Can we have a Secondary Transfer Vote, so it sounds a bit like CSI?

I haven’t blogged in ages, because I’m lazy. I also loathe and detest politics, but felt I should actually post something about this, this time around.

We’ve been promised a Referendum, so we can choose between various alternative voting systems. There’s one thing that’s really making my head hurt though, regardless of whether it’s a Single Transferable Vote, an Alternative Vote, an Alternative Vote Plus (does that contain caffeine?), or whatever.

The idea is that you pick a “second choice” (or a third, fourth, etc in some cases). If your first choice doesn’t manage to get more than 50% – thus securing a majority – then your vote transfers to your second choice, and so on and so forth, until someone gets a majority. So, if you vote Green Party as your first choice, and they don’t get in, your vote transfers to the Liberal Democrats to see if they get a majority… and so on and so forth.

It gets more complicated than that, of course, so lets just focus on the three main parties. Lets say that the Conservatives and Labour are sat on 40% each, while the Lib Dems are sat on 20%. Obviously, Mr Clegg won’t have won based on that, so the second choice of all those Lib Dem voters kicks in… and hopefully more than half of them will have picked one of the other parties. Sounds reasonable, right?

But hang on. What about the second choices of all of the people that already voted Labour and Conservative? What if everyone who voted Labour and Conservative actually picked Lib Dem as their second choice? Surely, that means that they’re universally more popular than either Labour or the Conservatives… but that doesn’t actually get taken into consideration at any point.

It gets worse, too. They’re toating this kind of situation as bringing an end to tactical voting… but at best, it just displaces it. In an ideal world, everyone will definately vote for their first choice. But then, their second choice becomes the tactical vote. Lib Dem voters might be so determined to ensure that the Tories don’t get into power in their constituency, so put Labour as their second choice. Conversely, every Labour voter might similarly put Lib Dem as their second choice to avoid the Conservatives getting in. If neither party gets 50%, then those second votes kick in, and it all cancels each other out, and ugh. Headache.

Surely it’d be better to count the second votes from the beginning… maybe make them worth half a vote? Going back to the earlier example, if we’ve got a 40 / 40 / 20 split, but all of those Labour and Tory voters picked the Lib Dems as their second choice, then those votes would add up to give the Lib Dems an extra 40% (40 + 40, divided by 2), which pushes them to 60%. Well, 60 points, since it’d add up to 150% in total. That demonstrates that they’re the “least unpopular” option… even with all of the Lib Dem second votes, the other parties could only earn an extra 10 points.

It all sounds squiffy, anyhow. And these “top up” MPs for larger areas… if you look at the geographical map of voting from the last election, look at where the strongholds are, and think about where these larger areas might be: looks to me like it’s a really easy way for the Tories to worm themselves a load of extra seats in a bunch of places.

Obviously, it’s more complicated than all that, and I’m sure some really boring person who has intensively studied politics could clarify things a lot better… but all of the options sound pretty flawed to me. Maybe I should get in touch with Nick and Dave and suggest some of my ideas, eh?

Anyone know the number for No. 10?