UK folks - The alternative vote...vote
 

Can someone explain it to me? It doesnt seem to make any sense at all. From what I gather, we vote for three people instead of one, rank them in order of preference (but they are all of equal worth) and whoever has the most votes overall wins.

What are you talking about? The British electoral system?

Yeah, I'm getting leaflets that there is a vote on whether we should have an 'alternative vote', and havent the foggiest what its all about (as you have probably been able to tell already).

Not got a clue.

For a minute I thought you were on about the way we do a general election. In which case you would have been ill informed.
In a general election we vote for one of 3 major parties, where the one with the least votes get in.
Makes perfect sense.

lol no I know that. I voted for the first time last year (eventually, I couldnt find the entrance to my local polling station for about half an hour).

This is about how we actually elect them though.

Electoral Reform Society - Alternative Vote

That bit makes not one bit of sense to me.

Don't bother voting again. It's a complete waste of time.
The Conservative's are all out for the minority, while Labour pretend to be for the working class. For New Labour, read New Conservative. Liberal will jump on anybody's bandwagon just to get a taste of the power...wasted vote.
Every time a party gets in they just fuck up what the party before did, but without actually making any improvements to the standard of living, or the state of the nation.
Do what I do and play by your own rules.

The above advice is made on the back of decades of personal experience.
It's worth it's weight in gold.

It's quite simple really.

Instead of voting for just one person you vote for them in order of preference.
If it's a draw then they ignore the votes of the person who finished last & add any secondary votes from his votes onto the other candidates.

No change there, then.

So in effect whoever gets the most first placed votes still wins the election, they just add on other votes in order to boost the result to abouve 50%?

Maybe this can help explain things.