Redirected from Talk:First-past-the-post election system
Its opponents say its principal deficiencies are
Its supporters say its principal benefits are:
Its Opponents say its principal flaws are:
The Liberal Democrats (UK) has long campaigned for an end to the First Past the Post system. The Conservatives support its retention. Labour, having indicated a willingness to consider change, now seems to be for maintaining the status quo.
While First Past the Post is used universally in Great Britain and Nothern Ireland for parliamentary elections, an alternative system, PR.STV[?], which offers greater proportionality and also greater complexity, is used in local government elections in Northern Ireland.
This wrong, in the UK, local election do not use a STV system. It is multiple (3) votes for the same number of seats, these are not transferable.
Ultimately, the issue of whether or not to use the First Past the Post system boils down to a simple question: which of the following is the more important?
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An Example of First Past the Post
Take for example a mythical constituency, called Wikipedia North. One Member of Parliament to be elected.
Candidate | Votes |
---|---|
Nancy Ash, Anti-Radical Party |
999 |
John Maurice, Not So Radical Party |
1000 |
Jean O'Leary, Radical Party |
1001 |
Michael Yates, Independent |
1000 |
Under First Past the Post, Jean O'Leary would win the seat, having won more votes than each of her opponents. Her majority would be described as 1.
Critics of the First Past the Post system would point out that of the 4000 votes cast, O'Leary only got 1001, whereas a total of 2999 were cast against her for other candidates. Supporters of the First Past the Post system would say she was the most popular candidate on offer. Having got more votes, she was entitled to win the seat.
Why does First Past the Post produce Disproportional Results?
The system's disproportionality is caused by the ability of one candidate to win a seat even though the majority of votes were cast against that candidate, with he or she in the above case being the choice of marginally over 25% of the electorate. In 1987 in Britain, for example, the opposition votes were split between two parties, Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance, allowing the Conservatives to win seats even though the majority of voters in a particular constituency were opposed to the conservatives. If the split between Labour and the SDP-Liberal Alliance allowed the Conservatives to win more seats and so a landslide in 1987, the split between the Conservatives and the Liberal Alliance[?] in 1997 and 2002 allowed Labour to win a landslide majority. In all three cases, 1987, 1997 and 2002, the winning party actually received a percentage of the popular vote that was less than 50%.
In the mythical election result above for Wikipedia North, if the Anti-Radical Party and the Not So Radical Party had arranged for one of them not to contest the election but have their voters vote for the other party, the remaining candidate would have got 1999 and so easily won the seat. But by splitting the votes of those opposed to the Radical Party, they gave the seat to the Radical Party candidate. In theory, if this exact result was replicated in 100 constituencies, the result would be
Yet, the Radical Party would only have approximately 25% of the vote, and would only have 100 votes more in total than the Not So Radical Party, yet the latter would have one 0 seats to the Radical Party's 100. This is, of course, an extreme case. No election would produce such a dramatically disproportionate result. That First Past the Post produces disproportionality in some form is not in doubt. Its supporters argue that its benefits in terms of electoral stability and clear-cut results outweighs a degree of disproportionality.
List System[?]
Voters vote for parties whose percentage support is then used to indicate how many of a list of candidates submitted by them are elected.
Strength Absolute Proportionality
Weakness Loss of local link with voters as not based on constituencies or personal votes
Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV)
Voters vote for candidates on ballot papers, marking '1', '2', '3' etc to indicate preferences. Those with lowest votes are eliminated and their votes re-distributed and counted. The process continues until one candidate reaches a 'quota'. This continues until all seats in a constituency are filled.
Strength - relative proportionality
Weakness - complicated. May involve multi-member constituencies.
Electoral systems can also be constructed using parts of other systems. For example, the List System & PR.STV can be combined, with two-thirds of parliamentary seats elected by PR.STV via constituencies, and the remainder filled from a List, to produce absolute or near to absolute proportionality.
So in other words you want students who use Wiki when learning about FPtP not to understand that it is the formal name of a system but simply to think it is merely a description of a system. If it is used as the name, it is regularly capitalised. Only if it is decribing a system is it in lower case. That's no personal idiosyncrasy, its basic english. In this case, you are not describing a system, you are naming it in the name of an article. As such, it is supposed to be in capitals, a basic grammatical rule. When it is used as the name not the description it is generally capitalised. The context decides the form in which it is used. In this context, capitalisation is a basic elementary grammatical requirement. JTD 02:00 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)
Yep - there is no reason to have this article title in caps. It simply ain't a proper noun so it is not capitalized. Please refer to Wikipedia:naming convention (capitalization) for the rationale. --mav
First Past the Post is a proper noun. It is the formal name of a voting system. When used simply as a reference to methodology it is not capitalised. When used as a name of a voting system it is. Hence you get references to FPTP not fptb in academic texts. It is the same as Proportional System using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV, never pr.stv) which is capitalised when using the formal name of the system, not capitalised when describing the methodology. Electoral system in this instance is not capitalised because it is simply in this instance a descriptive phrase contextualising the name of the voting system. ÉÍREman
"In the UK, there were only two majority governments in the 20th century."
This certainly wrong, the last five governments have been majority governments. It should probably state that there have been only two hung governments in the UK in the 20th century.
Please stop screwing around with this name and making wikipedia looking like a home for illiterates. First Past the Post is the formal name of a voting system and is treated like a proper name in titles, just like President of the United States, Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote, President of Ireland, etc. It is not treated as such if talking generically, just as single transferable vote if discussing the methodology of electoral systems generically is written in lower case, just as you use Pope and pope, Prime Minister and prime minister, President and president, etc, in different contexts. This is a clear definition of a clear explicit voting method, not a generic talk about voting. Students would be docked marks if they did not know when to capitalise and when to use in lower case, why can't some people on wikipedia understand the difference? ÉÍREman 01:28 May 14, 2003 (UTC)~
I know, Jim. I'm the one always setting up redirects all over the place (though I forget if I did any here). It would be nice however if students checking the information actually found that the text on the correctly named page, not the wrongly named redirect. It does not do much for the reputation of wiki if, having been told by their lecturers of the importance of capitalising the name when writing about the actual system, a student finds a supposedly credible encyclopædia then puts in the text in a form that the student has been told is wrong, and indeed worse than that, in a form that they were told if they used they would have marked docked over, because of how wrong it is. ÉÍREman 02:03 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (PR.STV). Unfortunately it keeps being moved to the wrong name, using the wrong capitalisation, etc. I don't what it is about wiki and electoral systems but people keep getting the capitalisation wrong, merging electoral systems that are somewhat different, getting details of them wrong. This one is at Single Transferable Vote (via a redirect at 'single transferable vote' (aaagh!)). Everytime anyone fixes it, someone screws it up again. Even getting the correct capitalisation for STV was a struggle. At this stage I have abandoned trying to fix the electoral system texts. Simply getting the titles right is frustration enough. :-) ÉÍREman 04:11 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
ÉÍREman says that "First Past the Post is the formal name of a voting system and is treated like a proper name in titles", and is mystified that anybody might think otherwise. Well, I've read a lot of books and spent way too many years in school, and I've never ever heard of a voting system's name being capitalized, formal name or no. I'm in a hotel room right now, so printed MoS is not handy, but instead of saying "every student knows this" over and over, I think we need to see some authoritative citations (never got any for Communist state, sigh, but hope springs eternal). If this naming convention is something important that wikipedians don't know but should, I don't think it's asking too much that it be documented at least as carefully as, say, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships). (It's also more efficient to point to an MoS page than to fill up talk page after talk page with repetitious verbiage. :-) ) Stan 05:26 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
I've taught the flaming thing to third level student for eight years. IF the thing is being named, it is treated as . . . a name. (surprise, surprise). If it is being talked about generically, it isn't. Learn the difference people definition and methodology, or try looking at a grammar book for how you treat formal unique names. If you talk about people generically you don't capitalise. If you talk about Stan or Jim you do because guess what? It is a unique specific reference. A name. First Past the Post is a unique reference to a unique name of a unique clearly defined system. So is Proportional Representation using the Single Transferable Vote (or PR.STV as most people call it). If you are generically talking about using a single transferable vote, it isn't capitalised. If you are talking about the Single Transferable Vote system (a specific system) you capitalise. The inability of some people to understand basic elementary rules of capitalisation is mind blowing. Is the standard of english language teaching so bad that people don't know what a capital letter is and where you use it? From some of the nutty namings on wiki it must be. No wonder Sian left wiki, saying that the standard of english appalled her! ÉÍREman 06:21 May 14, 2003 (UTC)
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