I voted in favour of AV.
Not because I like AV as a system, I don't. I think the only truely fair system would be to do away with the current parliamentary constituency system and go to a fully PR based one.
What does which part of the country a voter lives in have to do with their choices for the government of the country as a whole anyway????
In 2010, FPTP resulted in Conservative getting 307 of the 650 total seats in parliament on the back of 36% of the vote and Labour getting 258 from 29%. LibDem weren't far behind on votes - 23% - but only won 57 seats because much of their support is spread across the country as a whole rather than concentrated in traditional heartlands.
The Democratic Unionists won 8 seats from only 168,000 votes (0.6%), and Sinn Fein did something similar - 5 seats from 172,000 votes.
But the only mainstream party who want us out of europe, UKIP, pulled in almost
a million votes (3.1%) and got absolutely
nothing.
A
million people used their one and only vote to say "Above all else, I want this EU nonsense brought under control" and they get no representation whatsoever.
So I voted yes to AV. Not because I like it. But because when the No campaign wins (as I think they now will), Labour and the Tories will both say that this shows the people want FPTP, are perfectly happy with FPTP, no appetite for change, nothing wrong with it at all, etc. etc.
It'll be at least another 20 years before anyone in politics dares mention giving us a fair system where every individual vote has the same value.
And by then we'll be just one more "administrative region" of the EUSSR.