[Hilarysmum]

Listening to the radio apparently proportional representation or alternative vote is being proposed.  Does anyone understand how it works.  I am confused.

[Rosemary]

Dan understands it. We already have it in Scotland for the Scottish Parliament.

[Hilarysmum]

Does it work?

[bloomer]

alternative voting is not proportional representation

alternative voting means you rank the candidates 1st second third etc

when they count they count the first choices if anyone gets 50% or more there in if not the candidate with the lowest count has there votes divided according to the voters choice, this is repeated till one candidate has more than 50% of the vote.

Long term it means we will have more hung parliments...

[Hilarysmum]

I understand what you are saying but cant understand how it works.  Also what is proportional representation then and how does that work, thanks HM

[bloomer]

ok proportional representation is an even uglier beast currently used to elect euromps

for a given constituancy there will be x seats for our example we will use 10.  Obviously these constituancies are larger than those for local elections to warrent the number of seats, now everyone votes as normal but not for an individual but for the party they most want to get a seat or seats.

when all these votes are counted the seats are awarded in proportion to the votes cast so for our 10 elected representatives we could get 4 conservative 3 labour 1 green 1 weirdparty of doom and 1 lib dem.

Now the weird bit is you only voted for 1 party but all 10 of these people represent your interests in the elected body equally...

[Hilarysmum]

So  with 1 vote per person as now =    some people get the party they voted for, the rest dont.
With prop. rep. and AV                  =   no one gets the party they voted for because the second choice wins?