[the blog with the woofing dog] Sneak Preview! Those New Voting Machines The ...

[PhilH]

Here's a graphic I made to show you just how significant the No2AV Campaign's claim about the cost of the implementation of the Alternative Vote really is.  Note how this is a one-off cost, and all the other costs shown are incurred by the nation every year.

Here's the breakdown of the No2AV's £250 million claim:

£90 million - Cost of holding the referendum
Note that this cost will be incurred regardless of the outcome of the referendum. This money has already been spent. Voting "No" won't change that.

£30 million - Voter education before the next election
This is the only extra cost claimed that would be incurred by voting "Yes" in the referendum, though its size is debatable.

£130 million - New electronic vote counting machines
This bit's a complete lie.  As in the sketch above, Australia have used AV for their elections for 90 years and have always counted ballots by hand.  A bizarre response by some No2AV campaigners is that Australia is a different case because voting is compulsory.  But surely this means that they have even more votes to count and yet still they count their votes by hand.

Of course, the count will take a bit longer, so will cost a bit more every time.  But even if this doubled the cost of General Elections (which is extremely fanciful) this would cost only an extra 30p a year per voter.

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No2AV data came from here and here and here.
Budget Data came from here.
For those wondering about why I picked out those two particular departments, see Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

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Posted By PhilH to the blog with the woofing dog on 4/20/2011 11:00:00 AM