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The Pros and Cons of AV- NAWO's Elizabeth Sidney and Monica Threlfall consider both sides of the debate.

May 5^th - We Voters Have Our Say!

By Elizabeth Sidney, 8/02/2011

It's a simple choice. Do we want to stay with our present electoral system of FPTP (First Past the Post) or move to the slightly more flexible AV (Alternative Vote) system?

The main claim of those seeking to retain FPTP is that it (nearly always) delivers a clear-cut result, with one party in Government and the rest consigned to opposition. Other supporters of FPFT point out that AV would give small parties undue power (in coalitions). FPTP is also supported by MPs who would lose their seats under AV. There is strong support for retaining FPTP in Parliament, led by John Prescott and Margaret Becket.

Yet, there are very powerful reasons for changing, well set out by the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy and Yes to Fairer Votes. The Bishop of Exeter is one of ten bishops supporting change ‘on the grounds of justice and accountability'. Most cogent of the reasons, perhaps, is that the Parliament we have elected by FPTP is quite unrepresentative of the voters. Only 1 in 5 MPs is a woman, for example. In 2005, the Labour Party was elected on the lowest share of the national vote any single party ever (32.6%). Many MPs have been elected by less than 50% of their constituents, having gained a majority well below that figure. They thus represent a constituency most of whose members do not want them to do so.

This outcome cannot happen with AV (see box). All voters will have cast their votes in rank order and a candidate who leads with less than 50% of first choice votes will have his/her position reassessed by the allocation of voters' second choices. A strong accumulation of second votes may see another candidate come forward as being nearer the voters' choice, but if there is still nobody with 50%, third choices will be taken into account. Thus, no candidate can be elected unless s/he has gained 50% of votes.

FPTP and AV: A Comparison

	For the Voter	At the Count
In FPTP	The voter is given a list of candidates and puts a X against the candidate of their choice	The candidate the most Xs is elected. They may not have received 50% of the vote,
In AV	The voter is given a list of candidates and puts 1 against the candidate they prefer, 2 against their second choice and so on, putting all the candidates in rank order	If any candidate receives 50% or more first choices they are elected. If not, the weakest candidate is eliminated and their second choices distributed among those remaining. If this does not produce a candidate with 50% or more support, the process is repeated until one is found.

Opinion polls show a shift from 44% seeking change in June 2010 down to 32% in January 2011. But women's support for change remains high: 61% in November 2010.

Under FPTP it is very difficult to dislodge long-term MPs in safe seats. Their constituents become apathetic. A low turn-out is consistently linked to an MP's longevity in office.

Would AV help more women to enter Parliament? Peter Facey, Director of Unlock Democracy, says not much, as there is no certainty that women will secure more first or second votes. But optimists see reasons why it could help quite a lot. In the first place, voters hesitating to give first place to a woman might very well put a woman second. In any event, candidates' campaigns would change. Instead of simply hammering away at their rivals, they would need to bear in mind the views of those who might vote for them as second choice. AV should introduce a more nuanced campaign, with more awareness of potential consensus. Although AV will not sweep aside the prejudices with the Fawcett Society finds still beset women candidates, it could shake up long-established rigidities and start sensible reforms.

Of course, national legislation could promote gender parity in Parliament as well as in Board rooms. It has worked in Sweden and Spain. But such legislation presumes a Parliament seeking change and Parliamentarians assured of constituents' support. This is not the case in the UK. We have had determined efforts to change FPTP, notably in 1917 and 1931, but all have been voted down by Parliament.

This time, at last, we have a real chance to introduce change. It is modest enough, but it may initiate greater reform. Let us be thankful, work to gather supporters and go to vote Yes on May 5^th.

Political Scenarios around AV and women's chances of being elected

Monica Threlfall
Reader in European Politics, London Metropolitan University

The extraordinary fact that British public is being asked to vote without the government providing any good hard information about the proposed new system has led commentators and campaigners to take sides with insufficient knowledge. This article sets out some likely outcomes and scenarios, evaluating what effect they would have on the chances of getting more women elected.

Firstly scenarios resulting from some basic features of AV:
• All single-member/single winner systems are politically exclusive:

AV is a 'majoritarian' system, meaning: citizens only have 1 representative in their constituency; so one candidate wins all available seats ('single-winner' system). By definition, this excludes the presence of 2nd and 3rd, representatives who could represent the other large proportions of voters supporting losing candidates (multi-member constituencies). Result: large swathes of electoral 'deserts' where parties can never win the single seat in a series of contiguous constituencies stretching across Britain, despite having a mass of voters in the area. They are 'owed' about 2 seats for every 10 constituencies where they can't gain an MP.

More women? All single-winner systems, whether by majority or plurality, disadvantage women because of the biases in the selection procedure by party members or leaders at constituency level - this is established by extensive research. Only PR systems with a party rule or legal requirement to field a "gender-balanced" party list of candidates (30/70, 35/65, 40/60 - it varies) obtain the higher levels of women MPs in Europe, as the data held by the Inter-Parliamentary Union shows (www.ipu.org).

• AV should strengthen the 2-party system:

AV requires a candidate to accumulate over 50% of the turnout vote on the day. Any system that requires an absolute majority provokes voters into voting for their preferred likely winner without risking a vote to smaller parties who are most unlikely to accumulate support from over 50% of the ballots, even with 2nd preferences.

AV entrenches the 2-party system instead of opening it up. In Australia, the Liberals and Nationals have converged into a single 'Alliance' party. The 2 big parties took all the seats bar 1 in 2010 on first preferences alone.

More women? This could benefit women if the two major parties both field large proportions of women - but they don't. If the smaller parties are the more feminist, this does not help much as they won't get elected anyway. AV offers no improvement over FPTP in this respect.

• AV could discredit new MPs who don't make the 50%

AV cannot ensure ALL MPs get elected with 50% of preferences. Without compulsory preferences, research on the UK shows many leading candidates will probably not accumulate enough preferences to be tipped over the 50% mark if voters don't choose enough 2nd and subsequent preference candidates. The system will have to allow a leading candidate with a plurality to take the seat. AV supporters have been vocal in their condemnation of the small majorities with which MPs win a seat - yet the new system will have to allow this anyway. Are these MPs to be discredited?

More women? Both male and female candidates could suffer for this under AV.

• AV could wipe out small parties from Westminster

The Westminster parliament gained 11 small party seats in 2010, all of them with pluralities of between 31% and 40% of the turnout. These could all be lost under AV if they can't accumulate extra 2nd and subsequent preferences (Thomas Lundberg paper to PSA, 21.04.11, http://www.psa.ac.uk/2011/UploadedPaperPDFs/1255_666.pdf

And even if these MPs did survive, small parties cannot be more successful under AV than they are now unless their candidate comes top or runner up with 1st preferences. This is because third-placed candidates cannot benefit from 2nd preferences on ballots to the two leading parties. The 2nd preferences count starts by eliminating bottom-place candidates (eg the eighth or tenth-placed) and moves only upwards, and stops with ballots to third-placed candidates.

More women? As we know, only Left-wing parties field more women than average, but the UK scenario of small parties is neither leftist nor feminist except for the Greens. Right-wing, extremist and Nationalist parties do not field more women. Under FPTP, the answer would be for the Greens to field more women so as to capture some more feminist support - but this doesn't work under AV as explained above and below.

• AV could squeeze out the Greens

In the UK, the Greens won Brighton Pavilion with 31% of the turnout, giving them 1 MP for 1% of the national vote. Under AV, the Australian Greens with as much as 12% of the national vote, were unable to come top in more than 1 constituency - winning only 1 MP. Most of their 2nd preferences went to the Labor party yet they did not become kingmakers either as Labor won its seats before the 2nd preferences were added.
If AV induces voters to a massive swing to the Greens and their candidates come top or runner-up, then they could benefit from 2nd preferences from ballots to the third-placed party, and maybe win the seat - OR get pipped to the post time and time again and be left out of Parliament altogether. And since Westminster votes go towards the election of a Prime Minister, Labour and Conservative candidates will continue to benefit from tactical voting with extra votes both under FPTP or AV.

More women? If the Greens field more women under AV, more women will feature as losing candidates.

Finally,
• AV could put a squeeze on the fielding of women candidates

As we know from previous elections, women Prospective Parliamentary Candidates have great difficulty getting selected to stand for election on behalf of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. With minds focused on candidates getting that 50% of the turnout, the bar will be raised with further biases of various kinds on the part of selectors. These range from biases regarding having one woman to represent the whole constituency, to those after selection in the run-up to the elections, inherent to the myriad local alliances that could be made at constituency level over pledges by one party to another to urge their voters to give their 2nd and subsequent preferences to this or other candidate. As we know, when it is a matter of power politics and wheeling and dealing, women politicians tend to lose out to men. So they could far greater obstacles than at present.

By what calculation could women candidates benefit from 2nd preferences? In the usual scenario of leading Conservative and Labour candidates, ballots to third-placed Liberal Democrats might contain 2nd preferences for a Conservative or Labour woman candidate and this would then be transferred to her - but ONLY IF she were already a candidate, which takes us back to square one regarding Conservative and Labour reluctance to field women in the first place.

Alternatively, given the feminist sympathies among some Labour voters, ballots to Labour might contain 2nd preference for a woman candidate of another party. But these ballots would not even be transferred unless Labour comes third-placed (ie loses) AND the Conservative or Liberal Democrats were already fielding a woman candidate - both currently infrequent, and in future, unlikely scenarios.

• AV encourages all manner of pre-election deals between parties, which could vary and contradict each other from constituency to constituency. In Australia, each party can issue a How-To-Vote card in which it says who the 2nd and subsequent preference should be according to the deals struck.

This "concentrates more power into the machines of well-disciplined political parties". Then if the 2nd preferences of ballots to a smaller party are shown to have tipped the leading candidate over the 50% mark, s/he could be beholden to this party whether there had been a formal (printed) deal or not. "Like a lobbyist, the smaller party has power but no democratic accountability", concludes Antony Brown, http://www.av2011.co.uk/Q4.html. This is particularly worrying as, after the Liberal Democrats, the next most popular party in the UK is UKIP.

More women? As mentioned above, political deals at party machine level are not likely to favour women, and especially not newcomers to the system, as they often are, particularly ethnic minority women, who are currently under-represented. Importantly, are these deals likely to favour women candidates or advocate stronger government equality policies? In UKIP only 3 out of 17 Executive members, and 1 out of 11 MEPs, are women. They have a record of voting in the European Parliament against improvements to women's lives. Their 2010 Manifesto does not once mention women, gender, or equality. Yet they could hold some deciding 2nd and subsequent preferences for getting an MP elected.

All in all, no research has identified solid arguments that AV in any way helps women into politics - a key goal for a democracy in the 21st century, for which Britain lags behind in 53rd place in the world rankings - in the company of Eritrea, Uzbekistan, and Czech Republic, having dropped even lower than the 50th place it held a year ago [ http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm ]

What system would get more women elected?

We know that more women get elected under PR systems. This is not strictly because of PR but because when parties field a list of candidates for seats in a multi-member constituency, they feel under pressure not to field just men because... it looks bad! Worldwide pressure from the feminist movement's demand for 'parity democracy' with a 50/50 or 40/60 gender balance in parliaments led parties to adopt a minimum gender quota rule for candidate lists. Parties thereby started to introduce women onto their lists, at first at the bottom (with no hope of getting elected), but gradually the women moved up the candidate rankings into winnable seats. A good example is Spain where 36% of deputies are now women.

How could this be translated into the Westminster system?

Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and MPs don't vote to give up their seat to reapply to be selected for a list. But it is possible to keep campaigning and voting in the constituencies with their incumbent MPs, while at the same time changing the system of allocating seats to constituencies.

Constituencies can be grouped into electoral districts of, say, 10 existing constituencies. Parties could then field their candidates in the form of a list of 10 constituencies with 10 candidate names and their photo. This would encourage parties to present more diverse lists in terms of gender, ethnicity and age, creating competition among parties over the look of their list with looming bad publicity if they field an 'all-male, all-white, all-ancients' list. So parties would be under pressure to select more women and minorities to stand, and traditionalist selection committees insisting on white male candidates would be ticked off for ruining the look of the list.

Anyone interested in seeing the ballot paper and how this seat allocation method would work see http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/research-units/iset/staff/monica-threlfall.cfm

55th Commission on the Status of Women

For all of those attending CSW this year, NAWO's Annette Lawson has compiled a briefing note with lots of handy hints and tips for the event.

Click here to download the Briefing Note