Tuesday 29 April 2014

First past the post is a state error

The purpose of democracy and elections is to enable the people to choose their own representatives. We do not have a democratic system if people feel unrepresented but the first-past-the-post system tends to encourage so-called tactical voting. With a fptp system there is only one winner which means that voting for candidates which are not expected to do well is likely a wasted vote. For the electoral system to work well (one presumes) we require that all voters are able to be represented and that tactical voting is kept to a minimum. So a well-designed system is one which reduces tactical voting and hence provides proportional representation. If the system is not proportional it has at least partially failed in its purpose.

The state has made an error if it has chosen to use a less than proportional system and then fptp is an error by the state.

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