MONMOUTH MP David Davies has made clear his views on the AV referendum to be held alongside the Welsh Assembly Elections on 5th May.
Speaking from his constituency office in Usk, David said: "" In view of the upcoming referendum on the Alternative Voting system I thought it may be helpful to make my views clear to the voting public.
"" AV is a system in which the voter instead of putting a cross for the candidate of his or her choice rates them in order i.e. 1 for first choice, 2 for second choice, 3 for third choice etc. If no candidate gets 50% of the vote then the last candidate is removed and second preferences are counted, and so on until one candidate has more than 50 per cent of the vote.
“I am implacably opposed to any changes to a voting system which has stood the test of time and served us well. First Past the Post is a tried, tested and proven system which the electorate understand and trust to produce the best result. Nobody wants AV, even the yes campaigners don’t want it, and they see it as a convenient stepping stone to full proportional representation. Nick Clegg himself describes AV “as a miserable compromise"".
""AV is a discredited system. Only three countries in the world use it (Fiji, Australia and Papua New Guinea) and in Australia, six out of ten people have expressed a desire toget rid of it. In my opinion, AV doesn't work. Rather then the candidate with most votes winning, the person who finishes third could be declared the winner. It is expensive, calculating the votes is a long and complicated process, and it can take many days to figure out who was won.
""In my opinion, an AV system will favour the small fringe parties and lead to weak government. It's possible the least known and therefore least disliked candidate who has few first choice votes can be elected with this system.
""To sum up, I shall be backing my colleague Nick Ramsay for the National Assembly for Wales election on 5th May and voting no to AV in the referendum on the same day"".