Just sifting through some draws and came across an old essay I crafted during my school years on an old USB. It's always great to see your work in hindsight and see how your perspective has changed, or hasn't really deviated at all, as years go by. Without further ado an immature essay on why FPTP is awful: [spoiler]Analyse the arguments for not retaining the first past the post electoral system for general elections to the House of Commons. The first past the post system is a simple plurality system in which the winner requires only one more vote than a rival party to receive a seat. The system generally gives rise to the most supported party receiving the most power. However it is not majoritarian as not a single post war election in Britain has resulted in either major party having over 50% support of the proportional vote. The system Favours large parties, of which only two are usually sustainable; it leaves third parties often under represented. The system involves the eligible voting population to visit a polling station and simply strike through a box indicative of their political disposition. The votes are counted in constituencies (usually over night) and the candidate with the plurality earns one of six hundred and fifty seats for his party in the House of Commons. The First past the post has some great benefits. The Alternative Vote (AV) referendum in 2011 highlighted one of the flaws of direct democracy: if a vote is to complex, less voter’s turnout. A pattern seen again and again is that time plays a huge role in turnout. The New Zealand turnout is roughly 10% higher than ours thanks in part due to its more flexible polling system. This allows voters to vote when they have time to do so. Over the last few years we have seen an increase in political activity in terms of refusal to buy unethical products; once again, little time is consumed by doing so. In this sense First past the post (FPTP) excels. The ballot sheet is simple to understand and forces very little thinking and thus time from voters. AV requires a far longer period of thinking and a greater breadth of political knowledge to select preferences two onwards and may seem like it requires numbering. Additionally in Australia many ballots are ruined votes simply numbered one through to x, these must be counted but can damage the integrity of the poll. Proportional representation faces a similar problem in that you have to have an awareness of the variety of candidates that are available to you rather than just having awareness of your political disposition. As a side effect of being easy to understand the results are easy and fast to collate and publish results for. In Britain the usual period after voting ends before a result is announced is a day; this allows for quick manoeuvring of a new government into power. The Pragmatism of FPTP is not to be undermined, and usually it is considered supreme in this regard. Fast and easy, pleases the standard voter, the more active population though see major flaws elsewhere. Liberal democrat- 23% vote, UKIP- 3.1%, BNP- 1.9%: In 2010 all of these parties received a large enough proportion of the vote to warrant a seat in the House of Commons. Of the trio, only the liberal democrats received seats. At this point many FPTP advocates would say that there is no harm in keeping ‘extremist’ groups out of the House of Commons and that it is reasonable that the liberal democrats were the only group to receive any seats. Immediately one could argue that there is a flaw in the lack of seats rewarded. One aspect of the complaint would be that 6% of the population have no representation at all in their own government. 6% is a significant sum of people and could win many seats if they all voted for one party and lived in constituencies together. Yet because the parties’ votes are nationally distributed they receive no representation. This means that effectively, 6% of your votes are null immediately, AKA. Wasted votes. This leaves many apathetic eligible voters, they have strong enough political motives to vote but their votes simply do not matter on a grand scale. It seat seems very dubious that advocates of FPTP say it ensures extremists are not represented when you consider that many of these, would be ‘extremist’ voters turn to voting for either labour or conservative simply to keep their least preferred option from entering government. Perhaps a more major issue is highlighted by the liberal democrat party though. Clearly the party is not extremist in nature, and represents a substantial proportion of voter’s beliefs. Yet here to a party is unrepresented. The liberals received nearly a quarter of the proportional vote in 2010 and yet won less than 10% of the seats. The liberal democrats require in excess of thrice the proportional vote percentage of the two major parties to win a seat. The Liberal democrat party highlight the trouble of a plurality system. Coming second place means nothing. Theoretically a party with the most support nationally could receive no seats. Of course this never has nor will it happen but it highlights a major problem of FPTP. FPTP favours concentrated votes. An anomaly of the 2010 election was Brighton being claimed by the green party (another small ‘extremist’ party). The success was not due to Brighton receiving a collection of particularly strong environmentalist between 2005 and 2010 but rather the Green party’s concentrated effort to claim Brighton and thus gain some form of representation in the House of Commons. The Tactic employed worked incredibly and has since been emulated by Nigel Farage who is looking to stand for election in Folkestone or Hythe, where support is already strong according to polls. Parties need concentrated representation not overall representation to win seats; many would argue this is not the best system for this reason. The other issue associated with this is that individual votes are given varying weight. For example a vote in Na h-Eileanan an lar is worth roughly five times more than a single vote in the largest constituency, the isle of Wight. This means targeting smaller constituencies is advantageous as fewer minds have to be convinced and thus less effort is required to do so. In a similar fashion aiming for targeted support in densely packed constituencies is preferable, especially if they are adjacent to similarly targeted constituencies. Inner city labour seats require less advertising as more people will likely travel along set routes than they would in more distributed constituencies, traditionally conservative. On the second point less travel time between residencies is the cause of this; this city centric support advantages labour. Labour is also advantaged by fighting for more contested seats. Under FPTP any vote for a non plurality party can be considered wasted. However any vote beyond the single victory vote is also wasted. Where labour fights for seats (usually) fewer votes are wasted. Labour put their efforts into securing a seat by small margins. The quality of the representation is the same, but the effort to achieve it is lesser. There are still more problems though, as winning a plurality is all that matters ‘swing’ seats and voters become far more valuable to politicians. Politicians realise that some seats are safe. Sutton Coldfield has remained conservative for so many years that it isn’t worth worrying about for either party. The labour party see it as unwinnable so make no effort to tailor policies towards earning its constituencies support, whilst the conservatives realise that they only need be more right wing than labour to maintain its support. In other words neither party are making an effort to earn its support. Instead both parties focus on a fore mentioned ‘swing’ seats. These seats matter the most because they are likely to change and only small proportions of the voting population have to change in order to win seats. Relatively small efforts are required to win them, or they ought to be. The trouble is that both parties target this single seat for the above reasons meaning more and more changes are made to win their support. This centralizes politics, both parties trying to please a single small group of people vulnerable to changing their position rather than trying to please the majority. For evidences sake look at how strongly Romney and Obama competed to appease the voters in Ohio in America, one of the most valuable seats was also one of the least significance proportionally. This problem is worse still when you account for the duality of FPTP politics. You have two, very similar, parties to choose from thanks to a system that was intended to provide people with choice inherently hindering third parties. The first past the post system has some systemic failures. Huge amounts of people receive no or second rate representation, huge amounts of votes are wasted and huge amounts of power are awarded to successful parties regardless of the proportional support they have. It is an outdated electoral system that is retained due to political inactivity and the two successful parties, who could enforce change, reaping the benefits of the system as it stands. [/spoiler] Feel free to post your own opinions on it or simply post your own archived essay (or any form of work for that matter). And yes Grammar [url=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law]-godwinslaw!-[/url]'s, feel free to request corrections if they drive you insane- The flood loves you too!