FPTP breaks when there are more than two candidates. AV is the minimal change that fixes this.
Under FPTP, many voters vote tactically: "My preferred candidate won't win, so I will vote for my second preference who can win", and so on. The problem is that the voter's knowledge of which candidates can/cannot win is limited and subject to error, based on previous election results and perhaps some knowledge of political changes since then. AV is essentially automatic tactical voting: if your preferred candidate genuinely cannot win this election, then your vote is automatically shifted to your next preference, and so on. It allows a voter to accurately express their preferences without risking wasting their vote.
(Yes, I've ignored "without reference to the other case" because the point of AV is to fix problems with FPTP, and I can't be arsed with the circumlocutions involved in discussing the advantages of the former without reference to the latter.)
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 01:28 pm (UTC)Under FPTP, many voters vote tactically: "My preferred candidate won't win, so I will vote for my second preference who can win", and so on. The problem is that the voter's knowledge of which candidates can/cannot win is limited and subject to error, based on previous election results and perhaps some knowledge of political changes since then. AV is essentially automatic tactical voting: if your preferred candidate genuinely cannot win this election, then your vote is automatically shifted to your next preference, and so on. It allows a voter to accurately express their preferences without risking wasting their vote.
(Yes, I've ignored "without reference to the other case" because the point of AV is to fix problems with FPTP, and I can't be arsed with the circumlocutions involved in discussing the advantages of the former without reference to the latter.)