Voters will decide on 5 May whether to change the system for electing their MPs AV vote ‘won’t split coalition’
Voters will decide on 5 May whether to change the system for electing their MPs The two sides in the battle over the Alternative Vote (AV) have mounted a fresh drive for support before Thursday’s referendum.
Senior Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne has called for an anti-Tory alliance to change the current voting system, which he says has favoured the Conservatives.
But David Cameron warned voters against AV, which he called “unfair and undemocratic”.
He also said AV “could come with additional costs”.
The referendum on 5 May will decide whether to switch from the current system known as first past the post to AV, where candidates are ranked in order of preference.
Both the Yes and No campaigns include people from different parties, but the debate has pitted the coalition government partners against one another.
In the Observer, the Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne joins forces with Labour’s shadow Business Secretary John Denham in a call for a “progressive majority” to mobilise against the Conservatives.
The article is also signed by the leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, the MP for Brighton Pavilion.
“Britain consistently votes as a centre-left country, and yet the Conservatives have dominated our politics for two-thirds of the time since 1900,” says the article.
“On only two occasions in that long century – 1900 and 1931 – have the Tories won a majority of the votes. No wonder David Cameron says the current system has ‘served us well’.”
The prime minister warns in the Sunday Telegraph that there is a “real danger of exchanging an electoral system that works for one we would come to regret profoundly”.
THE REFERENDUM CHOICE
At the moment MPs are elected by the first-past-the-post system, where the candidate getting the most votes in a constituency is elected.
On 5 May all registered UK voters will be able to vote Yes or No on whether to change the way MPs are elected to the Alternative Vote system.
Under the Alternative Vote system, voters rank candidates in their constituency in order of preference.
Anyone getting more than 50% of first-preference votes is elected.
If no-one gets 50% of votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their backers’ second choices allocated to those remaining.
This process continues until one candidate has at least 50% of all votes in that round.
Q&A: alternative vote referendum AV referendum: Where parties stand
He calls AV “a confusing mess of preferences, probabilities and permutations”.
“AV could come with additional costs, from public information campaigns explaining the complexities of AV to the extra expense of counting votes at election time”, Mr Cameron also argues.
“At this time I think our money is better spent on public services than on our political system,” he adds.
BBC political correspondent Carole Walker says that with so much at stake “the final push for votes looks set to increase tensions within the coalition government”.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg voices support for AV in a Sunday newspaper interview.
“I kept my silence for weeks and weeks and weeks of ludicrous bilge being put out there… to dupe and scare the British people,” he tells the Observer.
Mr Clegg said he hoped voters would be able to “strip away the yah-boo” and see AV as a “relatively modest” change.
With the vote just days away, a new poll poll suggests increasing support for keeping the current system.
Research by BPIX for the Mail on Sunday concluded that 51% of those asked were opposed to the change, compared with 33% who supported it.
Asked if they would use the Alternative Vote if it were introduced, 55% said they would carry on voting for just one candidate.
BPIX interviewed 2,003 people online on April 27 and 28.
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