OK I promise not to say too much more about the AV referendum, I’ve been and voted, and really most everything that could be said has been. However I’m seeing loads of pro-AV articles at the moment, and there is a huge fallacy they’re promoting that is really starting to get on my nerves. The claim that to win in AV you have to have majority support is just nonsense, as a simplistic example can show (well simplistic examples are popular with Yes2AV so I don’t see why I can’t use them).
Let’s consider 10 voters just because it makes the maths easy, and they’re voting for a whole 5 parties. Voting as follows:
| Parties | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voters | Party 1 | Party 2 | Party 3 | Party 4 | Party 5 |
| Voter A | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Voter B | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | |
| Voter C | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | |
| Voter D | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | |
| Voter E | 3 | 2 | 4 | 1 | |
| Voter F | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Voter G | 2 | 3 | 1 | ||
| Voter H | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Voter I | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
| Voter G | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||
So with out hypothetical votes cast lest see what happens:
Round one Party 1 and Party 2 both have 3 first preference votes, so more than the other parties so they go through. The parties with the least first preference votes now get dropped, so goodbye to parties 3 and 4. Party 5 got 2 votes so they go through to round two.
In round two Party 1 picks up one second preference vote giving it 4 votes.
Party 2 doesn’t pick up any second preference votes so still has 3 votes.
Party 5 also doesn’t have any second preference votes so still has two votes.
So that ends the counting and Party 1 wins with 40% of the vote and so gets in on a minority of the votes, when the electorate would rather have been governed by someone else. In fact on the strength of second preference votes Party3 is by far the most popular choice with a stonking 80% os the second preference votes. Too bad they got knocked out on the first count.
So there you go, AV still not making sure that the winning party actually has any support from the majority of the population. Fantastic.
Yes I know this is contrived, but it makes the maths simpler and the various, cat Vs. dogs and pubs Vs. coffee were equally contrived so as a popular idiom would have it “bite me”. Oh sorry for the lack of graphics, they’re really not my strong point, if someone wants to make a flash movie then be my guest.
