Right:
With AV, you rank your candidates in order of preference on your ballot. They then add up all the "first" places, and see if anyone has over 50% of the vote. If not, then they add the "second" choice places and see if that gives someone over 50% of the vote, and so on. Hence why it would be difficult for the BNP etc. to gain representation.

First candidate to get to 50% in the constituency becomes the MP.
(BelladonnaAnodyne Melissa's gonna wet herself, I swear..., Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:13, 4 replies, latest was 15 years ago)

I'd also like to point out that I'm fucking shocked that people are so opposed to change when they don't even know what the change is.

(BelladonnaAnodyne Melissa's gonna wet herself, I swear..., Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:23, Reply)

I didn't say I was against it.
I am strongly suspicious of it and the motives behind it.
( Kroney, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:25, Reply)

The motive is to get a more representative voting system.
It's not the ideal voting system, but there is not one single argument in which FPTP comes out in front of AV, so from that point of view it ought to be a forgone conclusion.

The fact that the NO campaign is pedalling lies and negative ideas just goes to prove that they have nothing good to say about their choice.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:31, Reply)

But your suspicion is based on your mistrust of a party, rather than being informed about what it actually is.

(BelladonnaAnodyne Melissa's gonna wet herself, I swear..., Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:32, Reply)

What happens if no-one gets 50%?
Is that technically a possibility?
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:26, Reply)

I'm not very good at doing maths with percentages
But thinking about it logically, I think it would be impossible.
(BelladonnaAnodyne Melissa's gonna wet herself, I swear..., Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:29, Reply)

That's an interesting idea.
If you have five candidates and each got 20% and nobody put a second preference for anyone, then yes I guess you could have a tie. But I think the likelihood is so low.

Plus there will almost certainly be a contingancy for one candidate not getting 50% but still having the highest percentage.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:33, Reply)

Oh, I think I like that.

( G/PP 💩💩💩💩💩&#128, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 13:30, Reply)

Sorry to butt in
But thats not quite how it works... If no one person has acheived 50% of the vote then the person polling the lowest number of votes is eliminated and that second choice is added and so on, it is the "single transferable vote" AV is a misleading term.
(Bonzodog29 is an unemployed sponge of the worst kind, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 16:16, Reply)