Gen/Election vote on a Sunday,plus A/Vote.

[beorhthelm]

Would church goers or particularly religious people want the vote to occur on the sabbath?

My local polling station is the church hall, the polling station would have to be moved and might not be as easy for me (or other people) to get to.

they do vote on Sundays on the continent so i dont think the religious crowd have much issue. but you raise an important point on the logistics.

30minutes! What about those in rural areas that have to travel further to their polling stations, or those that turn up to find no ballot papers, or those that queue for hours to be turned away.

and how does changing the polling day change the time spent? the shortage of ballot papers is another logisitics problem, one which changing the day wouldnt adressess.

It would be a much better idea to do it on a day when most people aren't working.

Or do it over a couple of days.

this came up last week at the pub. theres a bit of an assumption that people dont do anything at the weekend. seems most actually vote on way to or from work and it fits quite nicely, rather than break up the day and other plans with a trip to the polling station (though again, it comes down to how much of a hardship is it really?). Multi-day voting would be problematic with the pollsters and media having to keep silent... not impossible but tricky.

There's some interesting analysis here:-

it is... but how on earth do they know how people would cast second preferences? finger in the air?

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Interesting, but surely there can be no earthly way of knowing what people's second vote would have been for.

They used a poll that specifically asked people about second choices - a ComRes poll published on 26 April 2010.



This is the full note on all of the assumptions used:-

• Our simulations should be regarded as illustrative … the picture they give is necessarily a rough one.
• We have assumed that votes cast on 6 May would have been 'first preferences'. [But] there was a considerable amount of tactical voting … secondly many people would not have voted for their preferred party on the grounds they could not win (for this reason the simulations probably underestimate support for the Green Party)
• AV and STV use preference voting (i.e. voters can rank candidates in order of preference). In our models we have used the second preference data of a ComRes poll of 26 April 2010 (fieldwork on 24/25 April 2010). This data, however, has a number of shortcomings when it comes to estimating how votes for smaller parties might transfer, and has obvious difficulties in Scotland and Wales … In the great majority of seats the simulated outcome is not particularly sensitive to the accuracy of the assumptions made on transfers.
• The polling data suggests that many voters would not wish to express a second preference, and consequently the impact of AV is not as great as other simulations have suggested.
• Our modelling of STV has used constituencies electing 3, 4 or 5 MPs.

 

[London Calling]

There's some interesting analysis here:-

How proportional representation would have changed the general election 2010 result | News | guardian.co.uk

Alterative vote is used to elect Mayor of London and other mayors

Labour likes AV plus and for obvious reasons the libs want stv.


So what comes in will be rigged, that's why brown wanted a deal on av + and the libs didn't.