So the Liberal Democrats have been promised a referendum on the alternative vote (AV) as part of the deal to support the Conservatives in a coalition government. But what is AV?<\/p>\n
AV retains single member constituencies but voters number candidates in order of preference.<\/p>\n
If the top candidate fails to receive 50% of the vote, the lowest candidate is eliminated and his\/her second preferences are allocated to the remaining candidates.<\/p>\n
If necessary, the process continues until the top candidates has 50% of the votes.<\/p>\n
It is not a proportional system, but it ensures that every Member of Parliament has been supported by a majority of those voting in his\/her constituency even if he\/she was not the voter’s first choice.<\/p>\n
It would help the Liberal Democrats – but not by much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the Liberal Democrats have been promised a referendum on the alternative vote (AV) as part of the deal to support the Conservatives in a coalition government. But what is AV? AV retains single member constituencies but voters number candidates in order of preference. If the top candidate fails to receive 50% of the vote, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2467,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions\/2467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}