For some reason, British governments for the last decade have found it utterly impossible to organize a referendum on whether Britain should stay within the European Union, but they’ve been able to whip up today’s Alternative Voting referendum in double-quick time. Brendan O’Neill has a few last-minute words for those of you eligible to vote:
But now that we’ve been landed with a referendum for an electoral system that a majority of the public are savagely uninterested in, it’s paramount that we vote NO to AV.
Because AV would accentuate some of the most degenerate trends in politics today.
Through its invitation to voters to express their views about all candidates, it would turn voting from an impassioned statement of political desire or attachment to an ideal into a relativistic process of erming and ahhing.
And by making aspiring politicians potentially reliant on second- and third-preference votes, it would nurture even more public figures who refuse to say anything surprising or provocative for fear of alienating their kind-of constituencies.
In short, AV would water down the act of voting and reduce risk-taking and ideas-making in mainstream British politics – a trend that is already underway but which would effectively be institutionalised under AV.
So go out and say NO.
