(Untitled)

[skean]

OK, fess up time: I ams till struggling with the implciations of the First Past the Post system on the current elections. Cruising various online tools, there appears to be some tipping point at which, say, a majority vote for Lib Dems turns from simply "more seats but not a commons majority" into "runaway domincation". Is this where the tool has

Comments

[anonymous]

As the others have said, but also FPTP works very well in a 2 party system.

I've always been a FPTP advocate because you get definate results rather than hung parliaments (which can work - Germany, but can also be very weak - Italy / Belgium), and it should allow for more mavarick MPs (local support is key, rather than a centrally managed party list). But with the current rise of the Lib Dems FPTP is starting to look pretty unfair.

The main issue I have with the PR is the power of the party lists. Say a particular MP is exposed as being pretty corrupt (not enough for criminal proceedings, but bad enough - ie like 10% of the current lot) in FPTP they get voted out. But in PR their party will still get a base level of votes (because some people vote tribally and the areas covered will be much larger) and if they are liked by the party hierachy, they'll still get a seat. Basically it's much harder to get rid of individual MPs and the last parliament has shown why that's pretty important. Most of those badly exposed in the expenses scandal are standing down, rather than face the wrath of the voters. I don't think that'd be the case in PR.

So to conclude, I don't know which voting system I'd like. But it'd certainly be interesting to see how few votes Lab and Con would get if people felt UKIP, Lib Dem, Green and BNP votes actually counted. Frankly I doubt either would get 20%.

[simoneck]

Apologies for posting that twice and anonymously both times.

[jonnycowbells]

I agree with much of this. At the last European elections I also found PR pretty difficult to understand, pretty difficult to get information on and, once I did understand it, pretty difficult to explain to anybody else. When one's been used to putting a cross against a name with FPTP all one's life, to be presented with PR is a bit bewildering.

If you asked me to explain it now, I think I'd probably fall down at explaining how the second and third (and more) seats are allocated, where second preference votes come into play (is that even PR, or was the London Mayoral election different again?) and why there are even different numbers of seats for constituencies in the first place. FPTP: There's a seat in a constituency, anybody there can stand, everybody there gets one vote. The guy with the most votes wins. Democratic electoral procedure - done. (slightly simplified, but even so...)

FPTP for parliament and PR for local and European seems a reasonable mix to me.

[despaer]

FPTP also gives you the benefit of having an actual local MP who is accountable to your immediate region. In my case, the local MP for Wells is more likely to care about the building of a new supermarket in Wells than is a South West PR goon who lives in Plymouth and covers everywhere from Trowbridge to Penzance. Doesn't always work but as a general rule...

[flitljm]

You can easily use PR to vote for a single person who's accountable to your region - e.g. using what I thought was called Single Transferable Vote, but wiki reckons is instant runoff voting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IRV_counting_flowchart.1.png

You just rank the candidates, and we count up the 1s to see if there's an absolute majority. If so, they win.

If not, we see who gets the least votes. We drop that candidate, and if it was your favourite, then your vote gets allocated to your next favourite candidate instead, and then we recount. Continue until one candidate does have an overwhelming majority.

The version where 're-open nominations' is one of the options gets my vote :)

[simoneck]

That feels closer to FPTP than to PR to me.
People get to make their protest vote (Green, UKIP, BNP, what ever), but the compromise candidate would get in, rather than the number of seats in parliament reflecting peoples first choice.
If anything that might make parties go more for the central ground than the current system (though I'm not sure that's really possible).