Piotr Brzezinski

The AV ‘stabbed in the back’ myth

The referendum results haven’t even been announced yet, but the Yes campaign’s myth-making machine is already in full swing. Within moments of the polls closing, Simon Hughes took to the airwaves to dismiss a No vote as a “hollow victory” because of our “false facts and false figures”.

Just as some people on the left never came to terms with losing to Thatcher – blaming the SDP instead – Yes supporters are already peddling the idea that they only lost because the No campaign fought dirty.

So let’s set the record straight on the supposed ‘lies and distortions’ of the last few months:

We did not say the BNP would win seats under AV: The Yes campaign’s not-so-clever tactic has been to deny an accusation we never made. AV helps extremists because they would get more first preference votes – losing fewer deposits along the way – and get more influence over the final result, not because they would win more seats.

We did say AV elections would more expensive: The £250 million debate centred on whether AV would lead to the use of vote counting machines. The Yes campaign said it wouldn’t; we said it would. So did Anthony Mayer, former Chief Executive of the GLA, who ran London’s elections under AV. In his words, ‘with SV there is no choice but electronic counting’.

Britain’s previous experience with multi-round preferential voting systems is clear: it led to the introduction of electronic counting for elections in London and Scotland (with SV and STV respectively). As the head of Opt2vote, a vote counting machine manufacturer, put it:

‘[With AV] manual counts will inevitably take longer, more staff will be needed or the same staff used over a longer period increasing the risk of error, more demands for re-counts…a more efficient, quicker and accurate method of count is to perform it electronically’ .

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in