Why AV won&#39;t spell RIP for tactical voting

Champions of the voting reform system proposed for Britain must avoid promising more fairness than they can deliver

All sorts of claims, many of them greatly exaggerated, are being made for and against the alternative vote system, which is being put before the people in a referendum at the start of May. But the yes side needs to take particular care with one proposition.

Some enthusiasts, such as Neil Kinnock, have been suggesting that under the reform "every vote will count". The core argument for AV is that because voters will be able to rank the candidates in order of preference, they will no longer have to choose between heart and head.

An anti-Conservative voter with Green sympathies, for example, will be free to vote for this minor party without fear of throwing their vote away and letting the Tories in, the argument goes. They can give their second preference to Labour, the Liberal Democrats, or whoever else is most likely to keep the blues at bay.

All of this is often true; the difficulty comes with appearing to suggest, as Lord Kinnock does, that it can be guaranteed in every case.

A system of multiple rounds of voting, as used in France, does indeed allow every voter to express their fondest hopes before using their vote in an informed way to avert their darkest fears. But the same is not true of the form of AV that is on offer in the UK.

Instead, the candidates with the poorest showing drop out in succession, and the second preferences of only the most distant losers are initially counted. If the second preferences of the Monster Raving Loonies, for instance, were sufficient to push the first-placed candidate over the winning line of 50%, then the second preferences of the third player in the seat will not even be counted.

That example is highly contrived, but the same point could apply in many real cases. That is particularly so in Scotland and Wales, thanks to the operation there of a four-party system.

Consider Aberdeen North, for instance, a Labour-SNP battleground where the Lib Dems came a distant third and might hope to be the tie-breakers under the reform. They might not get the chance, however: Labour would be quite likely to scoop up the second preferences of the last-placed Scottish socialists.

Next up to give their second choice would be BNP supporters. Once the spoils of the BNP voters had been dished out, it would be the turn of the Conservatives. And if any significant proportion of them were true enough to their unionists roots to vote Labour to keep the SNP out, then Labour would be home and dry, and the Lib Dems would never get a say.

Third-placed Labour supporters in Dwyfor Meirionnydd would very probably have suffered a similar fate in 2010. Chances are Ukip, independent and Lib Dem transfers would have handed Plaid Cymru a majority before they had any say.

I have not trawled through every seat in Wales and Scotland to suit this case; other non-English seats would no doubt make the point even more forcibly. But there was one pair of English seats I did think was worth tracking down: Dorset South and Dorset West. The first is a Lab-Con marginal, the second a Lib-Con toss-up. The musician and democratic activist Billy Bragg, a Labour supporter who is now the vice-chair of Yes! To Fairer Votes, has in the past used the pair persuasively to illustrate what is rotten with the current system.

As a Labour supporter in Dorset West, he feared letting the Tories in, just as he knew many Lib Dems did in Dorset South. His response was to organise a tactical swap of red and yellow votes between the two. He may have helped Labour pick up Dorset South against the odds in both 2001 and 2005. But the real point was that things would be much better if people did not have to mess around in this way.

So what would have happened under AV with the 2010 results? In Dorset South it is conceivable, though admittedly unlikely, that an overwhelming transfer towards the Tories from Ukip and assorted other minor parties would have pushed the Tories over the winning line without the supporters of the third-placed Lib Dem having any say at all.

In Dorset West, by contrast, transfers from Ukip alone could well have got Tory Oliver Letwin home and dry before supporters of third-placed Labour's even had a shout. To be sure of being left with no voice and an MP they didn't like, anti-Tory voters in such constituencies would have to make a tactical calculation on polling day, exactly as they do now.

None of this is to dispute that AV is an important step towards resolving the psephological tussle between heart and head, or that it will achieve this outcome in many seats. But it will not so do everywhere.

Lib Dems ? who have been used to casting wasted votes in many parts of the country ? will be particularly dismayed if they learn that the reform on offer does not guarantee it will not happen again. So far, the official line from Yes! To Fairer Votes has been suitably cautious. But as the campaign rolls on, reform enthusiasts will need to take great care not to promise more fairness than they can deliver.

Tom Clark

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