Complicated Voting System
Posted by Dave Cross
September 25th, 2010
The Daily Mail never misses an opportunity to push its agenda, does it. Writing about the Labour Leadership election today, Nicola Boden says:
Once regarded as the dark horse in the competition, the energy
spokesman, 40, took the crown thanks to the party’s complicated voting
system.
“Complicated”? How can you possibly describe the single transferable alternative vote as “complicated”? Unless, of course, you’re writing for a publication that is trying to persuade its readers that any deviation from first past the post is unnatural.
Update: Corrected STV to AV. And that, of course, makes the Mail’s comments even more political. AV is the voting system that we’re due a referendum on.
[Cross-posted from davblog]
Categories: Politics |
It’s not STV… (because there’s only one position to be filled). But I guess it is AV, which is a special case.
If the electoral collage can’t be called a “complicated voting system”, I don’t know what on earth can (and I support it).
[...] Complicated Voting System | Daily Mail Watch [...]
A new Labour leader is just another hate figure for the Mail.
You can look forward to lots of “Red Ed” stories from now on.
There was a ‘Red Ed’ opinion piece in today’s Sunday Times. I suppose I’d better read the ruddy thing just to see what it’s all about.
Don’t blame me I voted for Abbott. And it wasn’t bloody complicated. You rated the 5 people in order of preference. Not quite as simple as one X in a box but hardly quantum mechanics either.
..aand.. it begins.. Talk about not keeping your powder dry. Did anyone else see that horrendously smarmy article about Ed Miliband’s family life? “first British political leader of a major party to be living with his family out of wedlock”… They couldn’t find anything else to smear, so they went straight for this…disgusting..
Dave: it was that hard, eh? No wonder the churnalists at The Mail were confused.
Watch out for sly digs in the DM about Milliband’s Jewish background in the coming months. Already a couple of comments on their boards have aluded to this:
“He looks foreign to me”
being typical.
“Like Esau in the book of Genesis, David is the elder brother.
Esau, a hunter, was beloved by his father, while David is popular with Labour lawmakers and party members. In the complicated voting system for electing a Labour party leader, David did better among both groups than Ed did.” CNN.com.