I've heard this argument before from lots of politicians who oppose AV. And as Fans says, most notably I've heard if from "the left" In my opinion it's a silly argument (trying to be polite here). We live in a democracy. If what they are saying is that "AV will allow a minority group they don't like to get in, so therefore then we should not have AV" then I fail to see the logic of this as a reason not to reform the voting system. Those opposed to the BNP should engage with them on the streets and not try to fix some electoral system just because they are scared they may get the BNP few extra votes. Interesting to note that the BNP support the No vote.

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Guys, Its questionable whether we currently live in a democracy, when in reality, you only have a choice of voting for a preselected candidate from the two major parties. You most likely wouldn't choose either of those two candidates if you had a truely free choice in the matter. I do not like political extremists of any persuasion, however, If the party is legal, and publish a legal manifesto... and people vote for them, then they should have a voice in running the country. That, indeed, is the democratic way. The argument against AV, and indeed PR, has always used the spectre of the NF to gain popular acceptance of the current status quo that suits the two major parties. But this is not democratic. It is not the place of incumbent politicians to determine who is, or is not fit to be elected, it is merely a decision that must be made by the electorate. If twenty percent of the electorate choose to vote for a party we disagree with, then that party should hold twenty percent of the seats in parliment. We may not like it, but that IS democratic. So, AV... maybe a small step forward, but by Nick Clegg's own previous statement it is "A miserable little compromise". The only thing that would make a meaningful change is full blown PR. Just my tuppence - worth :-)

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I agree with Jonick about AV being a cop out, PR is the only real way to make the system fairer. An important issue is the lack of economic democracy which is the real reason that Labour governments throughout history have failed to redistribute wealth ( even when they wanted to - pre 'New Labour'). I shall be voting against in the hope of splitting the coalition government in two.

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Interesting point on democracy Jonick, certainly there is very little opposition or organisation against the "big two" in North Lincolnshire. Interesting to note that the only party to challenge every seat is Labour, not even the Tories are standing a full sheet. Bit poor really when you consider that last time in some area's of North Lincolnshire only 21% of people bothered to vote. Lets hope that with the AV referendum a few more can be encouraged to exercise their democratic right and to vote for change.

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The reason for electoral reform is to make the electorate engage in the process and make individual MPs more accountable to their electorate. AV is much better than FPTP in this respect as I have pointed out in previous articles. The question is what does PR address? Many PR advocates are disgruntled because the government they got is not the one they voted for and doesn�t have popular support with the electorate. Many Lib Dems for example are horrified that their party supports the Tories. They seem to forget that we do not vote for the government of the day, we vote for a local representative in Parliament who chooses the government for you � with a little help from the Queen who invites one of them to become Prime Minister. So rather than campaigning for electoral reform with PR, whose list systems undermine the link between the electorate and their MP, we should campaign for constitutional reform. A much more democratic system is the American Presidential system where everyone votes for the Executive (Government) and, because they also have a separate vote for the legislature (House of Representatives), they are protected from government abuse by the concept of �the separation of powers�. Unfortunately the UK is still rather wedded to the concept of monarchy, so as an interim measure I would propose that we directly vote for the Prime Minister/Deputy Prime Minister under an AV system as well as for voting for our local MP under an AV system. This would give people a clear result, strong leadership but still have Parliament has the safeguard against government excess. Yes to AV, No To PR, Yes to Constitutional Reform.

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I used to like the idea of PR, but the more i see the EU Parliament failing, which is voted by PR, the more i worry that it would fail in this country. I agree that constitutional reform is needed and would agree that the idea of a seperate vote on the leader of the country, using AV after an AV vote on local MP's would be a way of the people getting what they want, or at least a majority of the people getting what they want. of course a lot of this does not matter as the power to change laws in this country are dictated by the EU, a problem made by our very own MP's when they devolved the power to the EU and signed up to various treaties without the consent of the people. without that democracy back we can do very little to change things here in the UK.

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I've been thinking about Black Flag's comments over night, and while I agree with the sentiment of them, I can't help feel that Black Flag is creating exactly the opposite of what's required in terms of constitutional reform by helping to create another tier of political hierarchy. Now I understand that Black Flag's argument is academic, but do you not feel that as soon as addtional elections are introduced for the PM and Deputy then you are creating yet another additional tier to the political classes which already dominate politics in the UK? Look at the American system on which you base your claim, the candidacy process for the White House is a massive drawn out affair costing millions, and creating political dynasties not too unlike the monarchy of this country. Just look a the Kennedy and other major political families in the US and the power they wield). Indeed do we not have a similar spat in this country with the Major of London? Politics needs to be smaller, not larger, we need people representing citizens (not subjects) at a local demographic level, not trying to shoe horn people's needs in to a badly shaped political boot.

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Paul, I wouldn't say I was introducing another tier of governance with my proposal - just making the existing ones more accountable. If the executive and legislature have separate mandates then MPs will not be supine supporters of government and will be free to do their proper job of holding the executive to account; the Prime Minister will be more accountable as he has to win a more broader (read cross party) support in Parliament in order to get new laws passed. The money and political clans issues are red herrings as they are peculiar to the US - we have laws relating to campaign expenditure to guard against such excess. Neil says he has support for libertarian ideas yet complains that the EU has been passed powers that should be the remit of the UK. Paul thinks they should be devolved to an even lower "demographic" level creating yet more tiers of government. These powers should be the remit of the people not the State - whether that State be the unaccountable EU, the undemocratic UK or some green regional utopia. To quote Mrs T (God Bless Her) "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels." Cut back the State and set the people free.

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Hi Black Flag, You are right, my ideas are very utopian, but would (in my mind) require less central government as opposed to creating more of it. IMO devolution of power should be just that, an absolutely mininal "top level" with real power devolved to communities would ensure more accountability at a local level. I'd even go so far as to floating the "jury service" type of idea so that candidates them selves are selected from the community at random and voting then goes ahead. We already have a very well trained civil service at a local and national level, and this would put paid to career politicians. Obviously this is a totally unrealistic and impractical suggestion, but, having just read today's independent article about the 2003 war in iraq, and the pretext of oil, I'm fast becoming of the opinion that there never has been any true accountability and there are bigger agendas at work. All very conspiratorial I know, but one thing I think we all seem to be agreeing on is that some method of reform is required, and that more accountability is necessary. On a plus point I do think that blogging, tweeting and social networking have made (those representatives who wish to use it) more accountable with their public. Appologies for brevity / haste & spelling! working on site at the moment.

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