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Comment by MikeTaylor | Hacker News Reader

The German system sounds good. But the UK Conservative Party's argument against simple AV has been "it's too complicated for people to understand". Trying to get people to vote for something that genuinely IS a bit complicated would be a complete non-starter at this point.

Anyway, right now it's AV or Continue As You Were. That's the choice we Brits have to make TODAY, and I do hope that any of you reading this will make sure that you do vote.

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The Tory stance seems ridiculous to me (as an outsider) considering that the UK's devolved assembly elections use PR-STV or other similarly "complicated" systems. FWIW we use PR-STV in Ireland and are currently going through a debate about conceivably switching to a "list" system, or possibly a hybrid list system tempered as they do in Germany.

It IS ridiculous. But people have been TOLD that AV is too complicated for their simple little minds, and too many of them seem to have accepted this statement uncritically. It breaks my heart.

Unless it's something they care about (and not everyone cares about voting reform!), being told "Don't worry about it, it's too hard to explain" is often met with "Oh, okay."

The trick is to get people to care about it so they become curious and reject the assertions of "it's too hard". The Yes campaign attempted this initially but did a poor job, in this case it turns out much easier to explain the thing than to pose half-truth arguments why people should care!

Ultimately I suspect everyone knows that "it's too complicated" is a fake argument. The real reason that Tories don't want PR is that it will spell an end to proper Tory governments. Meanwhile, the real reason that Labour doesn't want PR is that it will spell an end to proper Labour governments. The only folks who are really keen on PR are the Lib Dems, whose power it would massively increase.

And ultimately, the population follows the parties -- unless you are a LibDem supporter you probably don't especially want to see the LibDems holding the balance of power in every parliament for the next fifty years.

The German system can be presented more simply. First, here are your local candidates. Which one do you want? Second, here are the global parties. Which one do you want? That's pretty simple.

I agree. Here is the ballot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Bun...

Voters have two votes: one on the left and one on the right. "Hier 1 Stimme" means "Here 1 vote". It is still just an X in a circle but twice instead of once. Most people when shown this grasp it immediately.

A similar Scottish ballot is on the left here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures...

We have two elections in Scotland today - the referendum and the elections to the Scottish Parliament. There are two ballot papers for the latter - one for a constituency and another for a region. As far as I could tell (I lost count) the regional ballot paper we had here had an amazing number of parties/candidates - what looked like 4 different breeds of socialists (excluding Labour, of course) and a similar number of liberals of varying types with a group of independents making up the tail end (literally).

If that epic ballot paper isn't confusing then I don't know what is!

I have to disagree. It's a list of options, albeit taller than a sheet of A4. Instructions: put a cross next to your choice.

If that ballot paper is confusing then you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

That's what I meant - nobody gets confused with what we have at the moment even though the ballot papers are huge and the regional seats are selected using PR.

Well, OK. It's two 'X' ballots compared to one 1..n ballot. You could argue each way which is more complicated. And I agree that neither is sufficiently complicated to disqualify it.

What I would say is that the mechanics of AV are more (pseudo?)non-deterministic than the Scottish Parliament system of PR. With PR - seats mirror votes more or less. With AV, nobody really seems to know how things will turn out, and even less representative massive majorities can occur. So in a way AV is more complicated in that sense.

I'm still wondering why I voted for it to be honest.

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