How Are You Voting On The Voting Referendum?

[Peter Parka]

For people from the UK, that is. Are you going to vote No and to keep the FPTP system or are you in favour of the proposed second vote preference system?
Personally I'm voting no. The new system sounds complicated, unfair and a waste of time.

 

[Springsteen]

I prefer PFTP.

 

[HK]

Undecided. I've heard some good reasons not to keep first past the post. And I've never felt like my vote counts for anything in the current system - you can see why so many people don't bother to vote at all.

 

[Peter Parka]

It seems unfair to me that under the proposed reform, the guy who got the second highest amount of votes could get the seat over the guy with the highest number of votes.

 

[HK]

I need to go and look this up again haha

You number your votes in order of preference instead of having one vote for one person, right? And the idea is that you might get 10 people vote the Red team as their first choice, then 9 people vote the Green team as their first choice, and 8 people vote the Blue team as first choice. So with first past the post, the Red team would win (I think) even though almost double the number of people who voted for them voted against them.

But under the new system, if everyone who voted the Red team and the Green team put the Blue team as their second choice, then the Blue team would win despite technically having the least number of 'first choice' votes.

Is that about right? I know it's something like that I like the idea because it suggests that you can vote for who you like and also who you would be happy with if they didn't get in, and then at least one of your choices stands a good chance of getting in. Whereas now, the party that gets in only has to get the majority, which might not reflect a good portion of the people who voted, so long as they just get past that marker.

 

[Peter Parka]

I need to go and look this up again haha

You number your votes in order of preference instead of having one vote for one person, right? And the idea is that you might get 10 people vote the Red team as their first choice, then 9 people vote the Green team as their first choice, and 8 people vote the Blue team as first choice. So with first past the post, the Red team would win (I think) even though almost double the number of people who voted for them voted against them.

But under the new system, if everyone who voted the Red team and the Green team put the Blue team as their second choice, then the Blue team would win despite technically having the least number of 'first choice' votes.

Is that about right? I know it's something like that I like the idea because it suggests that you can vote for who you like and also who you would be happy with if they didn't get in, and then at least one of your choices stands a good chance of getting in. Whereas now, the party that gets in only has to get the majority, which might not reflect a good portion of the people who voted, so long as they just get past that marker.

Thats pretty much the idea. The counters are going to have their work cut out for them.

 

[HK]

That's true. But I'm okay with that if it means my votes have more of a chance of actually meaning something.

 

[Peter Parka]

The biggest problem I see with it is that it's always between Labour and Conservatives. The minor parties will still get shut out under this system so it's pretty much going to be second votes of the Libs which will decide the election. Seeing that the majority of them are going to support Labour, the Conservatives will always lose regardless and we can then only look forward to a Labour government who can confidently do as they please knowing that they will always win.

 

[Abcinthia]

A bit undecided at the moment but leaning towards voting no.

 

[Zorak]

As usual I won't vote lol