DAVID Sherwood (Letters, April 25) is perfectly entitled to disagree with AV, but he might change his mind if he actually understood the process fully, which he obviously does not.
If AV is approved and comes into effect at the next and subsequent elections, if he doesn’t want to select second and third preferences he won’t have to – his ballot will not be ignored but will be valid, and his first and only preference will be counted.
The aim is that ideally one candidate should get more than 50 per cent of the votes once all the preferences have been allocated, but in the fairly unlikely event that no one gets more than 50 per cent, the candidate with the most votes including re-allocated preferences will be the winner.
This is more likely to occur if many voters choose not show their preferences after the first.
JOHN READ, West End.
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