Do some people's votes count more than once under AV?

The central change that an AV electoral system would introduce is the possibility for voters to rank the candidates on a ballot in preference order.

It is this change that has led NO campaigners to argue that AV is unfair because some votes will be counted more than once.

No to AV on First Past the Post: "It sticks to the principle of 'one person, one vote' — unlike AV, where supporters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted several times, while mainstream voters only get one say."

Labour No campaign: "AV is the opposite of one person, one vote. In fact, if you support a less popular party, you are more likely to have your vote counted multiple times."

The YES campaign strongly disagree with this argument.

'Yes to fairer votes' says: "No. With AV everyone gets one vote... If your first choice gets knocked out your vote is transferred to your second preference. Whether you just vote 1 for your favourite candidate or list a preference for every candidate on the ballot only one vote will be counted. If you go to the chip shop, and order cod and chips but they are out of cod, and you choose pie and chips instead, you have still only had one meal."

Facts

It is wrong to suggest that there will be an end to 'one person, one vote' under AV.

Instead, it would be fair to say that when a candidate is eliminated in a count, the votes for that candidate have their next preference choice included in the next count. Every vote is still only counted once in each counting round.

The claims around this issue by both NO and YES campaigners play heavily on semantics to make points that back up their arguments.

Campaigners for a NO vote are strictly speaking right, when saying that voters for a candidate who has been eliminated during counting, will see their next preference choices counted again until a candidate wins a majority.

This means that people who vote for the main parties, where candidates are less likely to be eliminated in counts, are not as likely to see their candidate eliminated and so have their next preference choices counted.

The Independent addresses the impact of this: "...in seven out of 10 seats, supporters of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates would not see their vote transferred to their second preference, because the result would be decided before their favourite candidate was eliminated. More than 90% of Labour and Conservative voters would never see their second preference counted, said No to AV."

As YES campaigners argue, this does not mean that voters whose next preference votes are counted will see their vote carrying a higher weight in the final decision.

A recent Full Fact factcheck covered this issue, pointing out that: "Each round is therefore effectively a new ballot, and all the votes for the highest-ranked candidates remaining are given equal weight, regardless of the position that originally occupied on a voter's ballot paper."