NOtoAV campaign launched – with these guys in charge we're screwed

This campaign isn't going to work

Good grief. Looking at the website the NOtAV campaign unveiled yesterday, defenders of our first past the post voting system might as well throw in the towel.

Instead of presenting any of the serious arguments – AV is more likely to lead to hung Parliaments, it will give small, extremist parties the whip hand in coalition negotiations, it will lead to the end of our two-party system in which voter have a clear choice between two alternatives, etc – it instead urges us to reject AV on the sole basis that it will cost £250m.

Actually, that’s not the argument – at least, it is sometimes, not at others. At the top of the site it says “AV will cost the country up to £250m”. But a little further down, when we see how his figure has been arrived at, we learn that “the referendum itself costs £82 million with the cost of voter education ahead of of the referendum at £9 million”. So does that mean NOtoAV is campaigning against the referendum itself rather than for a “No” vote in the referendum? It isn’t clear. What is clear, however, is that if the total cost of the referendum is going to be £91 million and the NOtoAV campaign has taken this into account in calculating its £250 million figure then the cost of changing the voting system, once the referendum is out of the way, will only be £159 million. Yet, curiously, the voiceover in the YouTube video at the top of the site says, “An alternative voting system will cost us £250 million.” Er, no it won’t.

One final point. The last person featured in the YouTube vox pop is called Glen and is identified as a “playwrite”. The people who’ve produced this YouTube video mean Playwright, obviously, but, in addition to not being able to add up, the masterminds in charge of saving our historic election system cannot spell. God help us.