On the alternative vote.

I’m tired of all the nonsense about the alternative vote. The fairest result of any election is for the Condorcet candidate to get elected, neither First past the post or the alternative vote guarantees that the Cordorcet winner will be elected, however under A-V it is more likely.

Another name for AV is IRV, Instant Run-off voting. The Alternative vote does not give anybody a second vote, the vote is redistributed because a candidate has been eliminated, they’re gone, they cannot win, kaput, and the vote is redistributed more than likely to the same person they would have voted for had the person they originally voted for not have ran in the election. Or to put it another way, in a normal multiple round run-off election people change their vote once their favourite is eliminated, no run-off election says, "If you voted for the person who came last in the last round your vote will be worth less this time round".
The vote is redistributed in the same way it would be in any run-off election only the election isn't a separate day, so their second choice automatically becomes their first choice.

Some people argue that AV is wrong because second choice votes from the candidate in last place can decide the election, this can happen but is unlikely. If the candidate in last place’s second choice vote is able to decide the election by tipping the person in first place over the 50% mark , then they must have been very close to it, and almost certainly would have won anyway.

On the contrary when the race is close under a first past the post election can be decided because just a small percentage of people vote for someone who obviously cannot win, who has similar views to the person who would have won had their votes not gone to them.

So inadvertently somebody who has similar views to the would-be-winner helps get someone with entirely different views elected, in 1997 for example the Referendum Party who won no seats stopped at least four Tories getting elected, the same happened in 2010 with UKIP candidates helping get Labour and Lib-Dem MPs elected despite the Tories being the most Euro sceptic of the three main parties.

Also Under the Alternative vote it is much less likely that someone could be elected by such an arbitrary amount the result could have been different had the election been a different day or even if the weather had been slightly different, a few MPs have majorities of less than 100 votes and have exactly the same power for up to 5 years as an MP elected with a majority of thousands.

People keep coming up with more and more elaborately unlikely scenarios to argue against the case for AV, these unlikely scenarios are a sign of desperation.