Sir – You published excellent pro-AV letters last week. Yet wilful distortions from the No campaign continue to confuse the issue.
The latest is ‘Defend equal votes: keep one person one vote’, a slogan clearly designed to mislead people into believing that AV is not one person one vote, when in fact it is.
Anyone unclear about this should recall MP Jo Swinson’s memorable analogy in a recent Any Questions broadcast: if I ask you to get me a Mars from the canteen, or a Twix if they’ve run out of Mars, then I still only get one chocolate bar.’ Because almost two-thirds of current MPs were elected on fewer than 50 per cent of the total votes cast in their constituency, our present first past the post voting system leaves most voters in the UK represented by an MP they didn’t vote for! How can this claim to be a fair electoral system?
Whatever its limitations, the Additional Vote system at least ensures that your MP has the consent (even if some of it is second or third preference) of a majority of the voters in your consistency.
We’ve elected governments by first past the post since early in the nineteenth century. A switch to a system that more fairly represents the intentions of all voters, not just those who support larger parties, is long overdue.
Robin Gill, Headington
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