"Do you want the United Kingdom to adopt the 'alternative vote' system instead of the current 'first past the post' system for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?"A 10-year-old asked me this morning what AV would have meant in Cornwall if it had been used for the general election earlier this year. Perhaps foolishly, I replied that it was impossible to know, but theoretically, following re-distributed votes, it might have increased the chances of the party which had come second. Quick as a flash the child, who I suspect had been put up to it by his parents, said "So instead of Conservative and Liberal Democrats, we could have had Liberal Democrats and Conservatives!"
Meanwhile a Labour bid to split into two parts the AV referendum and the constituency boundaries proposals in the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill was defeated earlier today by just 14 votes in the House of Lords.
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