James Ogley

Today’s the day.  You’ve heard the policies, you’ve seen the debates, you’ve read the comments.  You may even have engaged directly yourself in some way by leafleting, tweeting or discussing the election over a pint.  Today is the day to make it all count.  Today is the day to make your decision.

If you don’t vote today, the only thing you can complain about until the next election is the weather.

I don’t need to remind you why I believe you should vote Liberal Democrat – you can easily read back through my posts to see why.

The Guardian is tracking where people have voted using Twitter – here’s their #ukvote map.  If you’re on twitter, when you’ve voted, tweet #ukvote AB12 where AB12 is the first half of your postcode.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ll see a button at the top of your news feed this morning to register that you have voted.  As I type this, nearly 100,000 UK Facebook users have already voted.

The BBC have a search facility to give you all the information about your constituency – its history and candidates along wit who may be targeting that seat.

It’s going to be a long day – some of us may not make it to bed before dawn tomorrow – it’s going to be an exciting day and it’s going to be a significant day.  I just hope it is that last day that we vote under the current broken electoral system

Go vote!

Two days to go. Our chance to change politics and change our nation for the better is at hand.

Vote Liberal Democrat

Three days to go until the most significant General Election in generations.

Significant because we have a genuine chance of changing politics, of doing away with the decades-old hegemony of the two old parties. The Liberal Democrats are poised to be at least the second-placed party in terms of the popular vote, if not the first-placed. That result would – because of our broken First-Past-The-Post system – put them in a position to be the smaller party in a coalition or at least to support another party in forming a government in the balanced parliament we can expect to wake up to (or in some cases [ahem], to still be up for).

It is clear that that party cannot, must not, be the Tories. The Tories destroyed the fabric of this country in the 1980s, they decimated communities and saw the working class as something to be done away with – and they have not changed! David Cameron wants to give tax breaks to the very rich at the expense of the poor of society. He engages in scaremongering over immigration, seeking to play to the underlying racism and little-Englander mentality that sadly still exists in many parts of our society. I heard it said recently that UKIP is the BNP for people who can read and write. The Tories and UKIP are natural bedfellows, leaving the Tories a small step away from the politics of the BNP – not simply in essence but in the way they actively campaign.

I have railed against the Blair and Brown Labour administrations – regular readers of this blog over the years will know that – but it will have to be a deal with the Labour party on May 7th should the Lib Dems not be in a position to form a government themselves. Why Labour? Principally because the way we elect our government desperately needs to be reformed and the Tories will not countenance that – they want your voice to be heard even less than Labour do. Electoral reform should be a precondition of any agreement to support a minority Labour government – along with the appointment of Vince Cable as Chancellor, Nick Clegg as Foreign Secretary and Chris Huhne as Home Secretary. Once the reformed electoral system is in place, an election under the new system should be called as soon as possible to put to an end at last the broken system that has ruined British politics, disenfranchised many members of our society and disillusioned many more.

So, three days to go. When Thursday comes, go vote. Vote for a new politics. Vote for a brighter future. Vote for change, real change.

This is totally unscientific and if you want to see the professionally executed polls, click here.  That being said, it’s interesting.  There’s a poll on Facebook at the moment asking who people want to be the next Prime Minister.  Here’s a screengrab of the current results:

So, just to be clear, that’s 46% for Nick Clegg, 29% for David Cameron and 25% for Gordon Brown.

Five days to go, get ready to vote, vote for change, vote for a liberal future, vote Liberal Democrat.

@pintofsimilar asked earlier how a Single Transferable Vote system produces a result that is closer to the will of the electorate than our current First Past The Post system. I said I’d explain and then totally forgot. I just remembered. From here on in, the two options are STV and FPTP and if I refer to PR, that’s Proportional Representation.

I must say at the outset that I’m not a political scientist, I don’t imagine to give the definitive answer as to why this is fairer than FPTP and there are a multitude of variations on both STV and PR, this is a deliberately simplistic overview.

My imaginary constituency for examples is Dunny-on-the-Wold where there are three candidates: Alice, Bob and Carol.

So first, how does FPTP work? Very simply is the answer. The electorate cast their ballots for one candidate and whichever of Alice, Bob and Carol gains the most votes wins. This may be simple but it’s not a very effective way of gauging the will of the electorate as the votes could break down like this (assume no “others” or spoilt papers): Alice: 33%; Bob: 32%; Carol: 35%. Under FPTP, Carol wins in spite of having the support of only just over a third of the voters. That’s unfair just for the one seat in question but extrapolate that out across 650 constituencies and you can see that a party can form a “majority” government on the back of a relatively small proportion of the votes cast.

So, onto STV. Here, voters list candidates in their order of preference, so they may say Carol 1; Alice 2; Bob 3. As votes are counted, if no candidate has 50% of first preference votes, the candidate who came last is eliminated and their votes redistributed among the other candidates according to the second preference. So, lets say the first round of votes went Alice 37%; Bob 30%; Carole 34%. Bob would be eliminated after the first round. If 75% those who voted for him as first preference had Carole as second and 25% had Alice, Carole would win, ending up with 56.5% of votes. This more accurately represents the will of the electorate as she is deemed to be more generally favoured than Alice even though Alice won the first round – and would have won under FPTP.

STV can by applied over wider areas with the electorate voting for parties rather than individuals. In this system, a threshold is set (say, 10% or 15% or whatever – I’m not a political scientist) which is the level of popularity that parties have to achieve to gain seats (the level would probably be determined by the number of seats available). Assuming that not all parties achieve this level on the first round of voting, the party with the smallest number of votes is eliminated and their votes redistributed. If there are still parties below the threshold, the next one is eliminated and their votes redistributed and so on.

No electoral system is perfect. The issue that is being highlighted by the current election is that the UK incarnation of FPTP is one of the most imperfect among all the democracies of the world.

Read more (Wikipedia):

• Single Transferable Vote
• First-past-the-post
• Proportional Representation

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win — Mahatma Ghandi.

This seems to sum up the experience of the Liberal Democrats in respect of the two old parties so far.  At the outset of the election campaign, they thought they could ignore Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems – the “third” party, the fringe, unimportant, why bother?

Then came the ridicule, as if this upstart party could presume to be taken seriously.

Then, after the first debate, when the electorate were able to hear the party’s position and Nick’s voice on an equal footing with the others came the attacks, mostly from the Tory attack dog newspapers, the odious Mail, Express, Sun and Times.  The Sun even censored a poll that showed “too much” support for the Lib Dems

So, what’s the next stage?

For the Liberal Democrats, winning the popular vote is a real prospect now in a way that would have been unthinkable only a month ago.  Sadly, because of our broken electoral system, having the largest block of seats in the Commons is still unthinkable after this election.

Labour and Conservative attacks have failed to burst Nick Clegg’s bubble

If the surge in Liberal Democrat support were a blip, the polls would have “reset” themselves by now but they still essentially show the Lib Dems as being neck-and-neck with the Tories with Labour trailing in third.  The two old parties are scared of the Lib Dems because they are scared of the will of the people actually being heard.

David Cameron is so determined that people should not truly have a say in who governs them that he is scaremongering about the possibility of a hung parliament.  It is imperative that the voting system be changed after this election and before the next to a Single Transferable Vote system (see the Lib Dem manifesto, pages 87-88).

Ever since the first Leaders’ Debate a week ago, the focus in the campaign has been on one party: The Liberal Democrats.  This has been reflected in the polls which increasingly show the popular vote as being a two-horse race between them and the Tories (the make-up of the Commons is another matter and a product of our broken electoral system) with some polls  showing the Lib Dems out in front.

With all that as a backdrop, it was inevitable that the two old parties were going to become concerned, even scared, of the challenge of the Lib Dems and start to throw mud at Nick Clegg.

I don’t need to post the reality behind the false headlines of the Torygraph this morning, the party are doing that perfectly well when asked in the media.  What I will say is that the mud-slinging demonstrates how seriously the old parties are taking the Lib Dems in private (if not in public) and rightly so.  The Lib Dems have been proven to have been right time and again – on Iraq, on financial reform, on reform of the expenses system in Parliament and of course on reform of the electoral system.

Two other things, one serious and one fun:

• The Independent carries an interview with Nick Clegg where he makes it clear that the current electoral system can lead to a “democratic outrage” and answers the allegations made in the Torygraph.
• Currently on Twitter, mocking the mud-slinging from the old parties, is blaming Nick Clegg for all sorts of woes from history: #nickcleggsfault

Just came across this on Twitter:

The Independent: Truth matters

It’s a short (under 90 seconds) video presentation that tells you some facts that others, who support the old parties, would rather you didn’t know or think about.

No comments here, leave a comment with the Indy.

If you’re eligible to vote in the UK (British, Irish or qualifying EU or Commonwealth citizen, a member of Her Majesty’s armed services or a Crown Servant/British Council employee living overseas) then you have until 17:00 BST (16:00 GMT) today to register to vote.

If you do not register to vote, you forfeit what small degree of say the current electoral system affords you in how this country is governed.

To register, go to the Electoral Commission’s About My Vote site.

Even if you haven’t decided for whom you intend to vote, you need to be registered by that deadline.

Even if you want to protest by spoiling your ballot, you need to be registered by that deadline.

Don’t leave it to the last minute, register now!

Update: The Electoral Commission won’t directly register – it will provide you with a pre-filled form to print out.  You still need to leave time to take it for submission.