Over a year ago now (29 May 2009) David Aaronovitch used his Times column to discuss possible AV reforms for parliamentary elections. He ended with a sarcastic anticipation of objections on the grounds that the British people could not cope with ‘the incredible complexity of ranking a series of things from one to five.’
Well there are 120 different ways of putting five things in order, but under the AV system you may, if you wish, just stop at 1 for the one you really, really want. But even if you are quite clear about the order of your five preferences, sticking to that order on your ballot paper may not be the best way of achieving the result you really, really want, or even avoiding the one you would really, really hate.
Unfortunately the best strategy would depend on your being able to predict with a fair degree of accuracy how all the others in your constituency will vote, but it may be perfectly rational to put your favourite candidate at 2 or 3, reserving #1 for someone who will be excluded in the first two rounds of counting.
Then there is the problem that the very change in the voting system may bring about a complete change in the way that people organise themselves into parties & the number of candidates who put themselves forward.
There are 3,628,800 different ways of putting ten candidates in order.
A fact which used to be exploited in newspaper competitions. Put these 10 features in order & win a car – if your chosen order matches the one decided upon by our panel of expert judges. Easy peasy!
In elections, the net result could be that nobody gets the outcome they actually wanted.
Though of course, as with the lottery, there is nearly always one lucky winner of the jackpot
