Katy Ereira

Why Vote YES to AV?

Today, I am going out to vote yes to the alternative vote system. I urge you to follow, even if you don't think that AV is perfect - show them you care about the way in which we elect MPs.

Here are reasons why you should vote YES to AV:

You can read more about the arguments on the Yes to Fairer Votes, Yes to AV campaign website.

Here are not reasons why you should vote NO to AV, taken from the No to AV campaign website:

AV is costly

The change to AV will cost up to an additional £250 million. Local councils would have to waste money on costly electronic vote counting machines and expensive voter education campaigns. With ordinary families facing tough times can we really afford to spend a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers' money bringing in a new voting system? Schools and hospitals, or the Alternative Vote – that's the choice in this referendum.

Australia uses a similar system to AV, and they have always hand-counted the results - no electronic counting machines in sight. Electronic counting machines would be costly, but they are entirely unnecessary. We do not have general elections very often, and the costs of performing them are spread out over many years - what it does cost will be negligible.

AV is complex and unfair

The winner should be the candidate that comes first, but under AV the candidate who comes second or third can actually be elected. That’s why it is used by just three countries in the world – Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Voters should decide who the best candidate is, not the voting system. We can't afford to let the politicians off the hook by introducing a loser's charter.

The winner is the candidate who comes first - under a different system. The only way the 'person who doesn't get the most votes in the first round' could end up winning is if the person who won the first round didn't get over 50% of the vote - that is, not enough support to be considered the favourite. Also, AV isn't used by just three countries in the world - it's actually used by our own government to vote on some issues within parliament. Clearly it works for them, why can't it work for us?

AV is a politician's fix

AV leads to more hung parliaments, backroom deals and broken promises like the Lib Dem tuition fees U-turn. Instead of the voters choosing the government, politicians would hold power. Under AV, the only vote that really counts is Nick Clegg's. We can't afford to let the politicians decide who runs our country.

We had a hung parliament at the last general election, and Nick Clegg still made a U-turn on his policies - and that was using the current system of First Past The Post. Instead, AV eliminates tactical voting - you can truly vote for your favourite party knowing that if they don't have a chance in hell of getting in, you can state an alternative preference. And besides... I quite like the coalition government. ;)