The referendum on the Alternative Vote has thrown up some new challenges for me.
For the first time in my life, I was initially unsure about which way to vote in a national poll.
However, after much soul-searching, I have decided to vote against the introduction of AV.
I am in favour of reforming the way we elect our MPs and I do think that there are good things to be said about AV.
But I don't believe AV is the system we should adopt in the UK.
When it comes to the issue of whether we should scrap the First Past the Post system of electing our MPs, I do think that it is inherently wrong that a candidate can win a seat in the House of Commons on securing as little as 35% of the constituency vote.
And certainly the principle that a MP must win at least 50% of the support of their constituents is a major selling-point of AV. Eliminating candidates round by round until one has achieved over half the vote is at first glance very attractive.
However, in practice, this will only happen if every single voter ranks more than one candidate in order of preference and you have, say, 4-5 people being put through the eliminatiion process.
Furthermore, I would argue that AV will not abolish the scenario of safe seats.
Die-hard Tory and Labour supporters will always only cast one vote no matter what and will not feel the need to rank any other party candidates. And in traditionally safe seats, whether it be Tory Sutton Coldfield, or the Labour stronghold of Sedgefield, this will mean that a candidate may not need 50% of the vote to win. So you could put forward the view that even under the AV system, a First Past the Post-style result could still occur in many constituencies up and down the country.
There is also a very strong argument for saying that having AV, or any system that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference, will mean that a candidate could snatch victory at the last minute once all lower preference votes are added up - even if someone else has had more first preference votes than them.
I can think of no better example of this than the election held last September by the Labour Party to choose a successor to Gordon Brown as leader.
Right up to the announcement of the result, it was the more experienced David Miliband who was thought to be the first choice amongst the majority of party members. However, his brother Ed won the leadership at the last gasp thanks to the lower-ranked preferences of those eligible to vote, especially those affiliated to trade unions.
In my view this was extremely damaging to the Party.
The result of the Leadership election gave Labour's enemies in the media, not to mention their political opponents, a huge amount of ammunition with which to attack the Party. The accusation that Ed Miliband had been 'elected by the unions' has been repeated ad nauseum by a whole host of Tory ministers. The Party Chairman, Sayeeda Warsi, in particular, has milked this argument for all its worth.
This has greatly influenced my decision vote against the introduction of AV. It is high time Labour adopted a one-member one vote system for electing its leader. It should not matter from which section of the Party a member comes from. Each vote should be of equal value.
Another factor which has led me to the No to AV camp has been the issue of accountability.
I watched with some amusement the joint news conference held by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and John Reid, the former Labour Home Secretary. And whilst I felt the veteran Labour peer could have put across his case for keeping our current First Past the Post System more effectively, something Mr Cameron said did strike a cord with me.
The Prime Minister stated that the increased risk of AV leading to coalitions would make politicians less accountable to the electorate. And I do agree here.
Politcal parties quite often spend months, if not years, formulating policies to deliver in a manifesto come election time.
We only have to look at the Liberal Democrats and their very highly-publicised pledge not to support any rise in student tuition fees. Now a member of a Conservative-led coalition, Nick Clegg has abadoned this policy as part of a behind closed doors power-sharing agreement with David Cameron and his Party.
Whilst the result of the 2010 election showed that coalitions can happen under the current electoral system, this has not been the case very often. The adoption of AV will undoubtedly make coalitions a much more likely outcome of a general election. The resulting situation will be that parties entering into a coalition agreement will be forced to compromise on policy, renege on pre-election promises made to the voters and this will surely make a complete nonsense of any published manifesto.
More important, introducing a system that is more likely to result in coalitions and policy being decided behind closed doors, will only make the British electorate even more apathetic towards politics than they are now. If voters think that a party will swiftly abandon any key pledges just for the sake of power, they are only likely to become more cynical and mistrusting of politicians.
Finally, the point should be made that most Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg included, have always preferred the introduction some form of proportional representation. AV has never been the favoured option in the Party. Nick Clegg himself has famously called AV 'a miserable little compromise'. Clearly, AV, in my view, was a half-baked solution rushed through in an attempt to satisfy the need of both Coalition partners to reach agreement quickly on how to work together in power, so that the continuity of government would not be interrupted.
I personally would prefer to see a system where the share of the national vote each party gets is reflected in the number of seats they end up with in the House of Commons. That is not what happens under the current First Past The Post system and whilst under AV, individual MPs might get over half the constituency vote, this system is not a proportional one.
AV is not the only choice we have when it comes to reforming the electoral system of this country. I would like the merits and pitfalls of other more proportional systems to be thoroughly debated, such as the Additional Member System and the Single Transferrable Vote, before we make any decision to change the status quo.
David Cameron and the Conservatives remain vehemently opposed to a change in the current voting system.
Senior figures in the Lib Dems have campaigned passionately for a Yes vote for AV.
Both the Prime Minister and his Deputy have insisted that if the result of the AV referendum does not go in their favour, the survival of the Coalition will not be put at risk. However, backbenchers from both the Tories and the Lib Dems have raised serious doubts about whether, in reality, this could remain the case in the meduim or long-term.
We need to take stock.
The issue of how this country elects its MPs is far too important for a change to the current system to be hurriedly voted on without giving the British people a meaningful choice of what we should replace it with.
