Clayboy, otherwise known as Doug Chaplin, is a priest in the Church of England. So I was interested to see that he had put together a list of five reasons to say No! in the forthcoming Alternative Vote referendum.

I’m glad to see for once someone trying to find substantive arguments on the No! side. I hoped that in Doug’s list I might find some real Christian arguments on this issue, perhaps in response to my post Towards a Christian view on the Alternative Vote, or to what Ekklesia and some bishops have had to say on this subject.

So I was a little disappointed that the Clayboy arguments are mostly not about the ethical issues involved, but instead are speculation about the consequences of a Yes! vote. But, following his five reasons, he does write the following:

the most moral system of voting in a democracy is the one most understandable to and accessible by the most people.

Well, he may be right here. But is he really suggesting that listing candidates in order of preference is not understandable or not accessible by people? If there is an issue here, then it needs to be addressed by proper voter education. If he wants to rule this out on principle, then of course the best understood system will be the current one. That makes his argument into one for maintaining the status quo however bad that might be – and I cannot accept that that is a good moral argument.

Now I’m sure Clayboy is correct that adoption of AV will not on its own be “all that is needed” “to reconnect people and politicians”. But surely it is a step, if only a small one, in that direction. Let’s indeed make the politicians “do some real work to connect to the electorate”. But first let’s show that we care about this work by voting Yes!