Why AV will cost £250 million

Cynic

AV will be more expensive and more complicated, yet won't deliver proportional representation. Seems like a dog's breakfast to me.

Liberty

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Politics in the UK is a vast business, no country in the world has so many highly paid politicians. We have the EU costing £65bn a year and each MEP costs us a £2m for every four year stint, any MEP not becoming a millionaire after a four year term [and getting 6k a year, inflation proofed pension afterwards] is either stupid or unfeasibly honest. Then it is 635 MPs who mostly rubber stamp EU legislation but cost £1m a year each. Regional government, that is still in place even after being voted out where a referendum was held. Then the Scots, Welsh and Irish governments and then local authorities. The cost of all this is astronomical and they are all useless.

denis cooper

"Our estimate represents the additional cost of AV. The government stated the referendum would cost over £90 million – less, admittedly, than if it were not combined with council elections – and the remainder comes from vote counting machines (£130 million) and voter awareness (£26 million)."

It's already been decided that rather than changing or not changing the electoral system without consulting the people, we will be asked directly whether we want the proposed change, and so the £90 million is already committed.

Some may say that it's the wrong referendum, or even that we shouldn't have referendums at all, but it's absurd to urge people to vote one way or the other in a referendum on the grounds that it costs money to hold it.

Part of that £90 million will be spent by the Electoral Commission to make sure that people know what they're being asked to decide in the referendum, so why should it later be necessary to spend another £26 million telling them how the new system will work? It would only need amendment of the directions given to voters at polling stations and on the ballot papers.

So when it comes to deciding which way to vote in the referendum the only relevant cost which a rational elector might wish to take into account is the claimed one-off cost of £130 million for the vote counting machines which would allegedly be required to handle constituency counts under AV but not under FPTP.

As far as I know the Irish don't use machines for their parliamentary by-elections held under AV, an example from last year here:

http://electionsireland.org/counts.cfm?election=2007B&cons=85&ref

There were eight counting rounds in that Irish by-election, but the first was the count of first preference votes, equivalent to the single counting round under FPTP, while each of the next four rounds involved redistributing less than a thousand ballot papers and could be done very quickly and easily by hand.

Only the last three counting rounds, with several thousand ballot papers to be reallocated in each case, would have created significant extra work.

In our case there would be a chunk of safe constituencies where there would still only need to be one count, that of the first preference votes, and there would be no more need for counting machines than there is now under FPTP.

For example, if the next general election was held under AV then in all likelihood there'd still be only one counting round in Henley, where the Tory candidate got 56% of the votes in 2010, and no more need for counting machines than under FPTP.

In many other cases the tellers could flash through several additional counts reallocating a few hundred ballot papers from independent and minor party candidates, and that would be enough to finalise the result.

Only in a minority of constituencies would the change to AV impose significant extra work on the tellers, which would be a small addition to the cost of holding the election.

So what does NO2AV's £250 million claim actually boil down to? Maybe a few million extra on the cost of holding each general election.

I'm slightly concerned that Matthew Elliott has put his name to this, as I've always assumed that the Taxpayers' Alliance could be trusted to get their analyses more or less right and this is grossly wrong.

Lukr

This argument seems so weak on so many levels you almost think Matthew Hancock MP must have had some hand in developing it

Peter From Maidstone

Will Pakistani and other non-UK citizens be able to vote in this referendum as they are (and do) in General Elections?

TrevorsDen

This is bollocks and its shameful of the Speccy to put out this gargage.

I doubt people would complain about an in-out referendum on the EU or hanging on cost.

Furthermore there is no need for vote counting machines unless you want to piss money up the wall.
There is some well informed comment on Political Betting dot com about this.
And its cobblers to say you need vote counting machines.

It is utterly appalling that partial biased drivel is put out like this under the auspices of 'journalism'.

I might just vote YES after reading this.

ndm

Let's get some context here.

Matthew Elliott's bio at the bottom of the post states:

-- Matthew Elliott is director of the NOtoAV campaign

So what Matthew Elliott means by this:

-- Today the NO to AV campaign has published research showing that the change to AV will cost the UK an additional £250 million ...

is:

-- Today we have published research showing that the change to AV will cost the UK an additional £250 million ...

Bullshit. The reality is that the first past the post system has cost Britain countless billions of pounds over the years as in election after election the country came to be governed by parties the people had not voted for. At the last election barely one quarter of the electorate voted for the Conservative Party. This is hardly the makings of a Government with democratic legitimacy.

But democratic legitimacy is not something that troubles those like Matthew Elliott who demonstrate their anti-democratic credentials by publishing "research" demonstrating that AV will cost the country a whopping £250M. They choose to ignore the cost of not making the Government more responsive and accountable to the people of Britain.

Victor Southern

What on earth do you mean Matthew when you say so archly "special software is required"? Software of the relatively lightweight type required is rather less complex than writing a programme to play Noughts and Crosses.

In fact if one used a perfectly valid edge-punching system with needle sorting and counting scales the job can be done without the use of a single computer or even the need to count anything by hand - weighing votes is actually more accurate and about 50 times faster. Not that I advocate not using computers - I just want to highlight how simple the task is. 30 years ago I devised edge-punch sorting systems vastly more complex than this quite trivial sorting requirement.

The complications of Scotland using different voting systems to Westminster elections is with us whether we change to AV or not. London is entitled to use whatver system the people of London agree upon. Already it does not use FPTP.

I am not convinced by either side of the AV argument but surely a man of your intelligence and resources can do better than these lame arguments.

Robert Eve

NO2AV is the only sensible option.

Fergus Pickering

Tell me, my dear ndm, under the AV system who would be governing the country now? Somebody dropped from Mars that the people had voted for? Or Dave? Or Mad Gordo? Jeeze, what drivel.

ndm

-- Tell me, my dear ndm, under the AV system who would be governing the country now?

Perhaps someone from a party which came up with policies that more than one quarter of the electorate support.

Rob Richie

Matthew Elliott utterly distorts what I said in my talk in London last month about the rise of the Alternative Vote in the United States. No American jurisdictions has gone from a hand-tally to machines because of AV. I said that "machines are assumed in the United States" because we already use voting machines for nearly all our elections, most of which use first-past-the-post.

What I also said very clearly is that one of the issues that has slowed the rise of AV in the United States is that many current machines can't do it -- but that this would not be an issue in the UK because you do hand tallies and it's quite easy to do AV tallies by hand.

Fergus Pickering

And which party would that be, ndm? The Labour Party? But it has no policies at all that I can discern. Do tell me what they are? Still drivelling I fear. Or could you be talking of UKIP which does indeed have ONE policy.

Ron Todd

If we had voting machines would we have to get rid of postal voting, the labour party would not like that reducing many of their voters back to a single vote.

Never underestimate the incompetence of the public sector. There is no software however so simple that they could not make a complete mess of commissioning. And which company that got the contract because they knew the right people would be trusted to set up the system?

ndm

@Fergus Pickering

My intention was that parties - all of them - would have to start coming up with policies which found favour with more of the population.

TrevorsDen

ndm - this is rubbish.
PR and AV and FPTP - the more parties there are the less you get a policy which suits everybody - you assume the lowest common denominator is best. Risible.

I repeat I regard this article as a total disgrace. It is bigoted and full of holes and lies. Shameful.

The truth is studies show that AV does not make much difference to an election outcome. It formalises tactical voting. Its not perfect but no system is.

My preference would be a run off between the top 2 if no one gets over 50%.

merlindragon

I will be voting YES2AV.

I would ask the open source community to develop a computer software that allows quick entry of paper-based votes, and give the money that would otherwise be spent on counting machines to charity (gift aided, too)

As for the 'waste' of £250m, the cheapest option isn't necessarily better or more democratic. I believe AV will encourage more people to vote, and that can only be a good thing.

I hope AV will be a stepping stone to PR, which frankly is what I think this referendum should include. However, the two main parties will not let the country have that choice. Therefore I am very suspicious of their motives in supporting No2AV.

denis cooper

I've just noticed this:

"we haven’t included the costs of additional polling stations, election staff or training."

Just as well, as there would certainly be no need for additional polling stations - why should there be? - if as presumed the count was by machine the costs of the manual tellers would disappear, and just how much would it cost to train staff to understand how AV works?

The article is so deeply flawed that it undermines the credibility not only of Matthew Elliot but also, very unfortunately, that of the Taxpayers' Alliance.

EastLondon

There will certainly be additional polling stations and workers! Think about how much longer it takes to fill in a ballot ranking all of the options rather than simply voting for one person.

Extranea

As usual a rather pathetic argument against the AV system. Rather than debate the pro's and con's of the system itself, it is all about the money.

£90m of which is re the referendum itself, regardless of whether we vote yes or no. There is no information anywhere that the UK intends to use voting machines therefore this £130m is completely erroneous.

It is time to deal with the issues. FPTP is undemocratic, designed for a 2 party state which we no longer live in. Too many MP's live in safe seats and this needs to end.

More votes need to count at an election, and every MP should be able to command support from over 50% of their constituency.

There are cons to the AV system, but the pro's far out weigh them. In addition, those bleating on about this being a compromise between FPTP and PRare missing the point. Most people who will vote for AV would happily vote for PR, but those in power would not give the people of this country the CHOICE of PR because they are afraid of losing more power.

Grow up and deal with the real issues.

http://extranea.wordpress.com/

strapworld

'And the heavens opened' I agree totally with Trevors Den. This is not up to the normal (Korski excluded) excellent standard of CoffeeHouse.

I want a referendum on In or Out of the EU. I want others on local democracy. Living in Wales I am due to participate in a referendum on the Welsh Assembly. The need for extra powers for the Assembly cannot be explained to me by my AM and the North Wales Civil Servants has not answered my three emails to him asking for evidence to prove they need these extra powers. I will, as an Englishman, be voting NO!

I will still be voting NO in the AV referendum. I want to see the Liberal Democrats slither back into their hole.

FF

While, you're on Matthew Elliott, perhaps you would like to change your reason for voting No as displayed on your website:

"AV makes elections unfair. AV breaks the principle of one person one vote, because supporters of fringe parties end up having their vote counted several times while supporters of mainstream parties only have their vote counted once. "

This is dishonest. Supporters of mainstream parties get their vote counted [in the sense of being included in the vote] just as often as supporters of fringe parties - ie once per round.

yank

Yes, it will cost more money. FPTP is simple. Once you introduce additional complexity, you will introduce arguments, because more ballots will be spoiled, and people will argue over those spoils. And that will cost more money, before and after.

This is pretty obvious, I should think.

Publius

ndm writes: "...the first past the post system has cost Britain countless billions of pounds over the years as in election after election the country came to be governed by parties the people had not voted for"

-- This is a non-sequitur.

Will Cooling

"I would ask the open source community to develop a computer software that allows quick entry of paper-based votes, and give the money that would otherwise be spent on counting machines to charity (gift aided, too)"

There already is one - http://www.openstv.org/. Extremely valuable and easy to use as well.

TrevorsDen

I think Strapworld that we could both agree on a referendum on an English Parliament.

I am not sure I would want the extra cost it would entail and the reorganisation of local govt that really ought to accompany it. I would prefer devolution to be ditched - but if it is to continue we need some fairness for England.
At least we need a discussion on it.

Fergus Pickering

Extranea, are you happy with the list system in PR, which means I may well get an MP I have never heard of? Are you happy with the way the Israeli Parliament is always in hock to the mad Zionists? Are you happy with the European Parliament AT ALL? Have you ever heard of Thomas Carlyle. He said there were never more than two parties in any political situation - those who wanted to do a thing and those who did not. At present the only thing that matters much is our country's financial situation. We have essentially two parties - the ruling Coalition who wish to make cuts in spending, and the Labour/wet Liberal opposition who do not wish to make any cuts at all. All this AV, PR etc is quite irrelevant.

denis cooper

FF -

It's correct that every ballot paper is counted in every round, even if it's unnecessary to physically recount the piles which already belong to the surviving candidates, EXCEPT that because we'll have the Irish variant of AV a ballot paper will drop out of the process if the elector has expressed no further preference.

That wouldn't happen under the variant used for federal elections in Australia where the elector has to rank all the candidates, and so no valid ballot paper ever becomes "non-transferable" and "not effective" as the Irish describe it here in this example of a parliamentary by-election held under AV:

http://electionsireland.org/counts.cfm?election=2007B&cons=85&ref

It's the Irish variant of AV that we will have, not the federal Australian variant.

denis cooper

yank -

Yes, obviously it will cost slightly more to run general elections under AV, but nowhere the £250 million extra cost which NO2AV has suggested.

Going through the numbers of ballot papers to be dealt with in the eight counting rounds for the Irish AV by-election linked above, it turns out that the work done by the tellers was about 59% greater than it would have been under FPTP when they would have stopped after the first round.

Apparently 50,000 tellers were employed for the last general election:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/06/general-election-tellers-electoral-administrators

and paying them for the extra hours (or employing more) would add a few million to the total cost.

yank

Intuitively, I tend to agree with you, Mr. cooper, but the experience they cited in Scotland above says the costs of elections there doubled. So it seems to be somewhere in between a few million more and their doubling, and that's after you've had to buy the machines, do voter education, etc. And then there's the unknown bugaboo here, the election challenges, which you might presume to multiply as parties demand their right to recount.

denis cooper

yank -

You've missed the point that we don't have to buy the machines, manual counts will suffice.

Ron Todd

With the Australian version we would have to rank several candidates who had no chance of winning and of whom we knew little.

denis cooper

But we will have the Irish version, under which according to Section 9 of the newly passed Act:

"(1) A voter votes by marking the ballot paper with -

(a) the number 1 opposite the name of the candidate who is the voter’s first preference (or, as the case may be, the only candidate for whom the voter wishes to vote),

(b) if the voter wishes, the number 2 opposite the name of the candidate who is the voter’s second preference,

and so on.

(2) The voter may mark as many preferences (up to the number of candidates) as the voter wishes.” "

Chris Phillips

£250 Million for the introduction of AV is a ridiculously inflated estimate.

Why would counting machines be necessary? Each count may take a little longer and there’ll be a few adverts (mark 1,2,3 rather than ‘X’) but that would be about all that was necessary.

Here’s what Katie Ghose, Chair of the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign had to say:

Short on arguments the Nos are trying to claim we can’t afford change. After the expenses crisis we can’t afford not to.

Their make-believe machines don’t exist in Australia and won’t exist in the UK. Having given up on defending First-Past-the-Post the desperate No camp is descending into fantasy.

The No camp’s sums, like their arguments, simply don’t add up.

Edmund

What a thoroughly unpleasant and cynical bunch the official no campaign are. Utterly unashamed about lying through their teeth to the British public. Shame on the Spectator for not demolishing this nonsense.

Mark

"The government stated the referendum would cost over £90 million"

Yes the cost of the referendum - not of AV!

By all means campaign against having a referendum, if you fear that offering people a say is so costly. But if there is a referendum, that is not a reason to vote for FPTP.

"If this referendum passes, Britain would have upwards of 5 systems in place"

I fail to see why that makes counting one particular election (which only uses 1 system) harder. Australia shows that machines aren't required.

Another flaw in your argument is that voting machines _are_ used in the US, where they use FPTP. So if you are arguing that they are "just a given", this is nothing to do with AV.

As for moaning about the remaining £26 million - there are tonnes of actual wasteful things that money is spent on. Why focus on something that improves the voting system? The alleged cost is not an issue.

Out of interest, how much money has been spent on the No2AV campaign[*]? Isn't that money that could be better spent of saving babies?

[*] Funny how there's a complete lack of a Yes2FPTP campaign - I guess there's nothing good to say about it, is there.

Alex

Fergus Pickering. Who would be in power? Well it would likely be a... coalition, much as we have now.

The reason we don't have a single party in power is not because of AV, and if, in the future we have AV and a coalition it won't be because of AV it will be for the simple fact that we have one now under FPTP; people are voting more and more for other parties than the 'main' two. Less than 65% voted for Labour or Conservative at the last election. It's clear that the nations complex priorities and lives are not able to represented by just two sets of political beliefs, indeed it is naive and simplistic to believe it could be so, or that it is desirable to be so.

Since 1987 we have never had a party in power that has secured more than 45% of all votes, and in 2005 this was at an all time low of 35% Are you seriously suggesting that a democratic country should be governed solely by a party that has support from just over a third of the population... I would suggest that's a pretty twisted form of democracy.

With AV, if we have a single party in government we can be assured that they have at least gained the approval of at least 50% of the population, whether as a first or second choice that support has been shown.

A coalition government is the natural progression from a relatively simplistic two party country to a complex, diverse and intelligent multi-party country, and AV helps people show who they truly support instead of having to vote negatively to 'keep out' the party they don't want.

Also lets not forget that it is NOT the nation who decides how a government is composed, we do NOT 'choose' or vote any PM or government in to power, that is the job of the MP's we DO vote for, to decide amongst themselves how they can form a government. This is a myth that really needs busting for many people.

Alex

The No2AV (shouldn't that be the Yes2FPTP? Oh well, guess it reflects their campaign accurately) had to admit that they didn't know if counting machines would be used.

Also the Electoral Commission themselves have said that the introduction of electronic counting machines is an issue that is being looked at, and the recommendations will be 'irrespective' of the AV referendum. http://www.sphericalbowl.co.uk/2011/01/electoral-commission-confirms-no-to-av-lying/

In case you don't trust the source of that I'm sure the EC would be happy to confirm it to anyone who inquired.

david irvine

Right ok, so AV will cost £250 million because, 1 the referendum, well that's going ahead whether you vote yes or no, and 2 new voting machines, oh yeah, these won't be used....So actually voting yes will cost nothing, thanks for the blatant lies "no" campaign.