No to AV

The Conservative No to AV campaign has now officially launched, and activists across the country will be out delivering leaflets, knocking on doors and explaining to people why the Party is opposed to the AV system.

William Hague has sent an email to the entire Conservative mailing list, and today, David Cameron gave a speech setting out our opposition to the proposed system.

The Conservative website gives a selection of reasons on why you should say No to AV.

AV is unfair

With First Past the Post, everybody gets one vote. But under AV, supporters of extreme parties like the BNP would get their vote counted many times, while people who vote for one of the mainstream candidates would only get their vote counted once.

AV doesn't work

Rather than the candidate who receives the most votes winning the election, the person who finishes second or even third could be declared the winner.

AV is expensive

Calculating the results is a long, complicated process, which would cost the taxpayer millions. It can take days to figure out exactly who has won.

AV is discredited

Whereas First Past the Post is the most widely used system in the world, only 3 countries actually use AV - Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea. In Fiji they want to get rid of it, and in Australia six out of ten people want to scrap it.

No-one wants it

Even the 'Yes' campaigners don't actually want AV - they see it as a convenient stepping stone to even more reforms. Many of the Yes campaigners have previously criticised AV.

AV is not a proportional system

The independent commission chaired by the senior Liberal Democrat Roy Jenkins in 1998 concluded that AV was 'even less proportional' than our existing system, and warned that it was 'disturbingly unpredictable'.

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