Not voting in the referendum? What's the worst that could happen, eh?

Right, first ignore all that guff from the YES and NO campaigns about MPs working harder, losers winning, 50% to win, some people getting more votes than others, safe seats, Australian surveys, swing voters, more coalitions, 1951, the BNP, £250m, more choice, Papua New Guinea, blah blah blah blah...

Well maybe don't ignore that stuff completely: there are nuggets of good arguments in there. But they're oversimplified and oversold.

But if you want to know why it's not cool to miss the referendum, you need to understand what's wrong with the current voting system, First Past The Post (FPTP).

The best account I've found is by Dan Snow. It's 3 minutes long. You can afford 3 minutes, no?




Or to sum up Dan's point in a picture:


(Sorry, I don't who created this picture. I'll credit them when I find out.)

So the problem is:
Under the current voting system a candidate is often elected even though most people prefer a different candidate.

So what? Why does this matter?

There are two reasons why this matters:

1. It means that, over time, people get more and more disillusioned with democracy. Why bother participating in a democracy if it's common for the person elected as your MP to be less popular than one of the other candidates?
2. In order to try to beat this problem, we've learned to vote tactically: "Don't vote for The Green Man (even though you prefer that pub). That's a wasted vote. You'll just let the Coffee Shop win." And so it is often rational to vote for a party that is not your first choice. Our votes are an attempt to second-guess how others will vote, to try to stop the candidate we hate. We're not free to vote for the candidate we really want, and so this again breeds disillusionment.

Our current crop of politicians have been successful under the existing voting system. Why should they want to change it?

Your current MP might be great. If so, you're lucky, and I can see why you might not care too much about changing the voting system.

But if you've ever wondered why so many people say "politicians are all the same", "they never listen", and "they're just in it for themselves", ask yourself whether this disillusionment with democracy is good for the country.

AV isn't perfect by any means, but it's better than FPTP. And if you don't vote for change on 5 May, it'll be no use complaining about "our awful politicians" ever again.

Why I think the Yes2AV campaign will fail

The Yes2AV campaign has the best of the intellectual arguments, the most thoughtful people and a timely anti-sleaze message. But I think Yes2AV will fail.

Having looked at the options carefully, I think the AV electoral system is preferable to the current FPTP system. Nearly everyone I respect politically also thinks AV is preferable to FPTP. The anti-AV arguments I've seen are nearly all spurious, weak or ad hominem.

But my gut feeling is that the 5 May referendum is heading for a No2AV result.

Why?

Firstly, many people I've come across simply don't care. Maybe that will change nearer the date, but I suspect not.

Secondly, even if they've heard some of the headline arguments, it sounds a minor, nerdy proposal that seems unlikely to solve the disillusion many feel about politics right now. Many won't turn up.

Thirdly, the No2AV campaign has deployed so much chaff about AV - a lot of it neatly collated in David Cameron's speech last month - that voting No will seem to many like the safe, default option when the arguments appear to be balanced. FPTP has a simple, familiar metaphor - the running race - for people to cling to. AV doesn't seem to have crystallised one. The interview panel? The X Factor eliminations? The pub that runs out of Carlsberg? It doesn't matter that FPTP is nothing like a race, or that the arguments against AV are actually pretty weak. There's sufficient chaff to obscure the clear advantages of AV and create worry.

Finally, many of the most tribal Conservatives and Labour supporters are in the No camp, for obvious reasons if you consider that FPTP favours tribalism. Such tribalists will use their dominant share of the newspaper market to affirm disaster scenarios if AV wins:

• "BNP VOTERS TO GET THEIR VOTES COUNTED MORE!!"
• "Do you want Nick Clegg in power FOREVER?!"
• "SLEAZE: PRO-AV OPERATION BANKROLLED BY COUNTING MACHINE FIRM"
• "87% of polling officers confused on AV rules, exclusive survey reveals"
• "Greens, SNP & Plaid to be wiped out, experts say"
• "UK TO BECOME LAUGHING STOCK IF PAPUA NEW GUINEA SYSTEM IMPOSED HERE"
• "Do you want a Parliament of second choices? WE DON'T."
• "AV WOULD GIVE BRITAIN NAZI-STYLE DICTATORSHIPS!!!!!"

This newspaper onslaught will happen either on the day of the vote or the day before, to minimise the chances of Yes2AV rebuttals or a thinking through of how realistic these scenarios actually are. Readers will either be stirred to vote No, or stay away so that they can avoid voter guilt if these scenarios were to come true.

As with all my predictions, the above is to be taken with a pinch of salt. I'm usually wrong in my predictions. So here's hoping my gut is wrong again!