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Commentators discuss alternative voting (AV) ahead of today's debate on a bill to give the voters a referendum on electoral reform.

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The leader of the Green Party that AV may have some advantages over first past the post, but it is unlikely to shake up politics:

"[T]he proposed referendum question is merely a choice between first past the post and Additional Vote (AV): in other words, a system unfamiliar to UK voters and which, until the last few months, has had few supporters... May 2011 is not only the planned date of the referendum: it will also be two years since the MPs expenses scandal first broke. Parliament has come to be seen with contempt by many people because it acted in its own interests, not those of the people it is supposed to serve. A stitched-up referendum that denies people a real choice stinks of the old politics. All MPs, including those who support first past the post, should see that unless the public has a real choice, a chance to restore trust in politics will have been lost. But if politicians put aside their own instincts and interests and trust the people, Parliament could win back some of that lost trust."

Labour MP [subscription required] that the bill's suggested reduction of MPs will put place and loyalty aside:

"Labour will oppose it, as the Bill excludes some 3.5m unregistered voters from the new boundaries - disenfranchising ethnic minority, transient and first-time voters. Many are also right to worry that its plans to abolish rights of appeal to boundary carve-ups will undermine local democracy too.
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"A Tory party with any notion of conservatism should be troubled by a bill that places utility above tradition, separates people from place and past, and ruptures the unwritten constitution in order to hold a coalition together. It would certainly have worried Edmund Burke, who mourned the passing of an age of chivalry when "that of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded". Before Heathite functionalism goes any further, Conservatives might also reflect that such policies secured their former leader no more than a single term."

The the Labour party would be neglecting the bigger picture by opposing the bill:

"The Party will look monumentally cynical if it votes to head off a referendum that it was campaigning for as recently as May. It will be joining forces with the reactionary right of the Tory Party, which also wants to defeat the bill, although for different reasons. And if Labour helps to scupper this bill, it will jeopardise its chance of forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats at the next election. Worst of all, Labour will be, implicitly, allying itself with a discredited electoral system."

where all the enthusiasm for AV went:

"Bring on AV because it's a better-than-nothing change. But bellyache simultaneously about the coalition that first-past-the-post has thrown up. Grizzle about single party pledges abandoned. Grump about principles left to rot. Make the case for a future of coalition governments by complaining how awful and undemocratic they are... 'Fair' votes aren't an end in themselves, they are a means to a series of better, more transparent, duty-bound outcomes. But listen to the din all around you. Look at the wriggling and back-biting. Grownup outcomes need grownup politicians, pundits and voters."

Ex-Conservative MEP that AV is so flawed that the bill won't go through, killing the issue of electoral reform for another generation:

"Those who have been long-standing supporters of PR, including the Electoral Reform Society, are in danger of making utter tits of themselves. They have, quite simply, picked the wrong battle. As soon as the referendum begins, it will become obvious that AV would widen the gap between Parliament and people, and that its supporters, actuated by low politics rather than high principle, are advocating a system which they have spent decades attacking."

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