but a move to AV would be a decent start.

What I dislike most about the current posturing (it's too feeble to be called campaigning) is the claim that we the electorate are too stupid to understand AV and it makes everything so darned complicated. I can't work out if this sums up what certain MPs think about their constituents or wish about them.

Most of all, I fear that Mr. Cameregg won't learn from Mr. Blair's expressed regret at having been too cautious about House of Lords reform and fudge this one, too. The HoL reforms quite rightly tried to move away from entitlement to election but ended up with a hodge podge of heriditary, appointed and nominated peers and is far worse that it was 20 years ago! In my book, we should be looking at:

Around 450 MPs.
Constituencies of broadly an equal number of voters.
AV+
Fixed 5 year Parliaments.
No MP to serve more than 5 terms.
No PM to serve more than 10 years.
Get rid of unelected individuals or Peers serving in any kind of Ministerial role: Ministers should be MPs and accountable to the electorate.

Oh, and an entirely elected Upper Chamber with a revised and clear definition of the power of the Upper Chamber to change or reject legislation sent to it for scrutiny.

Oh, and also: no deployment of British Armed forces outside our own borders unless ratified in advance by both chambers.

I missed them the first time round. What was their best album?

AV does not go far enough and I'd love to see the current arrangement completely shaken up, it's an anachronism that should have been sorted out years ago.

There are, as you point out, no convincing arguments in favour of retaining the current system, unless you happen to be an MP in one of the two main parties.

I'm nervous at the prospect of the referendum, worrying that this might turn out to be our one crack at it, but hopeful that voters will be sufficiently disillusioned by the actions of the present incumbents as to want change. I really hope that this turns out to be a genuine opportunity for change.

And oh yeah, the 'three more from them later' thing, surely it's time to move on?!

Because I do

As someone who studied politics in my younger days the thought of a referendum being the answer to the issue is stupid.
My most recent experience of the matter was the 'Welsh' one where 65%( the non-voters) of the electorate handed the government of Wales to the political extremists who have done very well out of devolution.
Two days later Clegg stated this enabled the Assembly to raise taxes. Enough said about this nonentity of a politician who has squirmed his way to the top.
Funnily enough the ones making the biggest noise about a 'NO' vote to AV are the Tories. Strange really in Wales where they are a minority party of the people.
Many of today's voters never voted in the referendum of the Common Market and hindsight shows the anticipated riches for Britain only worked in favour of politicians.

Although I am in favour of a more proportionate voting system, like the one used for the Euro elections, the devolved parliaments or London Assembly.

The problem with AV is that you run the danger that the person elected won't be the one with the most votes, or even with the second highest number of votes. But it could be the one who would have come third under FPTP but now wins because people put him or her second because it seemed a harmless sort of thing to do. We end up with an MP who fewer people wanted to win than either of the the other two main candidates. That can't be right, surely? At least under the present system, the one with the most votes wins.

There's also the "Give Clegg a Kicking" argument. If the Lib Dems can't deliver voting reform, it does leave their support for the Tories looking even more suicidal. But it would be very irresponsible to decide my vote on immature lines like that;-)

A politician admits to lying: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/05/campaign-figure-b...

To No and sticking it to that spineless toad Clegg.

The biggest concession the Tories gave to Clegg was a vote on AV - he will look even more of a twat when the resounding No vote comes in.

but seeing as The Daily Mail, The BNP, William Hague and Cameron all wanted a NO vote, it was easy for me to play the Man From Del Monte card.

If 500 or so seats rarely change hands, can you explain how AV is going to change that situation? If a candidate gets 50% of the vote in the first round, he or she will win. If they get nearly 50% of the vote, they're very likely to win. This is surely the definition of a safe seat and that won't change under AV.

What will change is the marginals. The 150 seats you claim decide the election. What could happen there is that the person who would have won under FPTP may no longer win. Say, for example, candidate A gets 45%, candidate B gets 35% Candidate C gets 25%. Under FPTP candidate A would win. This is criticised by supporters of AV because 55% of the electorate didn't want him/her. Under AV, when C's second preferences are redistributed, it's possible that A could end up with 49% and B with 51% and thus wins. But we than have an MP who 65% of the electorate didn't want as their first choice. How is this fairer than the example under FPTP where 55% if people didn't want that candidate to win?

AV is no more proportional than FPTP. I agree with Nick (remember when everyone did?) and say it's a miserable little compromise. I'd vote for a proportional system but this isn't it.

I faced. Don't like Cameron and his cronies at all but for me Clegg is despicable and his actions were beyond the pale. The AV debate became extremely muddied and I don't think too many people understood the arguments. Not because the arguments were too complex but because the explanations were too simple.
For me it kind of explains why we only have a referendum in rare instances.

about the AR debate is that every single MP was selected, and every single party leader elected, by AV. That's right, including those who are against we proles using it to vote for our MPs.

Regardless of what I think of AV, this does strike me as a tad hypocritical on the part of the 'no' campaign.

a change to our electoral system that is actually worth making, I may well give the proposal the benefit of my enfranchisement. As for this sorry half-arsed gesture, it's a 'No' from me.

Anything else'd be like voting to decide whether the band should play 'Jerusalem' rather than 'Nearer My God To Thee' while the officers sort out which toffs get the lifeboat seats.

I'm firmly in the camp with those who believe that things are so broken that they'll need a more radical fix than anything that is ever likely to be offered by the mainstream parties.

I'd reduce the number of MPs at Westminster to around 500, passing legislation to enable around half of those MPs to be members of the general public, all picked from the electoral roll.
Membership of the parliament (for half of the house) would be like an extended period of jury duty. If you got picked, you would have to serve for two years (unless you could prove exceptional circumstances) and your job would be guaranteed, your employer compensated for your absence etc.
The other half of the house would then be made up of representatives of the various political parties, but the influence of those parties would clearly be greatly reduced.

In this way, the costs of government would be reduced, the views of ordinary people would be represented and a genuine notion of public service /active citizenship would be restored to everyday politics.

I think that what has put people off politics is 'career' politicians. The party machinery (both left and right, whatever that means these days) is not designed to encourage discussion, debate, or independent thought.

So ... vote for me. You know it makes sense.

Edit: Sorry, I just repeated the above post (although I hadn't read it).

Collect the names of all the adults in the country with an agreed qualification (A'-levels for the sake of argument).

Put all the names in a hat and draw out 500 names – there's your parliament. It would be like jury service – after five years, you would get your old job back.

It might not be such a bad way of replacing the House of Lords

One of the weaknesses in Bob's argument is that it appears to judge a radical idea in terms of how it would effectively maintain the political status quo. It’s a radical idea precisely because it seeks to dismantle the status quo.

A qualification threshold shouldn’t be a consideration. It’s rather an elitist concept. I refuse to believe that the average person in the street would do a worse job than many of the folk who represent us just now. In a true democracy, the vote of the shop assistant is equal to the vote of the college professor. Why shouldn’t that apply to political representation as well?

We certainly don’t need more laws for 'bright, driven' people to pass. I’d argue that one of the key tasks facing a radicalised parliament would be to repeal literally thousands of useless (and sometimes oppressive) laws.

We need government that does less stuff. And we need whatever ‘stuff’ that government does to be driven not by self-serving political parties, but by something closer to the settled will of the electorate.

I don't agree that MPs should be 'running a constituency'.
MPs should be trying to represent the interests of their constituents.

Nor do I necessarily want my 'best and brightest' to go into politics. I'd prefer them to go into business in order to create jobs and wealth. I'd be reasonably content with politicians who are honest, principled (perhaps even plodding) public servants.

I think we could now have an extremely dull argument about how much 'complex thought' is required of the average MP. I've met several and -to be polite- I've never had the impression that I was in the presence of a stellar intellect.

And I'm fully aware that my vision of a small, radicalised government is not shared by the vast majority of the electorate. So what?