Take Back Parliament

NoToAV campaign spreading disinformation on twitter

Andy: The NoToAV camp - or should I say their solitary twitter account have already started spreading the misinformation about the effects of the Alternative Vote.  In this instance the claims were made around the result of the Austrailian Election.   Australia already uses AV and similar to our last election the result means they have their first hung parliament in 70 years. 

I did expect a lot of spin and distortion from 'No campaigners' throughout the coming months but thankfully we have an excellent group of supporters ready and willing to rebut these claims.   I'd also like to question another assertion of VoteNoToAV.  The owners of the Twitter account - who has yet to identify themselves - claim they are a grassroots campaign.  However it appears the only blog post and site connected to their account has just one post dating back to the second of July.   

TBP has already got 20 local groups in the offering and many more meetings happening - so where pray tell are the grassroots groups backing a 'No' vote.

Anyway - thanks to the Research by Take Back Parliament Birmingham,  who have been monitoring tweets from the NoToAV campaign, below is the rebuttal of their claims throughout last night.

On the night of the Australian election, the NoToAV campaign has made a series of blunders:

Claim 1:

"VoteNoToAV In Australia, Labor (38% of the vote) win same number of seats as Liberals (43%). Greens (12%) win only 1. Behold the proportionality of AV!"

Reponse 1a) Actually it's the Liberal/National coalition which got 43% of the vote. This is ironic since no campaigners have complained that AV produces coalitions, when it is a coalition they are in fact talking about here.

Response 1b) VoteNoToAV completely ignores the second preferences of voters, clearly shown on the Australian Electoral Commission's website - http://vtr.aec.gov.au/

This shows the two main political groupings - Labour and the Liberal/National Coalition are almost neck and neck when second preferences are taken into account. Therefore you would expect them to be neck and neck in terms of seats under AV.

Claim 2:

"VoteNoToAV Over 11% of the vote and the Australian Green Party wins a single seat. Why does the Green Party UK support AV exactly? #No2AV"

Response 2a) There is no Green Party UK. There is instead the Green Party of England and Wales, and a seperate Green Party for Scotland.

Response 2b) The Green party of England and Wales are not in favour of AV - traditionally they've been in favour of AMS. They are debating the issue at their conference in September. Their leader, Caroline Lucas, has spoken out against AV in the past.

Response 2c) NoToAV ignores the prediction by some section of the media that the Greens in Australia may hold the balance of power in the Australian Senate, which is elected by STV.

Interestingly, there are proposals here to elect the Lords by...you guessed it, STV.

Perhaps the VoteNoToAV should change their campaign to VoteNoToDisinformation and start getting their facts right?

If you'd like to help crowdsource and rebutt such claims in the future let us know at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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