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Tom Harris's big lie

Ludicrous nonsense here from the establishment's friend, Tom Harris MP, who has a poster up on his site which argues against AV... by saying it gives more power to politicians not voters.
The big lie. The very reverse of the truth.

To set the record straight, here's the truth:


AV would drastically reduce the number of safe seats in this country, because all those MPs who get a plurality and not a majority of votes (that's almost all MPs) would now have to worry about everyone's 2nd preferences.

It would be much easier for voters to 'gang up' against the incumbent, if they wanted to.

In the expenses scandal, the worst offenders were virtually all MPs with safe seats. Because THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT WHAT THE VOTERS THINK, so they thought they could afford to break the rules - and, in many cases, they have been proven right.

It is really low of Tom Harris to try to pretend that AV would be good for politics as usual. AV would in fact be a genuine political reform. Not as good as PR, but a real start. AV would enable we the people to punish politicians who abused their positions.

The road to clean politics in this country is via AV.



P.S. Harris's awful line on AV makes more sense, in the context of this useful public service announcement, from the recent general election: http://www.thestraightchoice.org/leaflets/1976/

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