Agree 100% with your last paragraph, the partisanshipanisation (what's the right word anyway?) of choosing representatives of the people shouldn't be based on what club someone paid their membership to but what their propositions and ideas can do to increase the welfare of their voters. I would also like to see more "we've identified problems x, y and z, and this is what we propose to solve it" rather than "the other guy has messed up and here's how we're better and we'll fix it all" (the second part being sometimes optional). This "we're better than the other camp because they've made a mess" is really doing my head in.
Anyway, the main reason I like AV is because right now in FPTP you don't get to say who you _don't_ want elected, and I think that should be an essential part of the democratic process too. I'm not sure how it's counted here, but in French elections when you give a blank vote (ie, an empty envelope) it's not counted towards the final count. So you could have potentially over 50% of the people who bothered turning up to the booth to say I don't like either/any choice and their vote would count for nothing, which I don't find fair and democratic at all.
Also, right now I'm having issues picking a candidate for my constituency. Despite what I said above, I do have a preferred party but it's not represented in the 4 candidates you have to pick for your local MSP so being able to say X would be my first choice but I guess Y would be ok too, though I really don't want Z, in this instance would be helpful for me.
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Anyway, the main reason I like AV is because right now in FPTP you don't get to say who you _don't_ want elected, and I think that should be an essential part of the democratic process too. I'm not sure how it's counted here, but in French elections when you give a blank vote (ie, an empty envelope) it's not counted towards the final count. So you could have potentially over 50% of the people who bothered turning up to the booth to say I don't like either/any choice and their vote would count for nothing, which I don't find fair and democratic at all.
Also, right now I'm having issues picking a candidate for my constituency. Despite what I said above, I do have a preferred party but it's not represented in the 4 candidates you have to pick for your local MSP so being able to say X would be my first choice but I guess Y would be ok too, though I really don't want Z, in this instance would be helpful for me.