This Thursday residents in Tower Hamlets will vote for the borough's first ever elected Mayor. Labour's candidate Lutfur Rahman was recently sacked after links with Islamic extremists were revealed. As a result Mr Rahman is now standing as an independent.
The election in Tower Hamlets is fought on the AV system and Ken Livingstone is supporting and campaigning with Rahman. Livingstone has been negatively encouraging non-Tory voters in Tower Hamlets to use their preference votes for Rahman to keep the Tories out.
Livingstone's actions are probably a precursor to what would actually happen in every election fought under AV rules.
Meanwhile, a bid to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in next year's referendum on changing the voting system to AV, was defeated on Monday night.
MPs voted by 346 to 196 against lowering the voting age for the referendum on whether to replace the current first-past-the-post system with the alternative vote (AV). The Liberal Democrats are now under fire for not supporting the bid, after they called for the voting age to be lowered to 16 in their general election manifesto.
