Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I do not understand this. My noble friend is a supporter of AV. Those of us who have been in the other place—that is, those who have been to an election count, and I do not know whether my noble friend has—know that, under the present first-past-the-post system, if someone puts a 1 against a candidate, that counts as a vote because it is a clear indication. So it is bound to be the case under AV that if you put an X against a name, it will count as a vote; the normal rules allow for that. I thought that the idea of this was to persuade people to use second choices. This is where the con comes in of it being the ““optional”” AV system. There will be a campaign out there of people saying, ““You don’t have to bother with all these numbers—just put an X against my name””. That is what it is all about. The argument that AV gets rid of tactical voting is fraudulent, as I hope my noble friend will admit.