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Voting Systems
Alternative Vote Plus
What is the Alternative Vote Plus?
The Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) was invented by the 1998 Independent Commission on the Voting System, commonly known as the Jenkins Commission. The Commission was asked to recommend a voting system that fulfilled (or best fulfilled) four criteria:
- The maintenance of a geographical link between MP and constituency
- The need for stable government
- The desire for broad proportionality
- An extension of voter choice
The Commission described the system as a "limited" form of AMS aimed at achieving a balance between the requirements of "broad proportionality" and "stable government".
AV+ was created with the intention of being the alternative to First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) in Labour's promised referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. The referendum never came and AV+ has, for now, been confined to the parliamentary archives.
How the Alternative Vote Plus works
Under the AV part, about 500 MPs would be elected in single-member constituencies, but rather than voters simply putting an 'X' by their preferred candidate, they would be asked to rank them in order of preference. More details can be found on the Alternative Vote page.
On top of these constituency MPs, each elector would get a second vote to cast at a county (or equivalent) level. In Scotland and Wales, these areas would be the same as the ones used for the additional members in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.
Each voter would choose either their favourite party, or their favourite candidate from the list proposed by their favourite party. This means that they do not have to accept the order of candidates set out by the party, i.e. the lists are 'open' rather than 'closed'.
The county votes will be used to decide how many additional seats each party should get within the county. The constituency seats are then taken into account and the county seat or seats are allocated to the party or parties most disadvantaged by the share of constituency seats (the party or parties with the highest ratio of votes to seats).
The individual appointed as County MP will be the person from the winning party list who gets the most individual votes.
About 100 (up to 150) MPs would be elected in the 'plus' part, and would help correct the imbalance between seats and votes often produced by FPTP. AV+ is thus a crude cross between AV and AMS.
Also known as:
Alternative Vote Top-up
Real-world application of AV+
AV+ has yet to be put into practice anywhere in the world.
Arguments used in support of AV+
- Elected MPs would have the support of a majority of their local electorates.
- Being able to rank candidates increases voter choice, as does having both a constituency vote and a regional vote.
- Nearly every elector would have at least one vote that would have an effect on the overall election result.
- Parties would have an incentive to campaign across the whole country, and not just in the marginals.
- The final result will be fairer, with parties having a share of MPs based on their support among the electorate, rather than on electoral arithmetic and geographical oddities.
- AV+ will produce majority governments when the voters express a desire for one, but will force them to work together when the electorate choose not to give any one party a clear majority.
- Tactical voting is no longer necessary.
Arguments used against AV+
- All existing constituency boundaries would have to be redrawn.
- Ballot papers would be more complicated than FPTP ones.
- It creates two classes of representative, which in turn creates animosity between them and a confusion of roles.