The Pros and Cons of Proportional Representation (PR)

Furthermore The First past the Post system gives rise to a coherent opposition in the legislature. In theory, the flip side of a strong single-party government is that the opposition is also given enough seats to perform a critical checking role and present itself as a realistic alternative to the government of the day. It advantages broadly-based political parties. In severely ethnically or regionally divided societies, FPTP is commended for encouraging political parties to be ‘broad churches’, encompassing many elements of society, particularly when there are only two major parties and many different societal groups. These parties can then field a diverse array of candidates for election. In Malaysia, for example, the Barisan Nasional government is made up of a broadly-based umbrella movement which fields Malay, Chinese, and Indian candidates in areas of various ethnic complexions.

The AMS and FPTP are voting systems in use for the Scottish Parliament and House of Commons elections respectively. It can be argued that AMS gives voters more choice and better representation than FPTP, and in order to assess the validity of this argument 3 key indicators must be analysed: constituency links; proportionality and representation of smaller parties.

Forgette Richard, Garner Andrew, and Winkle John. “Do redistricting principles and practices affect US state legislative electoral competition? State Politics and policy quarterly, 20(9) (2009): 151 175.

The second reason why FPTP should not be used for elections to the House of Commons is that it is not representative, meaning that the percentage share of votes is not proportional to the percentage share of seats, because of single member constituencies. This is a weakness as it means that there is not a fair level of representation within the House of Commons, which makes the system less democratic as not everybody’s views are entirely represented in Parliament. For example, in the 2010 general elections, the Conservative party won 36% of votes, but a staggering 47.1% of seats, whilst UKIP gained 3.1% of votes, but 0% of seats, indicating the tendency of FPTP to radically distort the relationship between votes and seats. Due to the fact that FPTP is a plurality system, rather than a majoritarian one, MPs can win the seat by as little as 1 vote, meaning that

Politics in the United States is a complex structure that is comprised of many systems. While most of these systems appear to work well, there are a few that are broken. A perfect example of a broken system is the district boundaries and the likelihood of gerrymandering. Multiple states across the country are subjected to gerrymandering, which is the act of dividing a county into election districts that provide one political party with an unfair advantage over the other. Gerrymandering is used to help or prevent a particular demographic from gaining adequate representation. In Florida, for example, there is controversy over Congressional District 5, which extends from Jacksonville down to Orlando in a way that creates a “minority-majority” district.

First, gerrymandering can dilute an opposing party's voter base. This is done by trying to spread out the candidate’s or party’s, the people who are running for Congress, main voter base by drawing districts that would place the voters in a

The redistribution of districts definitely helped voters that felt underrepresented especially those in rurals and cities but this still presents problems with small pockets of voters that are either undecided or strongly in favor of one party over their districts affiliation. The new NY District 23 is a perfect example of this. District 23 is lead by Congressman Tom Reed, a Republican representing a very rural area of Southern Tier New York. The cities of Corning, Ithaca, Olean, Jamestown, and Dunkirk are scattered throughout the district with dozens of public and private universities also present. The district population is mostly isolated in the cities with sparse populations elsewhere. A majority of the population would be young, due to the universities, and mostly urban, because of the cities, so you expect the district to be blue, wrong. District 23 is in fact red, because of the lack of mobilization of young voters to go out and vote. Because of this, older more rural voters decide the party affiliation of the district resulting in representation by Reed. Some argue that Tom Reed’s district is gerrymandered in his favor which resulted in his reelection this past November. Although he was reelected, there was still a presence of more younger voters making an effort to go out and vote. John Plumb, Reed’s Democratic opponent, had great outreach in the Chautauqua

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

Even though the Proportional Representation system sounds like it could be a good thing for the United States, I think that the system we use now works best for our country. I think we should stick to what we have been doing for all these years. No system is ever going to be perfect but since we are familiar to how our system works, we should just keep it. I feel as though adding more parties would just be too much and get a little out of hand. With the Proportional Representation system I see the votes getting split up between too many parties, therefore there will not be one candidate that is over powering the rest.

In 1842, Congress passed the Apportionment Act, which required congressional districts to be compact and equal in population (“Apportionment Legislation 1840 - 1880”). Although the law made an initial effort to curb gerrymandering, it failed to adequately define “compact.” Over a century later, in the 1962 court case Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court ruled that congressional districts must have reasonable boundaries. The court further deemed redistricting issues to be justiciable, enabling federal courts to decide gerrymandering cases (“Baker v. Carr”). It wasn’t until the 1985 Davis v. Bandemer case that the Supreme Court ruled that manipulating district boundaries for political gains is unconstitutional (“Davis v. Bandemer”). However, the Supreme Court left unanswered one pivotal question: What are the standards for identifying and litigating a gerrymander? (Hess, 209). Although it is illegal, without a clear national standard for addressing gerrymandering, state legislatures get away with it in federal courts by exploiting the legal ambiguity surrounding the practice. Therefore, taking the power to redistrict away from state legislatures in the first place is the most viable

Say there is a state with a population of fifty, now three fifths of that state are democratic and the other two fifths are republican, now we need to separate this state into five congressional districts. The best way to do this would be so there are two republican representatives and three democratic. However with gerrymandering democrats can draw districts that are unfair and they get all five representatives, but if republicans draw the districts they can draw them were there are three republican representatives and only two democratic representatives. This process is seen through many states. In North Carolina forty-four percent of voters voted democratic, however thanks to a creative congressional map, seventy- seven percent of representatives were republican. The twelfth district in North Carolina is considered the most gerrymandered district in the country, and is home to two more of the top ten gerrymandered districts. Republicans rule six of the most Gerrymandered states, including North Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Alabama. The other four

Proportional representation also ensures that almost every district is in a “fair fight.” Even if a state like Georgia has a pronounced lean toward the Republican Party or a state like Massachusetts has a strong lean in the other direction, the margin of victory ends up mattering a lot. Since the margin of victory matters, parties have incentives to try to communicate with, appeal to, and mobilize voters in every corner of the country. This helps boost participation and engagement, but also ensures that no incumbent can feel so “safe” in his seat that he doesn’t need to try to work hard, avoid scandal, and otherwise do his job

In the UK, we have been using the First Past The Post system as our electoral system since we became a democracy. Whilst this system works for us, there are many systems that we could use, these being: Closed Party List, AMS, STV and Supplementary Vote. All these have various strengths and weaknesses to them.

is the winner. PR systems tend to be more complex and are not as easy

Meisburge states that “People in developing countries seldom fit comfortably along the sort of left right spectrum... ...another drawback of PR systems is emerging democracies is that representative accountability is primarily upward to party leaders, rather than..” the voters. (156) With the development of countries we see parties develop but they lack internal democracy because it is yet to develop. We also see that parties are more based on social cleavages in developing countries. Which leads to the exclusion of those not in the social cleaves.PR Systems would allow