AV campaign uses storytelling with impact

Here’s some good news. Someone in the campaign for AV gets this storytelling thing.

Last month, I was the guest speaker at the Hackney Liberal Democrats’ AGM. At the end of the meeting, a man from the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign was given a bit of air time. He didn’t give lists of reasons for voting AV. Nor did he spout statistics. He told a simple story about his time in NUS. The point was, when he went to lobby MPs, those with safe seats were much less likely to give he and his colleagues the time of day. I’m sure that his story made an impact on those present.

Since then, I’ve come across this video – Ralph’s story - on the Yes to Fairer Votes website. Ralph, a decorated World War II navy veteran, tells us how he and members of his members fought in various wars,

“for what? For democracy”

but

“I’ve voted in every election for 64 years but my votes have been confiscated by the system.”

Ralph’s story works because it passes Anecdote’s tests for a story with impact. In particular, his story packs an emotional punch. Wait till you get to this:

“For all the say I’ve had, I might as well have died on the D-day beaches or on the Russian convoys or in the Pacific later on.”

And this:

“I hope that one day, before I pass away, I will have the privilege of casting a vote that counts for something [and] for once in my life, I’ll have my say.”

To some ears, Ralph’s story may sound too much like a case for proportional voting, which will not be on the ballot paper next May. But he makes the pitch for AV that is most likely to work with voters: the Alternative Vote would allow people to cast their first preference for the party they really supported without wasting their vote.

It looks as if someone has learnt the lessons from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, in which ordinary Americans told stories about why they were voting for him. And the Yes to Fairer Votes website somehow reminds me of Barack Obama’s effort.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

AV is public's third choice of voting systems, says new poll

Today, FT.com/Westminster reports on a new poll showing that AV is less popular than first-past-the-post which is less popular than PR.

The research by ODC was commissioned by Lindsell Marketing, a business consultancy, and says that:

In a poll of over 2,000 British adults, just 29% wanted to keep the current voting system, with 20% in favour of the Alternative Vote system (the subject of a national referendum on May 5th 2011) and 45% wanting some form of proportional representation.

You can see the full results here.

The FT’s Jim Pickard suggests that Nick Clegg should have gone for a referendum on PR rather than AV. The only trouble with that is that David Cameron and the Conservatives would need to agree to hold a vote on PR!

Pickard is closer to the mark when he says:

Alternatively, this could just be proof that public opinion on such issues is far from fully-formed and there is still all to play for. How many members of the public would die in the ditch for any of the options?

The Lindsell findigs need to be compared with the YouGov poll from the autumn showing that public understanding of AV and how it works is still very low. I can’t find the specific question that Lindsell asked, but we should be sceptical of the results if people were invited to say whether they want “some form of proportional representation”. That’s a very vague proposition and I’m not convinced that most people get what “proportional representation” means. And the YouGov poll found that most voters had never heard of the party list or AMS systems; nearly half had ever heard of STV.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

AV in action: Labor and the Greens cut a deal on transfers

Next May, the UK is due to vote on whether to elect MPs by using the alternative vote (AV) instead of first past the post.

We have some signposts available, to show how AV might work here. Australia’s constitution is based on the Westminster model. But the Aussies have used AV (or, as they call it, preferential voting) to elect their House of Representatives – the equivalent of the House of Commons – at every national election since 1919.

Australia is to go to the polls for a federal election on 21 August. Today, the Australian Greens have said they have chosen to direct preferences (or “transfers” as Brits might say) to the Labor Party ahead of the conservative coalition in an unspecified number of House seats. The arrangement will apply in all but a handful of constituencies, where Greens branches will exercise their right to choose otherwise. In return, the Labor Party will direct its preferences for the Senate, which is elected by STV, to the Greens ahead of all other political parties in all states and territories.

The preferences swap could make a big difference next month. Current polls indicate that the election will be very tight and, with the Greens on around 13 per cent of the primary vote, the governing Labor party may need their preferences to stay in office. The deal will surely help Labor to retain many of their key marginal seats.

Labor and the Greens have been somewhere like this before. In 1990, Bob Hawke’s Labor government seemed headed for defeat and the opinion polls showed a slide of public support towards the Australian Democrats and Greens, due to a combination of protest votes and a new concern with environmental issues. Hawke’s environment minister, Graham Richardson, developed an impressive programme of conservation policies and assiduously courted the “green vote”. In the end, the Democrats and Greens combined won 17 per cent of the primary vote. But two thirds of their preferences went to Labor, who narrowly won the election, despite winning less than 40 per cent of first preference votes.

Deals or no deals, Green voters’ preferences have flowed to Labor in recent national elections by ratios of more than 3:1 in 1998 and 2001 and 4:1 in 2004 and 2007. The latter contest saw Labor restored to power and the generous allocation of Green preferences inflated their majority in the House.

The ABC’s Antony Green, the indispensable guru of Aussie elections, has found that for House seats, the main drivers of Green voters’ preferences to Labor have been the size of the primary percentage vote for the Greens, whether the party decides to direct preferences in particular seats and the presence of a donkey vote.

Green says that the real importance of today's deal concerns the election for the Senate, where either party may be able to gain seats at the expense of the Coalition.

It has to be stressed that this deal won't be responsible for delivering the balance of power [in the Senate] to the Greens. . . . The purpose of the deal is to weaken the Coalition’s position beyond what would naturally occur if the Labor government is re-elected.

The UK does not have an elected upper house (at least, not yet). But the developments in Australia raise some important questions about how the parties would behave under AV. A few months ago, I would have suggested that most Liberal Democrat voters would usually give their second preferences to Labour candidates, and vice versa. With the advent of the Cameron-Clegg coalition, that’s not nearly so clear. Still, we can’t be certain that either of the coalition partners would try to direct their supporters as to how to channel their preferences. Deals or directions might cramp their style for post-election coalition talks, alienate potential voters or cause internal party ructions. As Senate-based parties, Australia’s Democrats and Greens have never had to face those sorts of dilemmas.

Perhaps the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats -- and Labour -- would leave it up to local, state or regional parties to decide whether and how to direct preferences. But that could create other problems for party strategy and branding (“Lib Dems say one thing in Tory seats, another in Labour areas” . . .). The other option is to leave it up to individual voters to decide and hope they follow the subtle clues and dogwhistles.

We may hear claims, based on the Australian experience, that AV could skew future governments’ policies towards “minority” concerns, as the larger parties worked up special policy planks in order to woo third and fourth party supporters. But the way Labor played green issues in the Australian election of 1990 seems to have been a one-off. The reality is that AV seems always to pull Australia’s main parties towards the middle ground of politics.

One thing is for sure: whatever voting system is used, politicians will be politicians. I make no claim to be an expert on the Australian Greens and have no axe to grind with their leader, Senator Bob Brown. But Liberal Democrats in the UK will either laugh or marvel at the way he has distanced himself from today’s deal with Labor. [Click here and here] Here are a few quotes:

I've got enough to do without sitting at tables discussing preferences.

I'm saying to people, vote one Green and put your preferences where you want to.

I don't like backroom preference negotiations with other parties. In fact, I'm sick of it.

There’s one lesson from Australia: cross party deals that are about votes always look messy. So you have to keep your brand as clean as possible.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley

Winning the AV referendum: 10 lessons from New Zealand's experience

So, the government plans to hold the alternative vote (AV) referendum on 5 May 2011. I for one will be happy to support a change of voting system. It’s not that I think that using AV would radically change UK governance for the better. In fact, I think that hyperbolic predictions and promises are best avoided on this one. But AV has some important benefits. In about two out of three constituencies, more voters would see their choices count for something. All MPs would need the support of at least 50 per cent of those voting. That should enhance the democratic legitimacy of the Commons.

Holding a public vote on changing the voting system is a radical step for the UK. But it has been done before. In 1993, my home country, New Zealand held the second of two referendums to decide how to elect MPs. An established Westminster democracy voted by a 54:46 per cent margin to get rid of first past the post (FPTP) voting and put in its place the German-style mixed member proportional (MMP) system. [For more details, click here; here; here; here and here.]

Of course, the UK in 2011 will not be New Zealand in 1993 and, for that matter, AV is not a proportional voting system. But I believe that some valuable lessons can still be drawn from the New Zealand experience.

1. Reformers need to convince supporters of at least one of the major parties that a change will be better for their cause than the status quo. In New Zealand, Labour won more votes than National at both the 1978 and 1981 general elections, but ended up with fewer seats. Labour’s sense of injustice helped to kickstart the electoral reform process and kept the show on the road at key stages. Labour voters (whose party was back in opposition by 1993) backed the change by a margin of 2:1. In the UK, current polls suggest that Labour voters may well swing the final result.

2. Reformers should be prepared for attempts by pro-FPTP MPs to booby trap the process and/or make the reform option less appealing to voters. In New Zealand, the government added 21 "much hated" MPs to the MMP option. Sure enough, “more MPs under MMP” became one of the catch cries of the anti-change campaign.

There are already strong signs that some Labour and Conservative MPs are colluding to frustrate the passage of the government bill containing a referendum and reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600.

3. The pro-reform campaign must be grassroots-based and above and across party politics. Debates about electoral reform are always about political party advantage. And when any of the parties weigh in, the public naturally senses that political calculations are involved. New Zealand’s Electoral Reform Coalition (ERC), contained activists from several parties and none, but no well-known political figures. As a locally based, decentralised campaign that contained activists - but not MPs - from all parties (except, I think, National) and none, the ERC may be a useful model for UK reformers. But . . .

4. Reformers shouldn’t be surprised when the forces opposed to reform are well-funded and fight hard. In New Zealand, the pro-FPTP lobby eventually coalesced around the Campaign for Better Government (CBG), which was largely funded by major business interests. A leading light in the pro-reform lobby later recalled how the CBG was able to pay for high quality research material and mount a well-funded advertising campaign against MMP

targeting "the least educated and most gullible" sectors of the electorate by providing "easily digestible, alarming material" warning electors of the consequences of MMP. . . The ERC was ill prepared for this onslaught . . .

Now, who wants to bet the same sort of thing won’t happen in the UK?

5. The government should invest in educating the public about both first-past-the-post and AV. In New Zealand, the government appointed an independent Electoral Referendum Panel, which worked at arm’s length from politicians and public servants, for both the 1992 and 1993 votes. The panel had a substantial budget for the task of providing voters with impartial information about the mechanics of the options that were under consideration. Some of the panel’s output is in this clip.

6. Debates about electoral reform are won by using the most powerful frames. The report of New Zealand’s Royal Commission into the Electoral System provided a high level view of the frames used for discussing different voting systems. When it came to the referendum, those wanting reform framed the choice in terms of fairness between parties and groups in society and the need to place a democratic check on future governments (accountability). Those campaigning against MMP claimed that “faceless” list MPs from minor parties would have too much power (accountability) and that future governments would not be as effective. (Click here to see how the ERC countered the “more MPs under MMP” argument.)

In the UK, supporters of AV will frame the current system as one that allows MPs and governments to take office but without having democratic legitimacy. Supporters of FPTP will use the accountability and voter participation frames, arguing that we need a voting system that is easy for people to understand and enables them to eject quickly governments they don’t want anymore. They will also say that is more likely to avoid coalition governments, thereby promoting stable and effective government. John Prescott is framing the referendum as a pay off for Nick Clegg, part of a dirty political deal between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives.

7. Those making the case for reform will need to engage with the way voters feel about politics and politicians at the time of the referendum. Kiwi voters voted for MMP because, by the early 1990s, confidence and trust in politicians and Parliament had plunged to new depths. Both Labour and National governments had broken election promises and launched radical policy changes that had not been part of their manifestos. Polls showed that politicians ranked alongside used-car salespeople as the least-respected occupational group in the country.

Some of Britain’s “anti-politician” mood may have dissipated since the Coalition Government was formed. But if voters are deeply disgruntled by the time of the referendum, the reform campaign will need to play to these feelings. Even if they are not angry with politicians in general . . .

8. As is usually the case, this referendum will be about the government almost as much as the questions on the ballot paper. New Zealand voters cheerfully ignored warnings from the then the prime minister, Jim Bolger, and other senior members of an unpopular (centre-right) National government about the supposedly dire consequences of using MMP.

Next May, if the UK coalition is not travelling well, or its economic policies are unpopular, voters – especially Labour supporters - will be less inclined to “risk” another coalition. John Prescott is already encouraging Labour voters to use the referendum as a stick with which to beat the coalition and especially the Lib Dems.

9. The reform campaign will succeed by embodying its narrative as the cause of the people against the powerful. There is some evidence that New Zealand’s CBG over-reached themselves, with a big burst of advertising spend in the last week before voting. The political scientists Nigel Roberts and Alan McRobie later concluded that, whereas the ERC campaigners usually came across as sincere and credible, the pro-FPTP lobby suffered from a basic problem:

"built as it was on the fears and uncertainties of people who were not quite sure of the desirability of change, their campaign was remarkably effective.….. the CBG's greatest handicap lay in its failure to convince the electorate that — despite . . . repeated protestations to the contrary — it was not simply a front for the business roundtable."

10. All this suggests that politicians of all parties may be well-advised to take a back seat during the referendum campaign.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley

A referendum on electoral reform? Yes, but let's think it through

It seems incredible, with these new calls for a referendum, but, in the wake of expensesgate, the cause of electoral reform is back.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, has an article in today’s Times calling for a referendum on electoral reform for the Commons, to be held on the same day as the next general election. Mr Johnson may have various motives for coming out at this time in favour of a referendum [click here and here] but he is a long time proponent of electoral reform. Other members of the cabinet are known to agree with him.

Yesterday’s Observer supported reform, arguing that “the expenses scandal . . . has exposed the underlying illegitimacy of a parliament stuffed with complacent lifers in safe seats.” The same paper featured a letter from a variety of politicos, authors, artists, NGO leaders and others, with backgrounds across the political spectrum, demanding a binding referendum, to be included on the next general election ballot paper, on whether to adopt a more proportional electoral system. The Electoral Reform Society is running a campaign for such a vote. After years of near-silence, Liberal Democrats are back on the case.

MPs should be chosen using a proportional voting system. Not because “fair votes” would magically transform British politics or cure the nation’s ills. But it would be the key to strengthening the Commons as against the executive. We could have a parliament that better reflects the range of political viewpoints in the UK. Other countries’ experiences suggest that a change to PR would speed up (but not guarantee) the election of MPs who reflect the UK’s gender and ethnic diversity. In time, government policies may be more responsive to the needs of particular groups. That includes the poorest members of society, who tend not to vote or live in marginal constituencies.

There are good reasons for supporters of reform to welcome the new calls for a referendum, as the only democratic, legitimate and practical way of achieving change in the electoral system. On the basis of New Zealand’s experience in 1992/93 [click here and here], I have long argued that British voters would only opt for change when they were furious with politicians from both the main political parties and saw a chance to get even. People are now angry with the whole political “establishment”, and with a depth of feeling we have not seen before. Recalling the Obama administration’s mantra, “never waste a good crisis”, it’s hardly surprising that long-time electoral reformers sense a golden opportunity to achieve their aims.

But I fear that Britain's electoral reformers are, once again, going to be disappointed with these new calls for a referendum. One reason is the lack of clarity around what the public would be invited to vote on and how the choices would be arrived at.

The ERS wants “a referendum on electoral reform to appear on the ballot at the next general election”. It’s wise at this stage to call for “reform” rather than getting bogged down in the details of rival forms of proportional electoral systems.

If the referendum is to be legally binding – that is, on parliament – the ballot paper will have to give the options: first-past-the-post or a specific alternative. Supporters of reform need to know what they are campaigning for. Straight away, a basic, strategic dilemma opens up. Alan Johnson supports the “AV plus” system that was recommended by the Jenkins Commission. But the ERS officially supports the single transferable vote (STV). So do the Lib Dems. One of the main lessons from both New Zealand, and Scotland’s constitutional shake-up is that a proposed new reforms must have cross-party support. The Jenkins formula surely stands a better chance of gaining acceptance from Labour MPs and activists. It is not, however, a perfectly “proportional” system. STV meets this standard, but may be a harder sell. [For more details and a quick sample of how deeply some opinions are held, click on to Costigan Quist’s blog here and read the comments]

How to resolve this dilemma? The letter to The Observer suggests that the public would vote on whether to switch to a “more proportional electoral system [to] be drawn up by a large jury of randomly selected citizens, given the time and information to deliberate on what voting system and other changes would make Parliament more accountable to citizens.” But it would take time, perhaps many months, to complete this process, including passing the legislation required to set in train a binding referendum.

And here’s the real rub: with less than a year to go until the general election (assuming it’s held in May 2010), time is not on the reformers’ side. The outcome of a “citizens jury” may not, in the end, be credible. Tainted or not, MPs from all parties need to buy into the process and a citizens jury – still a relatively unfamiliar concept - may not be acceptable to them. Another option is to have another full-blown commission to study the options. That would take at least a year to complete. One of Alan Johnson’s strongest arguments today is that “the heavy lifting has already been done” by the Jenkins Commission. He adds that nothing has fundamentally changed (apart from the public getting much angrier with politicians) since Jenkins reported in 1998.

The New Zealand experience showed it takes a lot of time and effort to engage with a bemused public, who are more concerned with other things, and explain the merits of the alternative voting systems. The New Zealand reformers’ final victory in 1993 was the result of many years’ campaigning by a broad cross-section of political and community groups. The anti-change forces hit back, and started to close the gap in the final months before the vote. There’s no reason to suppose that this country would be any different.

Make Votes Count seems to have got its act together compared to where it was say, ten years ago. But I hope the reformers will be geared up and well enough funded for the sort of campaign that would be needed to win a referendum.

I really hope that these concerns turn out to be misplaced, that government and enough parliamentary opinion moves behind having a referendum and that Make Votes Count and its allies campaign effectively for reform. Despite being a long time supporter of STV, I’d happily campaign for “AV-plus” on the basis that it represents real progress. If no referendum is held next year, the current calls for reform need not be wasted. Once again, what is sometimes called the “progressive” side of politics is considering actively the possibilities and strategies for acheving electoral reform. A new momentum is building and that shouldn’t be allowed go to waste, as happened after Tony Blair broke his 1997 promise to have a referendum, and then shelved the Jenkins report. Let’s hope it doesn’t take ten more years for another opportunity to come around.