“The idea that first past the post is a strong and stable system is just a joke now,” says Darren Hughes of the Electoral Reform Society.
by bottish
“The idea that first past the post is a strong and stable system is just a joke now,” says Darren Hughes of the Electoral Reform Society.
by bottish
6 comments
> the UK and Belarus remain the only countries in Europe to use a purely FPTP system for general elections.
PR is looking like the only way to avoid Reform totally trashing the entire country. The one thing Starmer could do that would have a resoundingly positive impact for generations would be to rapidly move towards moving Westminster to a better system.
Failure to do so is Starmer rolling out the welcome mat for Farage and his band of incompetent fascists.
The only thing that the fptp system does well, is show clearly that X candidate got more votes than anyone else in the electoral area.
But, in a 2-party FPTP system, it is mathematically possible to get a majority government with only around 26% of the vote. (51% of the vote in 51% of constituencies, 0% everywhere else). And that calculus gets worse and worse as the number of parties increases. Which means that a national government can be formed by a party that plays to the interests of only parts of the country, rather than all of the country.
I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18. Most of the time, I felt that it didn’t really make any difference. The candidates that I liked were either shoo-ins or no-hopers, so my vote didn’t really do much.
Most votes in FPTP are wasted. That’s just not really acceptable in the modern age, when democracy worldwide is under a lot of pressure.
I want something different.
PR might mean it’s hard to get rid of unsavoury characters, it’d mean that nigel farage would remain a permanent fixture by scrounging enough votes across the UK to be elected, but, I think I could live with that as the cost of a more representative, consensus-driven governmental system, rather than a confrontational one where one party gets everything and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
We had a referendum on this issue in 2011 and barely any one stepped up to cast their vote.
Now folk are paying attention?!
Fuk’n shanty town behaviour x
SNP are never going to vote against that. It’s the only reason then get in being the only single issue party.
I distinctly remember a lot of people voting against AV because while they believed it was better than FPTP, AV was not their ideal voting system and they voted against because that would mean they’d get another vote on something better.
Tools.
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