Summary: Citizens of Britain, be afraid. Be very afraid. On May 5th we risk committing a grave crime against our democracy. We are being asked in a referendum, to ditch the system of voting – First Past the Post – that has served us so well as a democratic nation, and to adopt the system known as the Alternative Vote, that will allow MPs to be elected to parliament even if they are not the first choice of the majority of their constituents. Instead it will be the second and third preferences of those who vote for no-hope or extremist parties – “the most worthless votes given for the most worthless candidates", as Winston Churchill put it – which will in many constituencies determine whether or not an MP gets in. By thus giving an outlying group of voters what is essentially a second chance to vote, AV will kill the hallowed principle that each person’s vote is of equal weight. That at any rate is the view of 26 eminent historians (Professors Niall Ferguson and Antony Beevor included) expressed in a recent letter to The Times. But in a subsequent letter, their view was given a good kicking by 20 eminent lawyers (including Baroness Kennedy QC and Michael Mansfield QC) who argue that it is precisely because your vote is so seldom given equal weight in practice, that we need AV. Look at all those MPs who, under First Past the Post, regularly get well below 50% of the local vote, yet still get returned to Westminster even though a majority of their constituents don’t want them there. AV will create genuine contests for seats that sitting MPs at present take for granted as “theirs” – a situation that empowers a few thousand voters in "marginals" to decide elections. Is that the hallowed system you really want to keep? So are the academics right? Or the lawyers? Or – whisper it quietly – is it all a lot of fuss about very little
