Electoral reform - continued.

Following on from yesterday's post, let's go back to our hypothetical election where A gets 45% of the vote, B 40% and C 15%.  This time let's suppose that the overwhelming majority of C's voters give their second preference vote to A - let's say 12% with the other 3% going for B.  A now has 57% and is clearly elected, and AV has done its job - right?  But the situation now is that A owes their election to C, or rather C's voters.  Let's put flesh on the bone - let's suppose A is Conservative and C is BNP.  We now have a Conservative MP in the uncomfortable position of knowing that they owe their seat to BNP voters, and equally we have the BNP quite justifiably able to say to that MP "You only got elected thanks to us - you owe us some support for our policies".  And then of course there's the question of coalitions, which I'll deal with next.