Labour Yes

Today’s announcement of Prime Minister David Cameron’s official support for the No2AV campaign comes as no surprise to anyone.

“Cameron and the Tories have always been against voting reform – and have quickly forgotten the lessons of the expenses scandal. The Alternative Vote (AV) would give more power to the public and make MPs more accountable. On this as on so much else, now they’re in Government we can see they’re the same old Tories,” Ben Bradshaw MP campaign spokesperson for Labour Yes said today.

“The Tories are in favour of the status quo and maintaining a system that has served them well in the past electorally, but they also know that under the current system they can get away with savaging our public services with savage cuts without facing any real accountability from the electorate.”

(more…)

The latest dodgy figures to come out of the No2AV campaign implies that introducing AV will cost the British Taxpayer £250 million. This claim is based on three mistaken assumptions. The first is that introducing AV would require the UK to introduce counting machines such as those used in US elections. This has been clearly refuted by Australia’s foremost election authority, Antony Green, who says that:

“We’ve used AV for 90 years at all levels of government. And Australia has never used voting machines to conduct its elections.”

The No campaign has today had to admit that they do not know if counting machines will in fact be used if AV is introduced.

(more…)