Letter to the Editor: Statistics are notoriously opaque, and Dave Bradney may be right to say that Patrick Loxdale has a point about the proposed electoral changes to the Senedd (Right Field, Cambrian News 15 February.) However, statistics regularly outwit lies, and even damn lies, and perhaps that is why the renowned pollster, professor John Curtice, has three times ignored Dave Bradney, and not given his analysis of the BBC programme, Politics Wales, that alleged the Senedd electoral changes are a perverted form of STV.

Professor John Curtice is a strong advocate of STV and will doubtless eventually give his opinion of the Welsh proposals, but until that analysis is provided it might be instructive to study the testimonies of electors who have experienced both FPTP and STV. Those electors describe feeling that their STV vote can influence the political outcome, that their vote is not wasted, and gives representation to smaller parties. They recognise that coalition government requires compromise, but that encourages a wider consensus and is less divisive than FPTP.

For Patrick Loxdale to cry foul is a bit rich given the Tory legislation for voter ID, a tactic used by the US Republican Party to suppress the poor vote, or the removal of parliamentary scrutiny of current  electoral boundary changes, reminiscent of prorogation

Roger Louvet,

Porthmadog