First-Past-the-Post Voting is Really Bad: Why We Need Election Reform as Much as or More Than We Need Voter Turnout

Many developed nations pride themselves on their social and technological refinement. From scientific discoveries to cultural output, countries such as India, The United States of America, The United Kingdom, and Canada help set a high standard for the rest of the world. However another thing that all of these countries (and more) share is an antiquated system of voting: first-past-the-post voting, or FPTP. Why is it that so many countries that lead the world in so many fields are so behind in terms of voting practices? In order to answer that question we must first understand how FPTP works and why it still endures, even in the face of more equitable solutions.

At its most basic, FPTP voting consists of casting a single vote per person (or representative) for a single nominee. This is the simplest form plurality voting, in which the winning nominee secures a winning amount of votes but not always a majority. The glaring issue here is that it is possible for, in an election with multiple parties vying for one position, the winning nominee to be disliked by the majority of voters, but winning due to fragmentation of the opposition by other parties. 

A pertinent recent example is the 2016 election of Donald Trump. President Trump won the election, but not the majority of the votes (there were a whole slew of other factors that influenced his victory, but we’re only going to focus on FPTP). If the voters who had voted against Trump, but not for Clinton, such as Green Party voters; Libertarian voters; and write-ins; had made a concerted effort to vote for a single candidate -- in this case Clinton -- Trump would not have won the election. 

This leads to the next obvious criticism of FPTP voting: a strong reinforcement of partisanship. Since the FPTP system strongly favors a two party system by nullifying votes that are spread out among different nominees it often forces voters to align themselves with a party that they don’t support but believe is better than the opposition (again the 2016 presidential election is a prime example). This system also leads to single party governments for the same reason, which further promotes partisanship in a two-party system.

A commonly suggested, and more equitable replacement to FPTP is the Alternative Vote, a system wherein voters rank their choices by number each candidate in response to their feelings about them. For example, in the 2016 presidential election, a ballot with the Democratic nominee, the Republican nominee, the Green Party nominee and the Libertarian nominee could have been filled out like so: 1. Democrat, 2. Green Party, 3. Libertarian, and 4. Republican.

This way voters are not limited to a system that, despite having more than two parties, only really works to elect Democrats and Republicans, thus preventing the majority from electing a candidate they don’t like by splitting their votes between multiple nominees, as in 2016. This also means that voters can vote for their favorite candidate without feeling like they need to use their vote tactically, lest they waste it.

Want to know more? Check out this link:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-12892836