YES TO AV: Lies, fascists and the Baroness

So here we go again, the story is familiar but the depths the NO2AV campaign sinks ever lower.

Yesterday, Baroness Warsi (pictured above) made such an alarming claim you would think that some evidence could be produced in order to back it up.  Of course this was not forthcoming as it is simply lies to scare the public into voting no in the referendum on the 5th May.

This time it goes beyond scaremongering or lying but complete hysterical nonsense and proves that it is Baroness Warsi who is the extremist and not a voting system.  She has done an interview with The Sun in which she states that the yes to AV campaign is “pandering to extremist voters”. She claims that the voting system of AV is “a serious danger to our democracy”, and “would give power to fascists”.

This alarmist talk has absolutely no basis in fact and there is no evidence to back up her claim yet she feels that it is ok to give interviews stating this which is a cynical and calculated attempt to scare people into voting no.

This extremist language is beyond normal politics and she should feel ashamed at such language.  This type of behaviour shows the attitude behind another establishment lie that we have to have a hereditary and appointed chamber of the upper house in order to have intelligent and non partisan discussions to scrutinise Bills from the House of Commons.

If this is the ridiculous extremism that is shown by our Lords perhaps we need to speed up reform and finally, after over one hundred years of campaigning, to have an elected House of Lords.

Baroness Warsi has disgraced herself and the NO campaign with this disgusting language.

The BNP, one of the parties that Warsi is alluding to is actually voting against AV precisely because it will not help them in the election process.

Another member of the coalition, Liberal Democrat Baroness Falkner said:

“I’m shocked and frankly appalled by the distortions being spun today by Baroness Warsi and the ‘No’ campaign.

She went on, and I couldn’t put it better myself:

“Under AV, no one can get elected unless the majority of people support them which quite obviously makes it harder, not easier, for extremist parties. That’s exactly why the BNP are campaigning for a ‘No’ vote.

“The No-campaign has resorted to baseless scaremongering because they can’t make any positive case for the status quo. People won’t be fooled by this.”

Baroness Warsi also went on to state that AV gives some people who vote for extremist parties, the chance to have “several bites at the cherry”.

The no campaign has constantly stated that people have “more than one vote” in an AV election and that there would be “more hung Parliaments”.  Yet all the research refutes this latter point, and the former point either misunderstands how AV works or is simply a lie.

Nobody will have more than one vote.  AV actually brings more power to the voter by allowing the voter either a) not vote at all   b) use one preference vote as people have done under FPTP or   c) List candidates by preference.

This means that rather than people’s vote counting more than once, it actually means that the peoples vote has a better chance of being counted at all.

If someone voted in FPTP for the green party, if that candidate could not win the seat then the vote is not counted at all towards the make up of Parliament.  In addition, two thirds of MP’s get elected without 50% of the vote in their constituency.

If we use the analogy of a loaf of bread, and we went into a supermarket to buy a loaf of granary bread and was told they had sold out, normally we would then take another choice like wholemeal bread. With FPTP they deny this option and you go without, with AV you are able to take this option.

So under AV, with the voter voting for the Green candidate and this candidate gets knocked out at the first round of counting votes and no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote then the 2nd preference choice of the voter is transferred to another candidate (to buy the wholemeal loaf).  This continues until a candidate has enough broad support that they get a MAJORITY of the electorate to support them.

This makes it MORE DEMOCRATIC and ensures that extremist parties are LESS LIKELY to get elected because by the very nature of extremist parties, they have a small core support but little broad support and therefore would find it very difficult to get elected.

No vote counts MORE than another, because in the end your vote only counts once for whoever is left in the race to be an MP at each ballot.

It is finally time for the NO campaign to come clean.  These nay sayers, want less transparency, want the old 2 party rule, and do not want the power to fall more heavily with “the people”, because they are scared of the “will of the people”. Hence the dragging of their feet over all other constitutional reforms like the House of Lords.

It is time to put the extremism of Baroness Wari into the trash can of history.