It's Referendum Time.

On Thursday May 5th Britain will hold only it's second ever national referendum. Sadly the question won't be whether or not I need to sort my life out because the answer to that one's pretty obvious. Instead it will be whether to adopt the Alternative Vote (AV) voting system.

Under AV each voter is given a ballot paper listing all the candidates standing in that constituency. Theoretically there is no limit on the number of candidates who can stand in each constituency but it is normally around 10. After being given their ballot paper the voter then has to rank the candidates in order of preference. So they put a 1 next to their first choice, a 2 next to their second choice and so on. The ballot papers are then collected and all the first preference votes are counted. If any one candidate receives more the 50% of the total votes cast in that constituency they're declared the winner and the counting stops. However if, as is more likely, no candidate reaches the 50% threshold then the candidate with the lowest number of votes drops out. The ballot papers that cast a first preference for that candidate are then re-examined and their second preference votes are added to the totals of the appropriate candidate. If this allows one candidate to reach the 50% threshold then they are declared the winner and the counting stops. However if it doesn't then the process is repeated and keeps being repeated until either one candidate reaches the 50% threshold or there are no more votes left to count. So at the theoretical extreme under AV a candidate can win an election by being the least popular candidate amongst the majority of voters.

Obviously this is much more complicated then the current system called First Past The Post (FPTP) where everyone votes for one candidate and the candidate with the most number of votes wins. This added complexity is putting most people off the idea of AV. So to counter that supporters of AV are quick to point out that voters don't have to rank all the candidates if they don't want to and can just choose to just vote for one candidate like they do under FPTP. Although this is true it doesn't tell the full story. The problem is that there are a lot of people out there like me who (normally) fully understand the AV system because they work with politics or mathematical analysis all day everyday. So while most people are only voting for one or possibly two candidates what these people will do is rank all the candidates in highly complex tactical voting strategies which will give them more say in the outcome of the election. While that's great for me it's hardly in line with the principle of democracy that everybody gets an equal say in the outcome of the election. If fact it seems to be dragging us back to the days when only people from the right sort of background with the right sort of education were allowed to have a say in who ran the country.

So for that reason and the fact that AV massively increases the scope for electoral fraud I will be voting No to AV on May 5th and I urge other people to do the same. Although the opinion polls show that the No campaign has a slight lead I getting more and more worried that AV might just pass anyway. Due to the complexity of the issue the campaign has hardly been electrifying. Coupled with the fact that a lot of people will just want to relax during the first few days back at work following a long holiday the voter turn out is expected to be low, especially in London where local council elections aren't being held. That means that AV could sneak through due to AV supporters being the only ones bothered to go out and vote.