However, checking this morning, he seems to have deleted my refutation.
Fortunately I kept a copy on my local machine. My comment was this:
Sure. But for the benefit of anyone coming to this thread late, let's review.
Lee Griffin started off with the strong claim: "AV cannot increase or decrease likelihood of coalitions, only specific dispersal of political opinion, that's a fact like it or not"
The only evidence he can come up with for this is creating a bizarre, artificial and unlikely circumstance. He can make no argument that this circumstance is likely.
In reality, in 2010 every actually-existing AV body had the "hung parliament" / "no overall control" situation he says AV doesn't make likely.
When challenged, his only response has been to create a false dichotomy: that hung parliaments can only be influenced by geographical distribution or voting system, they cannot be influenced by both.
He has made no attempt to justify this false dichotomy.
His only responses are now empty insults: that I'm stupid, utterly ignorant, incapable of understanding etc. But he can't make a coherent argument as to why I'm so stupid.
So, why is he doing this?
Well, look at what he said here:
http://twitter.com/TheoEsc/status/22267067105284097
"I prefer hung parliaments, but the reality is that AV is no guarantee of them."
Like most of the AV campaigners, he prefers hung parliaments. But like most, he recognizes that they're unpopular with most people.
So, the pro-AV camp have to be deceptive. They want hung parliaments. They want AV so they can get the hung parliaments they want. So, they have to use deceptive tactics to try to convince the general public that it's not likely to produce them.
The pro-AV campaign is founded on deception. They're trying to sell a system under false pretences. Beware of it.
5 January 2011 21:30
I don't wish to present things out of context, and I'm not sure what else he will delete, so I've also preserved the whole thread as of 5 January 2011 21:30 here.
