I believe that voting should be simple, fair and easy to understand.  That’s why I’m campaigning for no vote in alternative vote referendum in May.

 

Our existing voting system is based on one vote for the candidate you would like to win – it’s as simple as that and it has worked well for hundreds of years.

 

Yet under AV some votes are counted more than once - how can that possibly be fair?

How can that be, you might ask.  Well with an AV system voters for smaller parties – like BNP and the Greens - would have their votes counted several times.  Worse still, a candidate in second or even third place could end up being declared the winner!  In essence the second, third, or even the fourth, choice of a BNP supporter can count as much as the first vote of someone who supports one of the mainstream parties.

Confused?  Well you should be, because the AV system is deeply complicated.  There are so many outcomes and possibilities that it is utterly confusing compared the First Past the Post (FPTP) system we currently enjoy.

 

AV is scarcely used elsewhere.  Only three countries use it for national elections – Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Australia.   It is unfair, unclear and unaccountable and I would urge others to vote against it in May.

 

Perhaps, worst of all, nobody actually wants the AV system.  The referendum, costing more than £100m, is merely to appease the Libdem politicians, but they don’t actually want it – they want proportional representation.  It’s all rather bizarre really.

 

It would be an expensive mistake to adopt a voting system that nobody wants, voters can’t understand and where some votes count more than others. One person, one vote, that’s what I say.