Letter: AV obviates the need for tactical voting

If my first choice is the front runner right through to the end, I give my one vote for that candidate in each round of voting. If my first choice is eliminated, with AV I can transfer my one vote to another candidate. And so can every other voter. That's "one person, one vote".

There are other voting systems that do award decreasing numbers of points for successive preferences. But these voting systems have three major flaws. First, to ensure "one person, one vote", every voter would have to mark a preference against every candidate.

Second, your second and later preferences would count against your first preference when the points are added up. Thirdly, such systems can produce perverse results in which a candidate with an overall majority of first preference votes can be defeated by a candidate with fewer first preference votes.

AV avoids all these problems. AV provides "one person, one vote" without forcing every voter to mark a choice against every candidate. With AV your second and later preferences never count against your first choice.

With AV, any candidate who secures more than half of the first preference votes will be elected. And of course, with AV there is no need for tactical voting - you can vote for what you really want.

JAMES GILMOUR

East Parkside

Edinburgh

IN 2010 in my local Banff & Buchan constituency, our MP was elected with 41 per cent of the vote. If Alternative Vote had been used, as the second candidate had 31 per cent and the remaining three candidates shared the other 28 per cent, it is probable that she would have secured one-third of the reallocated votes and won the seat. Her final vote would have included second, third and fourth preferences and would not change the fact that 59 per cent would have preferred one or more of the other candidates.

The AV system might well have resulted in the election of the second-placed candidate, if he had received just over two-thirds of the reallocated votes. This would have returned an MP who only had the positive support of 31 per cent of voters, and two-fifths of whose aggregate winning votes were second, third or fourth preferences.

In this case 69 per cent of electors would have preferred one or more of the other candidates. In what way could such a "second past the post" result be seen as a better outcome for the electors?

The Alternative Vote has appropriate uses in electing a leader around whom a party or a trade union must unite, but it is entirely inappropriate for electing Members of Parliament.

I trust electors will reject it.

SW SHAW

Rothen, Cornhill

Banff

REGARDING MA Underwood's letter (22 April), I agree that whatever voting system - AV or not to be - is applied, it is the elected members who matter. The trouble with democracy is democracy, because it engenders people trying to please so they can be elected. It's something like raising children, and more so today with so many competing interests for the child's favourable attention.

It is no wonder that politicians, like parents, promise the moon and end up having to try to pacify huffy kids and disgruntled electorates, because the promises they made are impossible to honour.

However, this being said, the politicians and parents are not always blameless. Politicians do face inbuilt problems with democracy and parents have to cope with general social trends, etc.

Both lots have to contend with the eternal conundrum of trying to please, and same thing, trying to be popular.

Pressure today might be greater because of so many competing influences. But pressure to please has always existed. So have people who manage more than others to resist it.

IAN JOHNSTONE

Forman Drive

Peterhead