Dan Snow's Alternative

Here's a brief explanation of AV and why it's clearly a better system that our current First Past the Post, and why we think you should vote YES on May 5th.

UPDATE - There's now a handy poster / leaflet version you can print out and pin up!
http://www.letsavabeer.com


There's a lot of nonsense talked about AV but the truth is simple - by every measure it's a fairer, more effective and more common sense voting system.

Hopefully this film shows that whereas our current system can produce obviously unfair results, AV will always produce a result the majority of voters are happy with.

There are many other ways in which AV is an improvement including:
- fewer safer seats
- no need for tactical voting
- harder for extremists to get elected

For a detail look at these issues there are many excellent blogs such as:
http://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/is-av-better-than-fptp/

http://niaccurshi.blogspot.com/

http://ipswichspy.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/why-you-should-vote-%E2%80%98yes%E...

and of course the Yes Campaign site:
http://www.yestofairervotes.org/

Please do make the effort to vote on May 5th -- this is our one chance in a generation to change the way this country works for the better.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• AV
• Alternative Vote
• Referendum
• Dan Snow
• The History Guy
• Voting
• Pubs

[nathankw]

Thanks for the (mainly) positive comments. In answer to some of the criticisms that this analogy isn't an exact model of our current political you've missed the point this video is making.

What its designed to point out is that AV is common sense and what you'd use for any group decision. It's obvious that only taking into account people's first preferences will lead to bizarre and unpopular decisions. It's true in every other area of life so why not political voting?

[PEA29]

The problem with this video is that it assumes that all the other party's are the same.

Imagine the coffee shop was the Tory party and the other votes for the pubs were the Lib Dems, Labour and BNP. The video implies that because the other party's votes added together are more than the Tories, the country should have a Lib Dem/Labour/BNP coalition.

I would like to see the Yes to AV campaign use differing examples such as going to the pub, to church, for coffee and bowling.

[Participativa1]

Brilliantly explained, Dan. It's a shame the AV referendum didn't favour a change. I absolutely must come up with something like this to explain how the electoral system works in Spain, it's supposed to be proportional, but actually is not.

[masonfreeparty]

AV is an occult symbol that symbolises the seal of saturn,masonic emblem,..its basically evil that is being used to manipulate minds...w.b.yeats the golden dawn elitist,crowley friend wrote a book AVision...so dont be taken in by this shit..there is more to it than meets the eye...there is a saturn demon called 'AVE'...Hence we get the word 'SAVE'...jesus saves and all that bullshit,..you're being led down the garden path or stairway to heaven[saturn] ;-)................

[irishgodfatherchris]

@MarkB1ngham not that I'm aware, but I'm not from the UK as you may have guessed so I'm not overly sure

[MarkB1ngham]

@irishgodfatherchris Didn't we get a second preference???

[irishgodfatherchris]

@MarkB1ngham wasn't Mr. Johnson elected by the supplementary vote and not preferential

[kcirdrab]

Well, that campaign went well didn't it : D

[billywong9]

@maurice Thanks for illustrating a very important point. The self-appointed progressive elites have such a low opinion of the general public. They believe we need the LibDem to be in power permanently to guide us through difficult decisions. The "thick" public respectfully disagree

[MarkB1ngham]

@maurice Didn't the 'No to the EEC' get something like 1/10th the funding of the YESers in the 1975 referendum?

[maurice]

On an issue that required the public to have some learned knowledge to know where they stood, all the apolitical thick majority were frightened by wild nonsense scare stories on the No side and in the tabloids. The campaign was not resourced with a fair parity for the Yes side. Breaking the precedent from 1975 only the Noes got a mailshot to every home financed. Yes got no chance to refute the Noes factual claims to all who they reached. So was a totally corrupted illegit referendum run on lies.

[rikwebber]

Many Thanks to Dan Snow and nathankw for all your efforts on this. It may not have been successful on this occasion but you fought for the right side.