Letters | 8 November 2012

Votes of no confidence

Sir: Charles Moore (The Spectator’s Notes, 27 October) rightly drew attention to the importance of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections and the arrogance of Lord Blair in suggesting they should be boycotted. However, he did not comment upon the fact that none of the literature admits which voting system is being used. After some research I find that it is in fact the Supplementary Vote system. This is a shortened version of the Alternative Vote (AV) system recently rejected by the electorate by referendum.
Jan Pointer (Mrs)
Hutton, Essex

Sir: Matthew Parris (3 November) suggests that people of his age are not necessarily more switched on to the issues facing voters than are teenagers. I well remember a by-election in 1981, the year the SDP was formed, when a BBC interviewer asked a housewife which party she intended to vote for. She told him that she couldn’t say, as her husband was not yet home from work to tell her which party to vote for.