by Peter Bensley
published on Facebook on Thursday, 21 April 2011: reprinted with permission.
Here's the full text of Cameron's speech on AV: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12504935
I don't mean to give the impression that there is only one lie in this speech. This is not at all the case. But rather than enumerate and refute them one by one I want to focus on one and make it absolutely clear why I am convinced that the Prime Minister is trying to mislead you.
"Supporters of unpopular parties end up having their votes counted a number of times…
…potentially deciding the outcome of an election…
…while people who back more popular parties only get one vote."
Let's look at a sample AV Election:
First Round: E is eliminated.
■A 22
■B 21
■C 20
■D 19
■E 18
Second Round: D is eliminated.
■A 27
■B 25
■C 24
■D 23
Third Round: B is eliminated.
■A 34
■B 32
■C 34
Fourth Round: A is the winner.
■A 55
■C 45
According to David Cameron, E voters are counted four times: For their first choice in the first round, their second in the second, and so on, while A voters are only counted once.
This is a lie.
The fact is, the votes for all candidates are counted four times. The votes for A are counted in the first round, then again in the second round, then again in the third and fourth rounds.
If the A & B votes truly were counted only once, and weren't counted as many times as the C/D/E votes, the election would look like this:
First Round: E is eliminated.
■A 22
■B 21
■C 20
■D 19
■E 18
Second Round: B is eliminated.
■A 5
■B 4
■C 24
■D 23
Third Round: A is eliminated.
■A 6
■C 25
■D 25
Fourth Round: C is eliminated. D is the winner.
■C 24
■D 26
If you vote for a candidate who is never eliminated, your second choice never comes into play, but your vote is cast in every round, and keeps your candidate from being eliminated in every round.
So when the Prime Minister says that E voters get many votes while A voters only get one, there are only two possibilities:
1.The Prime Minister of the UK does not understand how runoff voting works.
2.David Cameron is deliberately lying to us all for political gain, and hopes that we will be too naive to catch him doing it.
We've all heard a lot of jokes about how lying is to politicians what swimming is to fish, so it's easy to be cynical and blase about this kind of dishonesty. It's easy to keep on voting for someone even when he clearly has this much contempt for you, because, hey, the alternatives are all politicians and therefore liars too, right?
By treating this behaviour as inevitable we've made it acceptable, and that's what I'd like to see change.