Death Penalty: For The Avoidance of Doubt

No.

Ever.

However ... what it does raise is an interesting discussion regarding indirect democracy.

As I often ask my A Level students; if democracy is a good thing, what happens when MPs and the public collide on an issue such as - the death penalty? A few years ago a very bright young student called it "pick 'n mix democracy"; the public get to choose which issues it ought to have primacy over (death penalty, Europe, single currency, immigration to name a few) and which issues it delegates to parliament (everything else you don't find on the letters page of the Daily Mail, he quipped.) But we don't have a "pick 'n' mix democracy", we just have a parliamentary democracy, I said.

Ah, my padawan learner replied, and there-in lies the issue. Under "pick 'n' mix democracy" the pubic get the choose what they decide about, under "parliamentary democracy" the MPs do. I was reminded of this conversation when the AV Referendum was announced - the classic example. We, the people, don't get to decide on the death penalty (which a lot of people care about about) but do get to decide on AV (which very very very few people care about).

Discuss.

(Oh, and I say this as somebody absolutely and totally opposed - to both the death penalty and AV).

In choosing between FPTP and AV, do I vote for the system that will stop STV?

As a politics teacher I am looking forward to the AV referendum next year (although personally I wouldn't vote to have one; too expensive at this time). I don't yet know which way I will vote, but I am currently leaning towards the "No" side and one thing in particular has been tipping my view.

I am concerned that the people advocating AV are actually those who want full blown PR, which I am definitely against - this article on the Coffee House blog says it all, that all those chosen to push AV actually don't support it but another system.

Why would I vote for a system which may lead, in time, to a system I am totally opposed to?

AV referendum to cost £100m

Either that figure is wrong (but as it came from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg - I doubt it !!!) or I am voting NO just to spite whoever decided to run such an expensive waste of time just as the rest of country is bracing itself for cuts. Honestly - I know I'm a Conservative but is this really the best that the "new politics" can do?

AV if you want to ...

So the news is out (we think) that the referendum on changing the electoral system will be held on 5th May 2011; a little bit surprised that yet again a major issue has been put to the press before parliament.

Anyway, I'm not totally against a referendum but I also think that the voting system will never catch the enthusiasm of people in the way its supporters believe it will.

The Press will now spend a lot of time looking at the views of Tory MPs and the impact it will have on the coalition - for example, if AV loses will Nick and the LibDems pack up their toys and go home? Or, should Labour campaign against AV just to irritate the coalition?

If I were a Tory MP now there would certainly be 2 things that I would look at -

Firstly the date. I am not in favour of combining this with the local elections (and devolved authority elections) because of the potential for confusion and the in-built bias that the will exist in areas that are having elections. The Electoral Commission said it should be held on a totally different day and I agree - this is a major change and people ought to be clear what they are voting for. The worst thing would be for AV to win narrowly and then have voters claiming they were confused which undermines the result.

And secondly is the issue of a threshold; which comes into sharper focus when you consider how low the turnout might be (electoral reform ain't that sexy). Can you really justify this change on 50.01% of a, say, 30% turnout? I'm happy to discuss what the threshold ought to be, but there should be a clear measure of support for people before the change is made.

I hope some MPs take these ideas forward and the House of Commons gets a chance to vote on them - this isn't some LibDem obsession, nor a bargaining chip for the coalition, but the fundamentals of our democracy. This is important and should be taken seriously.

The BBC don't know their AV from their SV; and therein lies the problem...

One of the biggest arguements against any form of PR - aside from it being used as a fig leaf from a decaying government of course - is that it is complicated for the public to understand and PR system lead to higher numbers of accidently spoilt ballot papers.

So the BBC goes to prove the point when today it said on its website:

ALTERNATIVE VOTE
Voters choose their first and second preference and a candidate can only be elected in the first round if they get 50% of the vote
If no-one achieves this in the first round, all but the top two candidates are eliminated and their second preferences redistributed
The candidate with the most votes is then elected

As any AS Politics student can tell you, that isn't true. AV involves the elimination of the bottom place candidate and the votes get redistributed in rounds. The system being described by the BBC is SV, that which is used for the election of the Mayor of London.

Why does this matter? Because LibDems hate SV because it usually traps them out of contention. Let's say the result was:
Con 36, Lab 30, LibDem 28, Green 6
Under SV both the LibDem and the Green would be eliminated and the Labour candidate would probably win.
Under AV, the Green is eliminated which may put the LibDem above Labour; Labour is then eliminated and the LibDem might just win.

But if the BBC cannot get this right, what chance the political class or the public?

This proves the point perfectly.