Alternative Voting?

Much has been reported in the press about alternative voting, but little has been explained. I mistakenly thought that it might mean we had an alernative to voting - maybe a raffle or some sort of sweepstake. Maybe just put all the names in a hat and someone draws out the winner?
But no it seems that what itreally is is a sytem by which the losers get to win.
Imagine the Grand National. A simple race with horses leaping fences and running with the first past the finishing post usually, subject to any stewards enquiry at least, being the winner, providing of course it has a rider still on top. 2nd place goes to the 2nd past the post, third to the third past and so on. And this might be a good way to elect our politicians - making them leap fences and run.
Under alternative voting however, if enough people vote for the 2nd place horse, even though the first horse passes the post first and gets more votes 2nd place wins - in effect the person more people vote for NOT to win, wins unless more people vote for the person top win than vote for other people not to win. How could this possibly be fair? At present we have an unelected government, but at least we all voted for one of them, and as a coalition we got a compromise.
Under AV, as I understand it, if voting is not compulsory,then more people will fail to vote than will vote so logically we end up with no one elected. And that may be no bad thing. I have just worked two weeks without any body in charge, and my job has gone smoother than ever. I've had no Sergeant because he's on Leave, my Inspector takes every school holiday off, and the Admin staff who used to think they run the job, when in fact these days they actully do, have been absent with weekends off and Bank Holidays with extra days tagged onto them, with no appreciable effect to my working life. No, I tell a lie, my inbox has not been filled with the usual countless and pointless emails about public satisfaction surveys, quality assurance, Health and Safety, outdated intelligence repots, stupid taskings and requests to do woprk that we employ Admin staff to do, but they can't do them because they are too busy sending emails asking other people to do them. So if my job can work without anyone apparently in charge I think the country could muck long nicely without a Government mucking things up.
After all if I were on a boat under full power, I'd want someone at the helm who knew what they were doing - a professional. But given that the economy is barely idling along I'd rather have no one at the tiller than someone with no idea what the hell they were doing and just kept us going round in circles.
So, that's my advice. AV - Bring it on, and then vote for no-one.