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This election shows once again how terrible the FPTP voting system is. The Tories gained like 41% of the vote, but 48% of the seats. And this is a "better" outc

by mtgx 9y ago

This election shows once again how terrible the FPTP voting system is. The Tories gained like 41% of the vote, but 48% of the seats. And this is a "better" outcome than it would've been in the U.S., where you also have other high arbitrary thresholds for third-parties, and the media virtually ignores them throughout the year-long election cycles. If the Tories had 41% of the seats (per the number of votes they received) and Labor 40%, it would've been much easier to form a majority with Labor. Now that seems unlikely, even though all parties should see that the Tories are in rapid decline in the voters' eyes, and they shouldn't attach themselves to the Conservative party in any way. It's a real shame the Tories killed ranked choice voting (alternative voting) in 2011. I would have still preferred a proportional representation system, but RCV would've been a definite improvement over FPTP, too. https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/6g6e5d/half_a_million_votes_for_greens_one_mp_you_wanna/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/6g6e5d/half_... It's also an even bigger shame that the Liberals in Canada decided to betray their voters and back-down on moving away from the FPTP voting system, which was one of their biggest campaign promises in the last election. With the risk of getting the Conservatives back in power in Canada, I hope the Canadian voters punish them hard in the next election (by voting NDP or Green), because such betrayal must not be rewarded. Canada could have finally moved away from the the undemocratic FPTP voting system, but the Liberals decided it may be better to stick to the undemocratic voting system if it means they can just switch places with Conservatives and dominate the government every 1-2 elections, as it happens in the United States with the Democratic and Republican parties.

cm2187 9y ago
Political unstability is pretty ugly. Some countries are good at forming coalitions and sticking to them (UK, Germany), some are absolutely terrible at that (France) and you end up with a new government every week. There are some merits to these systems which give a clear majority to the largest party over a fully representative but deadlocked parliament.
Freak_NL 9y ago
As someone who lives in a country with proportional representation as the basis of its electoral system the UK and US first-past-the-post voting system is really weird to observe. It doesn't seem very democratic that a party could get 20% of the popular vote nationally, but win no seats whatsoever.
- vacri 9y ago
  This is a problem that the upper house in a bicameral system is supposed to solve. The lower house is assigned to smaller regions, with one representative per region. If every single region has party X at 20% of the vote (and always lower than another candidate), then every region has individually voted for someone else. The upper house is assigned to larger regions, with multiple representatives per region. You don't have to have to come first to have at least one representative in the upper house. As an example, in my state (victoria, australia) we have 12 senators. They take the total vote count and figure out how many votes you need to get a senator. They take the party with the most votes, give them a senator, and remove X votes. Rinse, repeat. The last senator (or sometimes two) is usually decided by preference flows. At 20% of the vote, you'll be looking at 2/12 senators, and possibly a third depending on preference flow. The problems in the US and the UK are these: the fewer senators you have per region, the harder it is to be representative, so in the US with only 2 upper house members per region there's not much scope for variation; and in the UK, the upper house isn't elected anyway. Mid-sized minorities just can't get representation (mathematically, at least) in either of those two upper houses.

by mtgx 9y ago

cm2187 9y ago

Political unstability is pretty ugly. Some countries are good at forming coalitions and sticking to them (UK, Germany), some are absolutely terrible at that (France) and you end up with a new government every week. There are some merits to these systems which give a clear majority to the largest party over a fully representative but deadlocked parliament.

Freak_NL 9y ago

As someone who lives in a country with proportional representation as the basis of its electoral system the UK and US first-past-the-post voting system is really weird to observe. It doesn't seem very democratic that a party could get 20% of the popular vote nationally, but win no seats whatsoever.

vacri 9y ago
This is a problem that the upper house in a bicameral system is supposed to solve. The lower house is assigned to smaller regions, with one representative per region. If every single region has party X at 20% of the vote (and always lower than another candidate), then every region has individually voted for someone else. The upper house is assigned to larger regions, with multiple representatives per region. You don't have to have to come first to have at least one representative in the upper house. As an example, in my state (victoria, australia) we have 12 senators. They take the total vote count and figure out how many votes you need to get a senator. They take the party with the most votes, give them a senator, and remove X votes. Rinse, repeat. The last senator (or sometimes two) is usually decided by preference flows. At 20% of the vote, you'll be looking at 2/12 senators, and possibly a third depending on preference flow. The problems in the US and the UK are these: the fewer senators you have per region, the harder it is to be representative, so in the US with only 2 upper house members per region there's not much scope for variation; and in the UK, the upper house isn't elected anyway. Mid-sized minorities just can't get representation (mathematically, at least) in either of those two upper houses.