stations at next month’s Staffordshire by-election?

I think this would be a great way to protest at how worthless voting is in this safe seat!

By: Paul Davies

Paul Davies — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:08:43 +0000

what made it worse i guess was the fact he wasn’t on the press for it, because he only decided he could make it at the last minute. ah well…

By: Hugh

Hugh — Thu, 12 May 2005 15:19:27 +0000

Good for him! He was the only member of the panel he didn’t introduce – distressingly for him, he was also the only member of the panel I didn’t recognise anyway.

By: Paul Davies

Paul Davies — Thu, 12 May 2005 14:52:13 +0000

Who he? He Lord Lipsey. He good man. He serve on Jenkins Commission. He even blog now and then. :)

By: Hugh

Hugh — Thu, 12 May 2005 13:17:27 +0000

Yes – I was at the meeting too, and although I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout and the obvious passion of convictions, there was (and I suppose always will be) a sense of being amongst the converted (and not so much being preached to as reaffirming one’s beliefs in turn!). The chair (who he?) did say that there was to be a move towards specific steps to be taken next – but the most obvious one he highlighted was, erm, to give money. That said, it was clear that this election has provided a powerful demonstration of the arguments at issue.

By: Steve Guy

Steve Guy — Thu, 12 May 2005 12:48:16 +0000

Anyone involved in this issue is strongly urged to read the Jenkins Commision report. Whenever a room full of people meet to discuss this issue, one or two people will want to air their preferred system. The problem is that this blunts our campaign, and opponents accuse us of being unable to offer an alternative. While the various merits of AV, AV+ and STV may be of interest to people like us, they will bore the pants off the average voter. In my view, we need to unite behind a system that has been thoroughly researched and documented - and commisioned by the government. And that has to be Jenkins. The system could be put to a referendum straight away and is not too radical. The last thing any of us would want to achieve is a referendum on PR followed by loud public arguments about which system to go for! Once we have PR, we can always have a debate about improving it!

By: Paul Davies

Paul Davies — Thu, 12 May 2005 12:21:02 +0000

glad you enjoyed it Neil. Much as I’d love to say we crammed 500+ into that room, we’re told it only holds 300, so we reckon 350 is a fairer bet. Still fantastic tho. Most of them seemed to be in the pub afterwards as well, which was fun.

Written a bit about it here: http://www.makemyvotecount.org.uk/blog/archives/2005/05/last_nights_mee.html

sadly not as informative as it might have been, but the first one died on me, and I couldn’t face writing something huge again.

By: Otis

Otis — Thu, 12 May 2005 08:02:39 +0000

As a bit of a political novice, does anyone have a more detailed description of how AV+ (and the other major voting systems) works? Despite having a “How it works” section, even the ERS’s site seems fairly vague on erm, how it works. Why is your example of Shaun woodward not possible under AV+? Who decides upon the extra “consolation” seats for counties, and under what rules are they given?

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 12 May 2005 02:07:22 +0000

Like Paul says, I think any of the alternative systems is preferable to FPTP. I would vote for any of them, including AV. We may have to accept incremental progress. Peter Hain is pushing AV, this would be a start. Although its not any more proportional it at least removes the need for tactical voting and ensures 50% support in a constituency for who is elected. Once we had AV and inevitably more minor parties represented, we could then push for PR from a stronger base.

I went to the meeting tonight in Westminster. The committee room was packed out. Im not very good at estimates but I would say over 500 people were there easily!

Peter Tachell suggested we need direct action to get this thing going. Media stunts like the Fathers for Justice and Countryside Alliance use. The panel mostly disagreed with this and said electoral pressure was more important, but I think he has a point. There is a vigil outside parliament being staged on Tuesday.
Check MVC website for details. They are also publishing a more detailed analysis of the election soon, describing the faults of the present system.

By: Paul Davies

Paul Davies — Wed, 11 May 2005 11:40:33 +0000

You’ll be glad to know that we are already thinking along the lines of most, if not all, of the things you suggest. It’s been a little slow, as we didn’t know how the election was going to pan out, then it turned out pretty good, but we weren’t totally sure what the reaction would be (although doing our best to make sure people noticed) and in the last couple of days (thanks to the Independent) it’s all gone completely nuts.

Plenty should be happening on the streets, we were gonna have massive viral stuff going on during the election, but John Cleese pulled out at the last minute and that sort of fell apart…

Also chatted to MySociety about the Pledgebank this morning, for example, so all in all we’re thinking along similar lines. The meeting tonight is very much a key point in the campaign, because it should show us how much legs this thing actually has… but expect good things, and thanks for thinking about it :)

And especially for Edward: I guess we’ll have to agree to differ. Voting reform has been stymied too many times by a bunch of anoraks arguing over the best way to do it. IMO (and partially in the opinion of MVC I would guess) this is not as important as showing people why we should be discussing this at all. We stand for broad proportionality and voter choice and being fairly amenable people, we’re fairly open-minded on the rest of it – the nitty gritty can be sorted out later.

By: Edward

Edward — Wed, 11 May 2005 00:30:13 +0000

My problem with MVC is that they just seem to be running down the current system without any alternative – that is the easiest job in the world and the least constructive.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 10 May 2005 21:52:04 +0000

They don't exclusively promote AV+ but certainly favour it... have clarified in the above blog entry now...