An engaging mock election showed the benefits or otherwise of the AV system of voting How do you make the AV referendum engaging? Radio will be trying all sorts in the coming weeks (this weekend's Archive on 4 offers a history of referendum campaigns and votes) but **Victoria Derbyshire** (5 Live) yesterday tried a simple format: a mock election to show how AV works alongside a first-past- the-post vote. The result was a lively programme that changed my mind on the issue three times in two hours, explained some tenets of AV clearly, and rendered the mechanics of AV voting over five rounds about as gripping as they're going to get for now. In a "mass live radio experiment" with an audience in Brentford and Isleworth, the existing voting system gave the following percentages: Labour (39); Lib Dems (15.6); UKIP (3.2); Greens (16.9); Conservatives (22.7); BNP (2.6). Five rounds of AV later, Labour had 49% and the Greens 41.7, and Labour was duly mock-elected. While experts and campaigners spoke about the bigger principles involved, some members of the audience reeled from the way the result went with AV. "I probably ended up voting for the Green party," said ...

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Cummings, Elijah E. Dahlkemper, Kathleen A. Davis, Artur Davis, Danny K. Davis, Geoff