Nuts in May

I am in receipt of my second anti-AV leaflet, which tellingly combines two attributes from some of the propaganda in the last general election: a horrendous pus-and-purple colour scheme and a reassuring note that none of my tax money was used in printing it. The first leaflet had the same colour scheme but not the note; perhaps at that point Lord Ashcroft had not yet made up his mind whether to donate.

Aside from its title, "Keep One Person, One Vote", which jestingly implies that the word alternative is a synonym for multiple, and the idiotic claim that "the second or third choices of supporters of extreme parties such as the BNP are counted again and again and again", the leaflet is quite a masterful piece of work on behalf of the Yes campaign. It claims that AV "leads to broken promises", using the example of Nick Clegg, whose party formed a coalition with Daveybloke ("I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS") under first past the post. It claims that the cost of reform would be £250 million, and lists the astronomical numbers of doctors, teachers, nurses, school places and hip replacements that money could provide should George the Progressively Osborne decide not to give it to the bankers instead. It provides parallel explanations of the current system and AV, leaving the reader to draw the apparently self-evident conclusion that the system which takes fewer lines to explain is inherently the better one. Most endearingly of all, it provides a prominent illustration demonstrating the idiocy of first past the post. Beneath the heading "Under our present system the one who comes first is always the winner", five piles of ballot papers are shown, and it is almost excessively obvious that more people voted against the winner than voted for them.