St Luke's Church Eccleshill - Articles from "The Link"

The scourge of the tactical vote

The French Presidential election was an extreme case, but almost all elections suffer from the same problem. The problem is that a first-past-the-post voting system forces voters to think about “tactical” voting. Should you vote for someone you don’t really want in order to stop the election of someone you want even less?

The problem comes as soon as there are more than two candidates standing for a seat. The voters will know which one they want to win, and they’ll also have some idea of which ones are the most popular and are likely to be the “front runners”. This puts them in a dilemma:

Suppose there are three candidates, A, B and C; and A and B are the popular ones. How should C’s supporters vote? If they vote for C then their votes are “wasted”, because they can’t express their preference between A and B. But if they vote “tactically”, say for A (so B won’t win), then C gets even fewer votes, so is even less likely to win.

We get this problem every election in Britain, because we use the wrong voting system.

The system of “run-offs”, used for French presidents and Conservative leaders, seems a better idea ... until you watch and notice it again ...

If you vote for your favourite candidate on the first round, you run the risk of only the candidates you hate getting to the final (as happened to all the socialist supporters of minor French parties). So you still have the dilemma: Should you vote tactically on the first round?

In fact, the run-offs make it worse, because they allow dishonest votes. Maybe Le Pen got through to the final because half a million Chirac supporters voted for him in order to get rid of Jospin from the final, knowing that Chirac would beat Le Pen but he’d never beat Jospin? Surely a system which allows such things is wrong!

What’s the remedy? A good voting system has to do two things. It has to allow voters to express their preferences between all the candidates, by putting them in an order. And it has to allow the votes for the no-hope candidates to be re-allocated to more popular candidates, so that the person who has voted for C (above) still gets to express a preference between A and B once it is clear that C has lost.

There is a system like this. It is Single Transferable Voting. My main interest in it is that it also produces a representative PCC for a church like ours.

If the French had used STV they would have had an instant result which would have chosen between Chirac and Jospin, and it would have avoided a lot of riots!

But will we be any wiser here?

John Hartley

	*St Luke's Church, Eccleshill - The Link* magazine** The Link is published monthly at 40p (Senior Citizens 35p), and we deliver free within the parish and post copies (at the reader's expense) to those who request it. Please contact us if you would like a free copy for a trial period. June 2002, Page 2.
Home Page. Index of articles. Democracy: index, The best win? Please vote, Tactical vote, Annual Meeting. In this issue: (June 2002) Vicar's Letter, STV, Sunday Club, Services, Question, History, Jelleys.	The scourge of the tactical vote The French Presidential election was an extreme case, but almost all elections suffer from the same problem. The problem is that a first-past-the-post voting system forces voters to think about “tactical” voting. Should you vote for someone you don’t really want in order to stop the election of someone you want even less? The problem comes as soon as there are more than two candidates standing for a seat. The voters will know which one they want to win, and they’ll also have some idea of which ones are the most popular and are likely to be the “front runners”. This puts them in a dilemma: Suppose there are three candidates, A, B and C; and A and B are the popular ones. How should C’s supporters vote? If they vote for C then their votes are “wasted”, because they can’t express their preference between A and B. But if they vote “tactically”, say for A (so B won’t win), then C gets even fewer votes, so is even less likely to win. We get this problem every election in Britain, because we use the wrong voting system. The system of “run-offs”, used for French presidents and Conservative leaders, seems a better idea ... until you watch and notice it again ... If you vote for your favourite candidate on the first round, you run the risk of only the candidates you hate getting to the final (as happened to all the socialist supporters of minor French parties). So you still have the dilemma: Should you vote tactically on the first round? In fact, the run-offs make it worse, because they allow dishonest votes. Maybe Le Pen got through to the final because half a million Chirac supporters voted for him in order to get rid of Jospin from the final, knowing that Chirac would beat Le Pen but he’d never beat Jospin? Surely a system which allows such things is wrong! What’s the remedy? A good voting system has to do two things. It has to allow voters to express their preferences between all the candidates, by putting them in an order. And it has to allow the votes for the no-hope candidates to be re-allocated to more popular candidates, so that the person who has voted for C (above) still gets to express a preference between A and B once it is clear that C has lost. There is a system like this. It is Single Transferable Voting. My main interest in it is that it also produces a representative PCC for a church like ours. If the French had used STV they would have had an instant result which would have chosen between Chirac and Jospin, and it would have avoided a lot of riots! But will we be any wiser here? John Hartley
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