The Christian Institute have published an easy to read paper on the First Past the Post (the existing voting regime) and the proposed Alternative Voting (AV) system. It does not guide the reader to a conclusion and leaves the answer on which voting mechanism is best open.
When election time comes around in the UK, as has been said many times before, a Christian cannot, with good conscience and with knowledge of scripture, vote for any of the three main parties: Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, nor for almost all minor parties. All three main parties are sycophantic in their policies and speeches towards Stonewall and similar homosexual lobbying groups. They also want, in the name of ‘equality’, to legislate against Christians who manifest their religion by obeying God rather than bad man-made laws and to suppress freedom of speech unless it fits within the articles of the current edition of ‘Political Correctness for All’ published by the Department for Education.
The only political party that openly accepts Judeo/Christian principles as being good for society and say so in their manifesto is UKIP. So AV has no relevance to me as I can only vote with a clear conscience for UKIP and I will not rank in preference any of the other parties on principle.
UKIP think that AV will help them to gain seats in the Westminster Parliament, but what I think they are ignoring is that most of their supporters are so repulsed by the three main parties that they will not use their vote to give them any preference ranking. Voting UKIP is a long thought over and self-determined decision that takes courage and conviction to stand alone and not follow the crowd, but to fight against the madness that is driving the main party politicians to take irrational decisions that year on year weaken the UK like a cancer.
There is no certainty of outcome with AV as unless a party gets over 50% of the votes in the first round, who knows what the result for a constituency will be as the second and lower preference votes of the weakest candidates (usually the most extreme parties or candidates) when eliminated are then added to the other parties and so on until a single party obtains more than 50% of the votes.
Yes voting today is more fragmented, but surely it is madness to have a party win the most votes, but less than 50% (first preference votes) in an election, and lose by AV because the second and lower ranked votes of the weaker candidates tip the balance. So what AV achieves is that the preference votes of people who voted first for say the Communist Party, BNP, Green Party, or even the Monster Raving Looney Party could tip the balance in an AV election as they are likely to be eliminated first.
AV does not guarantee that any candidate will get more than 50% of the aggregated votes as if most voters chose to not use their lower preference votes, then as the minority parties are eliminated their ballot paper is put straight in the bin with no reallocation. So what is the benefit? AV introduces randomness and a lack of certainty into the election process. First past the post may not be perfect, but it is easy to understand and it follows the old adage – Keep it Simple, Stupid!
For the majority of UKIP supporters AV is redundant as they will only rank UKIP, but the election result for their constituency is more likely to be determined by people that voted for a minority party candidate to win and used their preference votes. I will therefore Vote No to AV so that my vote really counts.
© 21 April 2011
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Published on www.christiandoctrine.com
Bible Theology Ministries - PO Box 415, Swansea, SA5 8YH
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United Kingdom