Voting method emotions

[jack]

Here are a random collection of thoughts on the voting reform referendum.

Don't let apathy win

From what I can tell, a lot of the "yes" campaign and essentially all of the "no" campaign has been hopeless. (Not as bad as some political campaigns, with the exception of the "AV kills babies" poster[1] which is pretty awful. And excepting some excellent volunteer education work done.) But please, please, don't vote against or abstain just to spite the campaign. If you genuinely don't want to change, then vote "no". If you genuinely think you don't have enough information, then abstain. But you're not voting for the "yes campaign" or the "no campaign" -- if they're crap, it still means you've got to have one voting system or the other, and the voting systems were there before the campaigns. There have been plenty of informative links -- if you're reading this, you probably know as much as anyone else about it, and there is no perfect oracle of knowing. Picking your best guess and going with it is the best we have to offer.

Emotional arguments

I've seen many well-reasoned arguments. I was mostly convinced by AV, but I know numerous friends haven't been. However, I admit it's sufficiently complicated it's in the domain of best guesses and heuristics rather than watertight logic. And when you're trying to convince someone of something, you need to both convince them rationally why it makes sense, and also convince them emotionally of why it's appealing.

The "no" campaign have many arguments that (I think) are pretty much blatantly false, yet are very very appealing nonetheless, like:

* It's too expensive
* It's complicated
* It kills babies
* It leads to hung parliaments which are ineffective and unbritish
* It was proposed by the coalition and you hate the coalition

And many astute friends have several very good reasons against, like:

* It may let in the BNP
* It's not worth the risk to leap into an unknown
* OK, it's not THAT complicated, but seriously, however competent voters are, a massive segment will STILL get it wrong
* It fails the concordat criterion
* It ought to be PR but it isn't

It seems like AV is lacking equally persuasive arguments. The campaign pushes "make MPs work harder and be less corrupt" but I don't think that packs rhetorical punch. Even very cute animal videos on the subject, don't seem to be truly simple. But I think there could be decent soundbites that are simplified, yet hopefully both persuasive and non-distorted. Let me see if I can make some:

* Want to seize the only chance in your lifetime to improve the electoral system? Vote yes.
* Ever hold your nose and vote labour to keep con out even though you'd rather vote libdem? Vote yes and you can do both.
* Ever hold your nose and vote labour to keep the BNP out even though you'd rather vote conservative? Vote yes and you can do both.
* Ever felt disgusted with the pointlessness of mainstream politics, but didn't want to vote BNP? Vote yes and you can do both.
* Ever wanted to vote socialist, UKIP, green, pirate, lib dem, or other, but feared your vote would be wasted? Vote yes and you can do both.
* Ever urged someone not to run so they don't split the vote? Vote yes and you won't have to.
* Ever wanted to see politicians forced to make some effing promises in advance and effing stick to them? Vote yes for more coalitions and they'll effing have to work together!
* Like Stephen Fry and Tim Gowers? Vote yes.
* Feeling unsatisfied by the coalition? Take advantage of one unmissable thing they've got done[2].

I don't think those are balanced, but I think they're as good as the "no" reasons.

Unfortunately, I think they're the sort of thing that will appeal to people already excited (rightly or wrongly) by the idea, not people (rightly or wrongly) sceptical.

[1] For the love of all that is holy, I wish I were making this up, but I'm not. It's (a) cruelly emotionally manipulative (b) completely meaningless -- almost everything the government does costs _some_ money, so saying "there are worthy causes other than this one" is always true (c) it would be outright fraudulent if only fraud laws applied when you were putting your country's future on the line, rather than your own money, since the figure is based on completely false assumptions.

[2] "What has the coalition done for us?" Quite a lot, actually, whether you think it was a good deal or not, but I can't find the convenient link with a list of dozens of items, but it was there.

Comments

[katieastrophe]

Here's one side of the coalition's successes, at least: http://www.whatthehellhavethelibdemsdone.com

[jack]

Thank you! Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of.

[katieastrophe]

FactCheck's blog post debunking myths from both sides of the AV argument is an interesting read.

It notably trashes the myths about:

• MPs needing 50% support (tl;dr an MP could still win on less than 50%, but it's really unlikely)
• AV being used to elect Cameron as leader of the Tories (tl;dr they use a very similar method but not exactly the same)
• AV costing £250m (tl;dr the electronic voting/counting machines won't happen and the referendum happens even if we don't switch to AV)
• AV probably won't help the BNP (tl;dr they may get more votes but probably still won't get seats - this is obvious because they are against AV and even they're not so stupid as to be against something that would help them)
• AV still means one vote per person

Problems with your arguments I would pick out, though:

* it is possible we might see a new referendum in our lifetimes. Unlikely, but possible.
* I think I know what you mean by "vote yes and you can do both" with relation to tactical voting (that you can vote for your preferred party and have a backup option of another party just in case, right?) but it reads awfully like you're saying you get more than one vote to me :/

[jack]

It notably trashes the myths about:

That was a good link, thank you :)

Problems with your arguments I would pick out, though:

it is possible we might see a new referendum in our lifetimes. Unlikely, but possible

Yeah. I meant that was likely, rather than guaranteed; I admit that while striving to be at least somewhat balanced, and for all of my points to be representative and non-distorting, all of them are simplified, and probably not literally true.

but it reads awfully like you're saying you get more than one vote to me

When I was writing, I momentarily forgot the need to avoid anything that sounds at all like the ridiculous "some people get more votes"[1] myth; I was writing more for reasons to like AV, rather than continuing to debunk the lies/myths about the election, but it would have been better if I'd been able to do so without even coming close to the spectre of "some people get more votes".

[1] I can't see why, if the candidate you voted for wins, why you should have a right to complain whether someone else voted for one or two losing candidates, although I can see why people would worry about it.

[katieastrophe]

I can't see why they can complain, because under AV, when a candidate is eliminated, any votes for them count for zero and second preference becomes your one vote ;)