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Thursday's vote provides progressives with the chance to embrace reform and reject first past the post

If Britain votes no in this week's referendum on electoral reform, the country will be stuck with a failed voting system. There are other, more party political considerations involved in Thursday's ballot, but ditching first past the post (FPTP) must take precedence.

To recap: under current arrangements, hundreds of thousands of votes are routinely wasted. The opinions of voters in "safe" seats do not register at all. Labour supporters in heavily Conservative areas are invisible and vice versa.

FPTP is what makes it possible for MPs to be elected with less than a majority of votes in their constituencies and for governments to be formed by parties that win as little as 36% of the national vote. It is an affront to the principle of democratic representation. It is plainly unfair.

The alternative vote (AV) system being proposed as a replacement is not perfect. No electoral system is. But it has the significant virtue of delivering a more accurate picture of the will of the people. Voters rank candidates in order of preference. The candidate who comes last is eliminated and the second preferences indicated on his or her ballots are reallocated. That means, in essence, that in order to take the seat, a candidate must secure some level of endorsement from an absolute majority in the constituency. This discourages lazy reliance on a hardcore of dedicated voters. It forces prospective MPs to listen to the views of as many people as possible. It makes politicians work harder for a mandate.

Contrary to the scaremongering assertions of the No campaign, AV sidelines fringe extremists, such as the British National party, since their candidates are unlikely to get many second or third preferences. Meanwhile, it maintains the vital constituency link, so that MPs would still be required to address the specific interests of the area they represent. In fact, AV would strengthen the constituency link, since the pursuit of second preference votes will introduce candidates to sections of their electorates they have generally been able to ignore under FPTP.

The people who gain most from the current system are tribal Labour and Conservative MPs, for whom nuance and compromise in politics are a bore. Generally, they sit in safe seats and imagine that power can be passed routinely from red to blue and back again, as happened for most of the 20th century. The Conservative party is keenest on the status quo since, on aggregate, it got the greatest share of years in power during that duopolistic period.

But in terms of people's actual allegiances and views, the duopoly is over. The share of the national vote going to parties other than Labour and the Tories has risen consistently since the 1960s. The idea that the trend for more plural politics might be reversed by sticking stubbornly to a system that rigs elections for the two biggest parties is naive.

It is also dangerous. No one seriously doubts that British politics is in bad shape. 2009's expenses scandal exposed and accelerated a decline in public trust in MPs of all stripes. Electoral reform is not the only remedy, but preserving the current voting system guarantees a widening of the disparity between the actual complexion of opinion in the country and the distribution of seats in Parliament. That chips away at MPs' claims to represent the people and erodes the legitimacy of government. It is a design flaw that urgently needs fixing.

That is a point of moral principle that the Yes campaign has so far failed to get across. Caught between the competing needs to rebut the No campaign's cynical misinformation about AV and explain its advantages, the Yes side has done neither with sufficient vigour.

Tories can at least claim a certain intellectual honesty in resisting AV, since conservatism habitually prefers institutional habit to progressive change. A far greater disappointment is the willingness of so many Labour MPs to oppose reform. Ed Miliband backs AV, but his unsteady voice has been drowned out by the guttural bellow of his party's most tribal wing.

In particular, a short-sighted notion has taken hold among many Labour supporters that AV should be opposed for no other reason than the fact that Nick Clegg supports it. The Liberal Democrats, according to this view, betrayed the progressive cause by joining forces with the Tories last May. Sabotaging electoral reform would, it is then conjectured, undermine Mr Clegg, weaken the coalition and hasten its demise.

That analysis is wrong. Given their low poll ratings, the Lib Dems are in no position to quit the government and trigger an election. By contrast, a yes vote would send the right wing of the Conservative party into apoplexy. Tory hardliners think that David Cameron has already conceded too much to the Lib Dems already; some mutter that he is not an authentic Tory. They would turn downright rebellious if AV were passed. That is by far the greater threat to coalition stability.

This week's referendum should, ideally, not be viewed through the prism of tactical party skirmishing. It ought to be judged foremost as a proposal to amend the voting system, not a device to reward or punish the incumbent government. But if Labour voters are determined to use this ballot as a weapon to use against the coalition, they should, at the very least, understand how to apply the most effective blow. A yes vote suits Labour's tactical interests and upholds its claim to be a party of progress.

The country now has an unprecedented opportunity to ditch a bad electoral design and replace it with something undeniably better. The only real arguments for maintaining the status quo are that it is familiar and that change and reform are inherently suspect. To accept such views would be a dismal act of collective cultural pessimism. It would signal weary resignation to the gerrymandered politics of a crooked electoral machine that is tailored for the benefit of indolent incumbents. It would bestow undeserved legitimacy on a clapped-out voting system, with which the nation would then, in all likelihood, be saddled for generations.

It doesn't have to be like that. Britain can embrace democratic reform. All it takes is for enough people to turn out on Thursday and vote yes.

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