British Electoral System

However the government is held to account by the British public in general elections because the First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system favours the two party

The first election in British America was in 1607 by the commanders of the 105 colonist using a ballot system. There was suspicion of concealing a mutiny and since that time more individuals were asked asked to vote who they thought had a stake in the government. Individuals who were asked to participate in the voting were property owners.

In this essay I will assess the outcomes of Additional Member system, First Past the Post system and the Closed Party List system. The F-P-T-P system is used to elect the members of House of Commons and local government in England and Wales. Voters select candidates, and do so by marking his or her name with an ‘X’ on the ballot paper. This reflects the principle of ‘one person, one vote’. The Additional Members system is used in Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, and Northern Ireland Assembly and Greater London assembly. It is a mixed system made up of F-P-T-P and party-list elements. The Regional party list (or the closed party list) is used to elect the

It is important that a candidate becomes well known in the area they are hoping to represent and to this end they will often undertake a great deal of publicity work, such as leafleting houses, displaying posters, and canvassing door-to-door for votes. Publicity costs money and so the more wealthy parties will have an advantage. In addition, during a general election you will often see party political broadcasts for the main parties outlining their policies. This is because they can afford publicity campaigns that include film-making.

I agree with that the Electoral College System should be done with. My reasoning for this is in any presidential election, the Electoral College is above the votes of the people of the United States of America. All that a candidate needs when they run for an election is 270 out of the 538 votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency. The Electoral College System over runs the election. It pushes aside the votes of the people and consequently decides who is going to be president for themselves. They say that the American people have a choice in who becomes their president, but it only takes 270 out of 538 of the Electoral College to choose the next president of the United States of America. If the Electoral College chooses who is going to be the next president then what is the reason for the American people to vote? There is

Westminster is the location of the Houses of Parliament, where the majority of political decisions (other than those for devolved states) are made for the nation. The current Westminster electoral system is First Past the Post (FPTP) which is used for general elections every 5 years (due to the new fixed-term parliaments brought in by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.) The FPTP system is constituency based, each person votes for a representative for their constituency and whichever party wins the most constituencies gains governmental power. First Past the Post works on the basis of a plurality of votes, that is, that the winning party need only gain the most votes out of all parties to gain power, they do not need an overall

It’s interesting to notice that in those four disputed elections of 1800, 1824, 1876 and 1960, the winner of the popular vote didn’t become President because they weren’t the winners of the Electoral College votes. The first two instances were mainly due to an unorganized system because of the early establishment. However, there is a recurring pattern in the later elections.

The most important issue in relation to the Canadian electoral process is the debate over whether or not the state should implement electoral reform for federal elections. It is my stance that replacing the Single Member Plurality system (SMP) with the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) is undeniably in the best interest of Canadians, and I will attempt to prove this by contrasting The Limits: Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform - Or How I Came to Love SMP by Christopher Kam, who believes in the current SMP system, and Getting What You Vote For by John Hiemstra, who pushes for a change in favour of the MMP system. This paper will conclude with further critical analysis, as well as my justified stance the MMP system is clearly superior.

In a presidential election, the popular vote means a total of all votes taken from all the states in the United States of America. It is possible for a candidate to win the popular vote by getting the most votes overall but still lose the presidential election. That is because while Americans vote directly for their presidential choice, the president is elected through a system called the Electoral College. While many people view the extra steps unnecessary, the process of going through the Electoral College system of voting is better for the country.

which are proportional to the shares of votes in parliament, but it still is the best electoral system for the UK general elections. There are limitless reasons for this which has already been stated in this essay. Referring back to hung parliaments, under first- past-the-post system we have been governed under a coalition government twice, but systems such as the AV system would be more likely to

The main reason why this system is unfair is because each riding is won by the candidate who receives the most votes, even if that candidate receives less than half of the constituency. Therefore, it is possible for a political party to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons. A disadvantage of FPTP voting is that a small increase in the number of votes a party's candidate receives results in a larger increase in the number of seats that party's candidate wins. For example, in the 2011 federal election the Conservative Party received 39.62% of the total votes but won 54% of the seats, while the NDP captured 30.63% of the total votes, but received only 33.12% seats. Smaller parties are affected

For the purpose of this essay, I will be evaluating the factors that influenced the result of the 2010 UK general election. The general election was held on Thursday 6th May 2010 and was the first election since 1974 to result in a hung parliament, as no party achieved the 326 seats needed to for an overall majority.

Britain is considering changing current first past the post voting system (FPTP) to proportional representation (PR). The main reason is that FPTP is “quasi-democratic” voting system under which there is only one majority party ruling the government and it does not represent wishes of all voters as some votes are wasted. Whereas, PR seems to be the best alternative voting system with proportionality of seats in mandatory places, more parties ruling government and etc. Let us look at these two voting systems and analyze whether PR is suitable and alternative change for FPTP and do advantages of PR outweigh disadvantages.

the UK up to 1950. Then in the years after there have been many other,

As one of Europe’s oldest democratic countries, the United Kingdom consequently has one of the oldest voting systems, a plurality system often called First-Past-The-Post. The system relies on a basic principle; voters can vote for only one candidate and the candidate who receives the most votes wins the seat. (UK Parliament Website, 2014) As the quotation from David Cameron shows, the system is often hailed as one of the simplest voting systems possible, and is mainly used in the U.K for national elections.